5/29/23: I did not get reading in today because I was busy doing yard work. I did however listen to a couple podcasts and I think that narrations of those are worthy.
First, I listened to the Not Just the Tudors episode "Great Fire of London." Interestingly one of the first questions that the hostess asks is why is it called 'great'? I actually had never really considered that but she asks if it is because of the magnitude of the fire and the difficulty to contain it, the devastation it caused, or because it coincided with other major occurrences. Her guest was an author of a book who had researched the fire quite extensively. In the course of their time they covered the makeup of the city; the buildings were made of wood; the people were a mixture of richer and poor; there were routines and ways of doing things.
They also talked about how the fire started and why it was difficult to contain. It began in a bakery where apparently the necessary and usual task of making sure the fires were out was not completed. There was a maid in the household of the bakery that unfortunately died in the fire. Because the buildings were made of wood, the fire easily spread, but there was also a wind that made it worse.
The resources they had for fighting fires were primitive to our minds but even so some of the methods they use we still use today. (I honestly do not recall what these were.) Something that was important to the fire's ability to spread was that the mayor (?) did not do his job when he was notified of the fire at the start. One method used was to pull down buildings so that the fire would not be able to continue down the line; but he did not do that when he should have. Eventually, when it was really out of hand, he just got overwhelmed and left!
Charles II was king at the time and when he was notified of the fire, he got people moving and finally the buildings that should have been torn down were (well, the ones that hadn't already been consumed, that is). Speaking of Charles, the fire wasn't a "good" thing for him but it really wasn't a horrible thing at the time either. He was having a time of it politically and this was good for his image: action on his part to attempt to contain the fire.
There were suspicions that the French were the ones who had started the fire, since the English were at war with them. French people, foreigners in general really, were harassed. Some were accused of hiding firebombs and were tortured. There were examples given of women accused of hiding them in their dresses. One had her breasts cut off! But it wasn't just that people were suspicious of arsonists but also, people were just changed after the fire. People behaved differently and no examples given were good. There were accounts of coming upon a dead body of a person that had been murdered in the street. Before apparently this wasn't common.
The other reason it may have been called great is because some say that it stopped the plague that had reappeared the year before in England. The author though really does not believe that to be the case. We have plague still today, she says, and at the time of the fire the plague was coming to its end already.
The second podcast I listened to was The Art of Manliness episode 768, Become a Focused Monotasker. I listened to this while doing yard work so that was interesting. The guest for this episode has written a book about monotasking as opposed to the ever popular myth that we can get more done with multitasking. Multitasking is a lie essentially. Machines, computers, can multitask; humans really cannot. There are some people who can do a couple things at the same time, and do them well, but majority of people cannot.
When we multitask we are not focusing enough on any of the tasks and it ends up taking longer because we make mistakes, get frustrated, and just simply it takes longer to do any one thing. There was mention of it taking our minds something like 25 minutes to realign itself to a new task adequately to be able to have the focus to do it well. One of the tips he makes to help with the monotasking is to set a time for 20 minutes to do one thing and have all your attention on that one thing.
His first suggestion was reading, and reading of a physical book. Not a kindle or on a phone, a real book. He referenced studies that have been done on the way our minds react to a physical book as opposed to a screen but I don't recall quite what was said. Another activity is taking a walk. This was a bit more difficult for me to grasp because when you are walking, you really can't do something else. But he said that a lot of time we walk and that is when we do our thinking. Instead of taking a walk to bring about your next great idea, walk to simply enjoy the walk; look at your surroundings, notice the flowers and trees, hear the birds, etc.
The host suggested focusing when on an airplane ride instead of plugging into your ear pods, watching a movie, or listening to music.
By taking the time to really focus on one task at a time we will be honing our skill of attention. Attention is a skill that we use in absolutely everything we do so why not strengthen that skill to enable us to do things better...one thing at a time.
Of course there was more to both of these podcasts and I'm recalling them almost 7 hours after listening, so I've linked them if you'd like to listen yourself.
Until next time.
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