Happy Thanksgiving Sunday, everyone! Or, Canadian Thanksgiving, at least. For a long, long time, I felt Canadian Thanksgiving was held on a superior date than American Thanksgiving — you need to spread out the big national holidays, after all. But now, with the introduction of Truth and Reconciliation Day on September 30th in Canada, we now have three statutory holidays in the span of six weeks, and then nothing between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think something needs to give somewhere.

My wife and I had a chance to test drive perhaps the most luxurious vehicle we’ve ever been in this week. We’re not particularly flashy people, and we certainly don’t live in a flashy part of the world, so there was an element of imposter syndrome going on. But boy did we have fun. This vehicle had massage chairs, a massive wrap-around panoramic display, and all the technology a person could ask for. It was the first time I’d ever experienced these types of features, and I can now see why they cost money and why they’re popular.

Next, I have had a particularly annoying few weeks with my original Apple Watch Ultra since the introduction of watchOS 26. For whatever reason, I cannot change my Action Button action to a shortcut. Shortcuts is installed on my Apple Watch, and I have the specific shortcut I want to use as set to work on the Apple Watch. But for whatever reason, Shortcuts just won’t show up as an Action Button option. There has to be a bug — this is how I have used the Action Button for the last three years.

Second, I woke up this morning and simply couldn’t get my Apple Watch Ultra to turn off Sleep Focus. I had the focus changed on my iPhone, turned it off on the Apple Watch, and even used Siri to ensure it was off. But still, the Watch Ultra continued to stay in Sleep Focus and would constantly shut off my always-on display until I tapped it. The only way I could get it to reset to regular focus was by unpairing and re-pairing the Watch with my iPhone. Which means I have to reset everything on my Apple Watch this afternoon.

I’m not implying planned obsolescence or anything. But I do find it annoying how, out of the blue, the first generation Watch Ultra just runs into a plethora of new bugs never before seen, and it happens immediately after watchOS 26 is installed.

A Weekly Meditation: Acts 2:1-13

This week’s meditation culminated in our pastor’s discussion today on Pentecost and the historical point where Heaven touched Earth. By and large, the events occurring as described in Acts 2:1-13 is the actual conclusion to God’s redemptive work for mankind on earth. As our pastor said this morning — you can describe the Old Testament as “God above us”, you can describe the Gospels as “God with us”, and you can describe the rest of the New Testament (and even up to today) as “God within us”.

I continue to find this powerful — that from the fall of man in Genesis 3 and the eating of the apple, God’s redemptive plan to crush the head of the serpent was to come and live among us and to send His spirit to dwell within us for the age. Yet, to understand this and the establishment of the New Covenant, you must first love the Son and obey His commands, by which you will know the Spirit and you will know the Father.

To someone perhaps unaware of the Gospel message, this could sound a bit kooky. I can’t imagine the phrases like “Washed in His blood” or “filled with the Holy Spirit” sounds even remotely logical or rational. I can make it a personal goal to make it more approachable for more people over time. But for now, I greatly appreciate the reality that these sorts of things may be hidden from people. Again, John 14:16 which we discussed last week:

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

It’s all connected, in one way or another. I could spend a lifetime writing about the brilliance of the Lord’s New Covenant with us. For today, I can say that I appreciate the Pentecostal event far greater than I did yesterday.

Productivity as a Fetish

The above are some bold words from Curtis McHale, one of my former colleagues when writing at The Sweet Setup. I’m piggybacking this off Greg Morris’s blog, wherein Greg says the following:

The people giving the advice are very unlikely to be doing so from a similar position to the people consuming their opinions.

This has long — LONG! — been a pet peeve of mine when reading (and, formerly, even writing) about productivity. Those who provide these types of courses, or who “teach” or “coach” CEOs of “multinational corporations” — are they CEOs themselves? Or those who discuss perfect work-life-balance (which usually just means life) — are they mothers or fathers, or volunteers, or service-based business owners? What life experience can these folks lean on when they don’t commit five hours a week to their local food bank, or their local church? Or when they don’t have a staff of 500 people? Or they never completed a legally binding designation?

I grow so tired of this type of coaching.

And it scares me immensely about the future of public policy. Public policy has long been shaped by those who had built businesses, built families, and built their communities, and those policies have been designed to ensure building businesses, building families, and building communities are always incentivized. What’s going to happen when public policymakers are elected into office but have never built a family or volunteered to build their community? Will public policy shift away from incentivizing community and family when it’s made by folks who have no experience with either? Or worse, will those individuals assume they still know best how to build families and communities, despite never doing it themselves?

This to me is quite reflective of so many productivity courses. You have to go in with at least a heavy dose of skepticism.

Battery test: does the C1X make the iPhone Air a battery champ?

Matt Birchler undertook a whole slew of iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air battery tests to test a claim made on some YouTube video, and the results could potentially surprise you. His tests, by and large, confirm what I’ve been feeling (though I’m certainly not sharp enough to articulate what I was feeling) — that the iPhone Air on cellular has better battery life than it has when on Wi-Fi. This seems insane to me.

But truly — you’ll note I mentioned something about this when doing up my first impressions of the iPhone Air. That we drove all the way to Winnipeg and I streamed music through cellular for most of the trip without even dropping 5% on the battery.

Matt’s tests seem to confirm I wasn’t seeing funny things in the dark.

The Second Cup

If You Get the Chance

There is just so much awesome life advice in this quick blog post. Another Collaborative Fund masterpiece.

When design drives behavior

I like this illustration of design and behaviour. There will be a ton of examples out there to showcase this idea, but this is a good one.

Fluid forms, vibrant colors

This seems like another one of those Microsoft design tendencies wherein their designs are bright, colourful, and honestly super beautiful. Only for their software to oddly feel drab. For years, Microsoft’s design breakdowns and trailer videos showcase more beautiful products than the actual products when launched.

Pay yourself first

I had never considered the idea that “paying yourself” could actually mean “solve the problems you want to solve”.

I read a tweet this week that suggested professionals have been doing a terrible job of returning phone calls, returning emails, and corresponding with clients since COVID-19. And that this was akin to the professionals “not caring” about their clients. That if you cared, as a professional, you would return a phone call or email. That the only thing that matters to professionals nowadays is how much money they can make off each of those phone calls or emails.

But boy does this feel unfair. There is so much work to do, with an endless array of problems ranging from big to small. And sometimes you have to tackle those problems in the order you set under the priorities you set.

I feel strongly this has nothing to do with caring and everything to do with which task do I have to do first that will have the biggest impact.

Happy Sunday. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.

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