Learning to speak, bourbon and whiskeys language: how to read and understand the information on a liquor bottle.

Hello again dear reader.

Today's discussion is going to be something slightly different as it was inspired. Yet again by an interesting conversation I had with a friend. Today's discussion will be concerned with how to properly read and understand the labels and information on bourbon whiskey bottles. As thanks to resurgence in the popularity of cocktails are liquor such as bourbon and whiskey have become more prevalent than ever. The problem is that a lot of people don't speak a bourbon or whiskey language into lying about something either because the label looks cool, it sounds very old and classy or because a friend recommended it. And these are all good ways dear reader, to end up spending far too much money on bottle of liquor. That’s taste isn't quite what you're looking for. So you either end up giving it away (which I guess isn't so bad. If you give it to someone that truly enjoys it, because then it's not waste) or it ends up gathering dust in the back of your liquor cabinet. Today's conversation is intended to help you cut through all of the fancy labels and graphics to help you dear reader, to find a specific bourbon or whiskey that will truly be suited to your taste...


With its resurgent popularity and increased availability, bourbon has become a go-to drink for the refined gentleman. For many, it has knocked Scotch out of the top liquor spot due to its affordability and unique flavor-set. If you’re a bourbon fan yourself, are thinking of venturing into the flavorful and historical world of this beverage, but have found yourself spending too much money on a bottle that you didn’t truly enjoy, this discussion is for you dear reader.
Many of us have wandered the aisle of a liquor store aimlessly waiting for a bottle to catch our eye. If you’re like me, the first one (or three) you notice may be significantly beyond your price range. So you eventually settle for a standard big-name whiskey without really knowing what you’re getting into. Oftentimes, the product that you go home with is underwhelming and/or not quite what you expected. In some ways, it’s like buying Budweiser when you really want a craft brew, but don’t know where to start. It can be an intimidating world.
This was a common occurrence in my life until about a year ago, when I determined to learn more about the drink I’d been spending so much money and time on. I began to ask questions of friends in the industry and read documents pertaining to the qualifications and taxonomy which guide this category of whiskey. I am not in the distilled spirits industry myself; however, living in Louisville, Kentucky, I’ve had the privilege of interacting with some legends of bourbon culture. When asked to pass on some wisdom to a bourbon newbie, they’ve all said essentially the same thing: “The informed consumer is the happy consumer.”
Today I’ll pass on the knowledge they’ve imparted to me, so that you too can make an informed choice when selecting a bourbon. Below I’ll walk you through the meanings of some of the common bourbon terminology you’ll find on the bottles you pick up and examine at the store, to ensure you bring home the right one.

Whiskey

First, let’s briefly define whiskey. Simply put, it is a distilled spirit made from fermented grain. Rum is distilled from fermented sugar cane, sorghum, molasses, or other sweet substances. Brandy is distilled from wine, which is made from fermented fruit. Any distillate made with anything other than grain cannot be considered whiskey. These boundaries are wide, allowing for distilled rice or quinoa to be considered whiskey, but not so wide as to be insignificant.
Bourbon is a type of whiskey, as is rye, Scotch, single malt, etc. Those all fall under the vast banner of whiskey.

Kentucky

There is a myth, common in the whiskey world, that to be called “bourbon” the beverage in question must be made in Kentucky. This sentiment, while popular, is not true. Although there are plenty of other places bourbon is made, seeing the word “Kentucky” on a bottle’s label is significant for at least two reasons.
First, Kentucky is home to many rivers, the most important of which is the Kentucky River, which runs the length of the state. The riverbeds of the Kentucky and its tributaries contain natural limestone, which naturally filters out impurities — like iron — which can cause discoloration, off flavors, and hangovers. It is possible to remove these impurities through chemical processes in a lab, but the natural filtering of the limestone interacts in such a way as to remove the greatest amount of impurities. While Kentucky isn’t the only place in the country with naturally-occurring, limestone-laden water, it does have the easiest access to the highest amounts, making it prime whiskey production territory. Because of its superb purity, limestone-filtered water is, in my humble opinion, the most important ingredient in your favorite distilled beverage.
The second reason the word “Kentucky” matters on your whiskey label is because of the bluegrass state’s drastic changes in weather. All four seasons are experienced distinctly each year, making Kentucky an excellent environment for aging whiskey. As the weather heats up, the wooden staves that make up a bourbon barrel expand, soaking up whiskey and passing the liquid through a layer of caramelized wood sugars, adding a large portion of the flavor and 100% of the color to the drink. When the weather turns cold, the staves contract, forcing the liquid back out. This repeated filtration in and out of the wood ages the whiskey more thoroughly and consistently than if the climate were more consistently warm or cold. When hosting tastings for friends, I will often ask, “Would you rather drink Florida bourbon, where the weather is consistently swamp-like, North Dakota bourbon, where the weather is consistently cold, or Kentucky bourbon, where the fluctuations in temperature help it age and develop those signature robust flavors?” With proper understanding, the answer is always: “Kentucky!”
Of course, other parts of the country have seasonal variety, but in combination with the natural limestone water, the best of the best bourbons come from the state with the deepest heritage: Kentucky.

Age Statements

For one reason or another, age statements on bottle labels seem to be going the way of the dodo. Some distilleries, such as Heaven Hill and Jim Beam, have begun to take age statements off of some of their bottles in favor of wording such as: “Artfully aged to meet our unique flavor profile.” However, age matters when it comes to whiskey, both legally and for depth of flavor. Unlike wine, the age on a bottle of whiskey refers to the time spent aging in a barrel rather than the bottle. The age statement put on a specific label and used in its marketing material must match the youngest drop of whiskey in the bottle. So, hypothetically, you could have a bottle of bourbon containing 6-year, 8-year, and 10-year-old whiskey, and legally it must be labeled as 6 years old.
How does this happen? Isn’t bourbon just aged in a barrel, and bottled straight from there? Not quite. Unless it has the term “Single Barrel” on the label, you know that it’s actually a blend. The distiller has taken a 6-year barrel, an 8-year barrel, and a 10-year barrel (using the example above), mixed it all together in a big tank, and then bottled it from there — labeled, of course, as 6-year bourbon.
There is another myth out there that whiskey must be aged two years to legally be considered bourbon. This is simply not true! Whiskey that was put in a virgin oak barrel straight off the still and bottled afterward has equal claim to the title of bourbon in the eyes of the law. However, anything aged less than 4 years must display an age statement. So the distillers mentioned above that have taken age statements off bottles are providing bourbon at least 4 years old, but probably not much more than that — if it was 8- or 10-year bourbon it would be labeled as such because of the prestige of a long-aged whiskey.

Straight

The term “straight” is a legal reference to the liquor’s age. Straight whiskey is aged for a minimum of 2 years. It is rare that a whiskey develops any depth of flavor prior to that 2-year mark. Whiskey less than 2 years old will often taste “green” or overly floral, and will be lightly colored, sometimes even clear. While everyone has a unique palate and some may prefer this flavor profile, straight whiskey is the widely-accepted baseline in the industry.  

Bourbon

In the early 1960s, Senator Thruston Morton from Louisville and Representative John C. Watts of Nicholasville introduced a proposal before a joint session of Congress which would solidify bourbon’s place in U.S. history. On May 4th, 1964, the United States Congress passed a concurrent resolution, ratifying the senator’s proposal designating bourbon as the native spirit of the United States. This resolution codified the industry standards for production and made the claim that anything labeled and sold as bourbon had to be made exclusively within the boundaries of the United States. This particular piece of legislation, along with differences in the grain mash recipes, differentiates bourbon from Scotch, Irish, Japanese, and other types of whiskeys.
A whiskey must meet the following qualifications to be considered bourbon:

1. It must be distilled from a grain mash consisting of at least 51% corn.
2. It must be distilled at a maximum of 160 proof, and barreled at a maximum of 125 proof.
3. It must be aged in a new, charred oak container. This could legally be oak from any part of the world — red oak or white, a box or a barrel. The important thing is oak wood specifically. Additionally, the oak must be virgin, meaning that the container cannot have been used for any other purpose prior to the whiskey entering. Unlike other distilled grain spirits, the cooperage used to age bourbon may only be used once. The industry standard is an American white oak barrel, usually 53 gallons.
4. Additional flavoring or coloring may not be added to the distilled spirit. Only water, to cut the proof, or bourbon from other barrels may be added to the whiskey.
5. It must be made in the United States. If all other qualifications are met, and the whiskey is produced in Canada, it must be labeled as “bourbon-style whiskey,” as it does not meet the legal standards required to be called bourbon.

Bottled-in-Bond

This category is not found on the majority of bourbon labels, and they’re usually located near the bottom of the shelf in the liquor store. You’d think that would make them a lower-quality product (because they’re also lower priced), but it’s a secret in the bourbon-drinking community that just the opposite is true. In my opinion, bonded bourbons are the best bang for your buck and the most flavorful/unique bourbons in production.
The high standards that guide this federally defined category came about, like most things, out of necessity.
Until the early 20th century, bourbon was sold to taverns and bars by the barrel. To increase the longevity of the whiskey supply and the profits of the barkeeper, as the barrel would begin to empty, foreign substances would be added back into the barrel. According to the stories I’ve heard most consistently, these substances included: iodine, acid (to retain the bite), tobacco spit (to maintain color), and river water (to retain liquid volume). People would often fall ill, even to the point of death, from consuming these tainted bourbons. In 1897, Kentucky legend Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor passed a piece of legislation known as the Bottled-in-Bond Act. This consumer protection bill increased the quality of the whiskey for the drinker and benefited both the distillers and the federal government by providing mutually beneficial regulations and protections. Funny enough, this beat the Pure Food and Drug act by 9 years; apparently Congress was more worried about tainted booze than tainted food!
To be considered bottled-in-bond, a bourbon must meet the following qualifications:

1. It must be: “the product of one distiller, at one distillery, in one distilling season.” This helps ensure quality control by making each batch of whiskey identifiable by its producer. This is important because many modern distilleries actually produce and bottle their product at a third-party production facility, and that’s often kept a secret for marketing and branding purposes. Iowa favorite Templeton Rye got in trouble for this a few years back.
2. “It must be aged in a federally bonded warehouse.” This is where the tax agent and this mutually beneficial arrangement come in. With federal involvement, a distiller can market their increased quality standards and the government is able to profit from taxes on the whiskey, both as it ages in the warehouses and as it is sold.
3. It must be aged in the bonded warehouses for a minimum of 4 years. This ensures a consistent and thorough aging process.
4. It must be bottled at exactly 100 proof (50% alcohol by volume). This is a higher ABV than you’ll find in a lot of whiskeys, making it hard to drink neat (with no ice). But, it makes the value higher for the consumer and creates a universal standard that can be tested.

Bottled-in-bond bourbons are the most restricted class of bourbons in the world. The high standards and consistent production makes them a wonderful value for even the most pretentious of bourbon snobs. If you’re not sure what to purchase in the liquor store and are looking to venture outside of the “well” whiskeys that most people know, I recommend trying some bottled-in-bond products (here’s a list of those that are available today).
Why is it that bottle-in-bond products are often cheaper than the top-shelf bottles? They just aren’t as rare or hip as some of your more expensive options. A distillery, especially a new and upcoming one, isn’t going to invest in meeting the bottled-in-bond qualifications for small batches. It’s just not feasible. For the warehousing and taxation involved, the bourbon needs to be made at a fairly high volume to be worth it. A lot of the money being made in bourbon today is about marketing and being “cool,” but much of the bottled-in-bond makers have been doing it for a very long time. It’s sort of a throwback label; today’s new products aren’t dangerous to consumers, but 100 years ago that was a different case, and some of those distillers are still around, making bottled-in-bond bourbons and selling them to you on the cheap.
Understanding the meaning behind words and phrases on a bourbon label helps the consumer make more informed choices when looking to purchase a valuable product. Being able to identify what you’re taking home will provide for a better drinking experience and waste less of your time and resources. Additionally, knowing the history and reasoning behind each word or phrase on the label increases the pleasure of both the buying experience and the actual imbibing of your favorite brown water. Keep learning, keep experimenting, and keep on drinking Kentucky’s native spirit — and the gentleman’s favorite.


As always, dear reader, thanks for listening, and there will be more to come soon. _______________

Eyes front, and pay attention!! How to focus the power of the human brain.

Hello again, dear reader.

Today's discussions that I have anything specifically to do with the adventure (as summer is coming to a rapid close,) however, I suppose this device could also be used to help keep your mind sharp. In an adventurous situation as today we are going to be discussing how to train your mind dear reader to stay focused, especially during stressful situations. As recently I heard someone say that the problem with today's younger generations is that they have no attention span. I can see why some people with certainly think that. However, I am of the opinion that what looks to be a lack in attention span is simply an inability to focus as things to be overwhelming increase in technology available today. We are absolutely bombarded by visual verbal and mental stimulation, which of course makes it increasingly hard to focus on any individual activity or task for an extended length of time. So I started wondering if there was a way to teach the mind. How to block out some of the overwhelming and unnecessary stimulation, so that one could more easily focus on a given activity or task for an extended period of time (at least long enough to accomplish a specific goal), such as reading the entire article in a newspaper or finishing a homework assignment. So hopefully by the end of today's discussion, dear reader, you too will have a better understanding of the human brain's ability to focus and how to control it...





If you just focused more, you’d be more successful!”
We’ve all probably heard these kinds of admonishments from a teacher or a parent. And most of us probably castigate ourselves on a daily basis for our inability to concentrate on the task at hand. It seems in our distracted world of texts, tweets, and news feeds, more and more folks are bemoaning their scattered thinking and have a strong desire to improve their attention span and focus. Anecdotal evidence bears this out: the number of people searching for “how to focus” has increased dramatically in the past five years, and two of the most popular posts on AoM are about removing web distractions and improving concentration.
Many of us want to improve our attention, but we often come up short. When we do fail, the typical response is to redouble our efforts and swear to the gods of attention that we’ll never browse Reddit again. But the very next day we find ourselves backsliding into our old scatter-brained ways.
What’s going on here? Why is it so hard to bridle our attention?
In answering this question, it’s common to point to the increasing amount of distractions in our modern world and/or a lack of individual discipline. These factors are certainly part of the problem, but there’s a more fundamental underlying issue at play: people want to master their attention, but they don’t know what attention actually is.
When most people think of attention, they think of the ability to completely focus on one thing without being distracted. So when they set about trying to improve their attention, this is all they concentrate on. But single-minded focus is in fact only one facet of attention. Recent research has shown that attention actually comes in different types — each with unique strengths and weaknesses — that are best deployed or rested in various situations. Mastering your attention then, is like being the supreme commander of your mind’s armed forces; instead of continually placing the same unit at the frontlines and being dismayed each time their trench gets overrun by the enemy, you rotate your troops in a savvy and deliberate way.
In short, attention mastery is attention management.
Since you can’t change what you can’t understand, in this first installment of a two-part series, we’re going to dive into the nature of attention – what it is, how it works, and why it’s so important beyond just being able to sit and read Moby Dick for more than 5 minutes at a time. By understanding how attention works, we’ll be better equipped to manage it.
Next week, we’ll look at specific actions you can take to improve and manage your attention.
Let’s get started!
And pay attention, damnit!

What is Attention?

“Knowing something about the mechanics of your attention can be as powerful as any therapy or medication or drug.” – Steven Johnson
Psychologist and philosopher William James best defined attention over 100 years ago.
“Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.”
There’s a lot going on in any given moment around you and even within your own body. If we didn’t have the ability to attune ourselves to specific things while ignoring the rest, we’d go insane. In fact, neuroscientists believe that the reason LSD causes psychedelic experiences is that the drug inhibits our brain’s attention networks, thus causing sensory overload. If we didn’t have the ability to pay attention, life would be one long LSD trip.
“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 
What we decide to pay attention to and what we decide to ignore shapes our existence and our reality (Or as Yoda put it, “Your focus is your reality.”). Because everyone pays attention to different things, everyone has different conceptions of reality. Attention explains why three different eyewitnesses can have three different accounts of a crime and why couples get in fights about who is or isn’t pulling their weight around the house — everyone is training their focusing lens on different things and framing the “shots” of their reality in their own way.
So attention is, in a nutshell, the ability to focus on certain stimuli or thoughts while ignoring others, which in turn shapes how we perceive and experience the world around us.
All well and good. But how exactly does attention work?
Well it’s a lot more complex than you’d think. There’s no “attention” part of the brain that you can just flip on. Rather, attention involves a complex combination of different cognitive processes — like working memory and executive control — that  work together in unison. Moreover, there are actually different types of attention, each with their own benefits and downsides.

Types of Attention

Involuntary Attention

Involuntary attention isn’t consciously controlled by us, but rather by compelling stimuli in our environment.
We experience involuntary attention when we hear a loud noise, see what we think is a snake slithering in the grass, or simply notice something new and novel. For our ancestors, involuntary attention helped them avoid danger and find rewards — it allowed them to react quickly to predators or discover new resources.
Stimuli that’s possibly dangerous typically grabs our involuntary attention more than stimuli that could lead to a reward; in primitive times, simply surviving was more important than getting ahead. This explains why eyewitness testimony during a violent crime is often unreliable. A victim or bystander will automatically focus in on the weapon being used, while everything else, including the perpetrator’s face or what he was wearing, becomes a blur.
From an evolutionary standpoint, there’s a benefit to reacting automatically to potentially dangerous or rewarding stimuli. However, in the modern age, our involuntary attention has been hijacked by the constant stream of stuff going on around us — urban noise, TV, smartphone pings, background music, etc. “Look, I see a bear!” has become, “Look a funny video on YouTube! An interesting article on this news site! A photo of my friend on Facebook….” Basically, the sensitivity of our involuntary attention to the new and unusual is the reason why the internet is so damn distracting.
While our involuntary attention can be overwhelmed by an onslaught of distractions, mild stimulation of it actually puts us in a “soft fascination” state that quiets the mind and gives our voluntary attention (see below) a break. Getting out into nature puts us in this soft fascination state – there are different things to see whilst out walking in the woods, but the stream of incoming stimuli is so slow and mellow our mind feels simultaneously engaged and at rest. For this reason, spending time in nature not only feels great, but has been shown to relieve stress, anxiety, and depression.

Voluntary Attention

Voluntary attention is a focusing process over which we have conscious control. Instead of our attention being at the whim of whatever stimuli grabs for it, we deliberately decide what our mind attends to.
Voluntary attention requires effort, willpower, and intentional concentration. When your elementary school teacher told you to “pay attention!” she was telling you to use your voluntary attention.
You exercise your voluntary attention when you decide which of the stimuli bombarding your involuntary attention you’ll attend to, and which you’ll ignore, as in when you choose not to answer your cell phone in order to get out of the way of a honking taxi. We also call upon our voluntary attention when we try to shut out all competing stimuli in order to concentrate on a single task, like writing a memo, reading a book, meditating, or even playing a video game.
The more stimuli there are competing for our involuntary attention, the harder our voluntary attention has to work to stay engaged with the task at hand. For example, our voluntary attention goes into overdrive when we try to have a conversation in a loud restaurant and really stay present with the other person. Despite the fact that there’s so much going on around us — waiters taking orders, other people yakking, toddlers crying — we’re able to ignore all that stuff and just pay attention to the conversation (most of the time, of course). It’s a pretty amazing cognitive feat if you stop and think about it. This may be why adding one more distraction to the mix – a smartphone on the table – can end up pulling you away from the conversation; your voluntary attention is already working so hard that it becomes the straw that breaks your concentration’s back!
If involuntary attention allowed our species to survive, voluntary attention is what has really helped us thrive. It’s through voluntary attention that cities were built, wars were won, and masterpieces written. On an individual level, voluntary attention is what allows you to progress with your personal goals. When you plan your week, write in your journal, listen to a loved one, or work on a new habit, you use your voluntary attention.
The thing with voluntary attention is that just like willpower, we have a finite amount of it. Part of the reason people complain so much about feeling distracted or having a short attention span is that our modern world taxes our voluntary attention so stinking much. Every day we have to consciously decide to ignore an ocean of stimuli, from the simple noises of a city, to electronic billboards, to smartphone pings, to text messages. On top of that, constantly switching where our attention lies also saps our supply. However, voluntary attention is also similar to willpower in that research has shown that it can be strengthened with certain exercises and practices. (We’ll be talking about those in our next post.)

Default Mode: Mind Wandering

When an outside stimulus isn’t engaging our involuntary attention or we’re not using our voluntary attention to attend to a specific task or thought, our mind shifts into a default mode called “mind wandering” – what we often refer to as daydreaming.
Lots of research has been done about mind wandering, yet cognitive and neuroscientists still disagree about what exactly is going on with our attention whenever we engage in it. On the one hand, mind wandering takes our voluntary attention away from whatever task we might be working on at the moment. It often happens while we’re engaged in low cognition activities like showering, walking, exercising, or even reading. For example, you might be reading this post, but thinking about what you’re going to eat for dinner tonight. So you’re not fully paying attention to the oh-so-masterful prose right in front of you…
On the other hand, research has shown that when we engage in mind wandering, our brains actually use the same regions that are utilized when we’re trying to exercise voluntary attention; even though we’re not paying attention to the task at hand, we are paying some attention to our distracting thoughts (like tonight’s dinner).
Hmmm…what’s going on here?
The answer is that mind wandering is a true cognitive paradox. When our mind wanders, we use our voluntary attention, just not necessarily on the thing we wanted to pay attention to originally.
Mind wandering is an important facet in our attention system because we spend so much of our time in this default mode — about 50% of our wakeful thoughts are aimless daydreams. Spending time in this state has both benefits and drawbacks, and it’s important to understand what those are so you can intentionally manage how often you do it and what your mind drifts to while on these cognitive rambles.
The Drawbacks of Mind Wandering
Apart from the fact that mind wandering keeps you from being fully present in what you’re doing, there are some other downsides to our brain’s default mode. When we let our minds wander, we typically drift towards negative thoughts and emotions. We’re focused on unresolved problems, conflicts with co-workers and girlfriends, unfulfilled goals, bills to be paid, even an embarrassing moment from ten years ago. Research has shown that even neutral thoughts that arise when our mind wanders tend to be shaded with a negative emotional tone. What’s more, once the negative thought/emotion stream gets going during mind wandering, we tend to fixate and ruminate on those thoughts (like a cow chewing its cud), which pulls us deeper and deeper into a funk.
Not only do we tend to focus on the negative when our minds wander, that stream of negativity is typically directed at ourselves, because we’re the most common subject of our musings. Mind wandering’s negativity bias and self-focus turns us all into daydreaming Eeyores (“Nobody cares. I’m so sad.”). What’s interesting is that once we start to ramp up our voluntary attention again and shift out of the mind wandering zone, the regions involved with emotional and self-referential preoccupations quiet and we start to feel better. Whenever you’re feeling in the dumps, Grandpa’s admonition to get over yourself and get to work is actually incredibly sound advice.
The Benefits of Mind Wandering
Despite mind wandering’s downsides, research has shown there are some benefits to spending time in this cognitive zone. First, mind wandering is just your brain’s way of directing unused processing power towards solving unresolved problems in your life. While we tend to wander towards problems and negative emotions when we engage in mind wandering, our mind floats to those things in hopes of resolving them. Mind wandering’s negativity bias is just trying to nudge us to work on the issues in our lives that need some untangling.
Second, while we tend to focus on the negatives when we daydream, we can also experience positive thoughts and emotions. Cognitive scientists call these more rose-colored musings “positive-constructive daydreaming.” During positive-constructive daydreaming, we engage in future planning, reminisce about positive emotional experiences, and engage in moral reasoning.
Third, mind wandering can get our creative juices flowing. One study showed that individuals who spent time mind wandering before taking on a challenge that asked them to come up with novel uses of an object were able to generate 40 percent more original ideas than individuals who didn’t daydream before getting started. Mind wandering boosts creativity because it’s so unstructured. By allowing our mind to freely ramble over the hills and dales of our craniums, we’re able to make connections we otherwise wouldn’t if we were actively directing our attention to one single solution. Mind wandering explains why so many of history’s great insights and discoveries were made while taking a walk or soaking in a bath.
Finally, and most importantly, daydreaming gives your voluntary and involuntary attention systems a break. We’re surrounded by a cacophony of stimuli that constantly compete for our attention. To be truly effective with our precious attention, we need periods in which we’re not strenuously attending to anything.
To sum it up, mind wandering can be good or bad, depending on how you manage and direct it. While research suggests that whether our mind wandering skews negative or positive depends largely in part on our genetic temperament, research also shows we do have the conscious ability to nudge our wandering mind into more constructive modes.

 Narrow vs. Broad Focus Attention

Once we decide to direct our voluntary attention to a certain stimulus, we can attend to it with either narrow or broad focus attention.
The difference between narrow and broad focus is neatly explained with an analogy from American football. When a quarterback drops back for a pass, he’ll initially have broad focus attention. He’ll take in the entire playing field, read defenders, and find an open receiver. He’s allowing as much information into his mind as possible. Once he decides on a receiver to throw to, he’ll shift to a narrow focus attention, calculating the best time to throw the ball and the kind of speed and arc to give it in order to successfully get the ball into the receiver’s hands. (And now to truly appreciate the power of both the mind and the NFL quarterback: this entire process averages just about 2.75 seconds.)
Broad (or open) focus attention is great for getting your bearings, understanding the “big picture,” and comprehending complex systems and relationships. It gives us a quick and dirty conception of a situation. However, broad focus attention isn’t so useful for managing important details like your checkbook or calendar or editing, say, a blog post.
Narrow (or sharp) focus attention allows us to be efficient, productive, and meticulous. However, too narrow a focus can lead to tunnel vision, causing us to lose sight of other important facts or details. The drawback of narrow focus attention is best illustrated in the famous invisible gorilla test.
Neither broad nor narrow attention is “better” than the other — they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Again, the trick is learning how to manage the two and knowing when to switch to one type of focus or the other.
Something that makes this idea easier to grasp is understanding how emotion interacts with narrow and broad focus. Research shows that when we’re engaged in narrow focus attention, our negativity bias increases and we’re more likely to home in on negative emotions and/or miss positive stimuli. Conversely, when we shift to a broad focus attention, we feel happier and more optimistic.
Think about the arguments you may have had with your wife about who’s doing more of the chores around the house. Studies have shown that spouses both believe they are doing the lion’s share – which is of course impossible. Each spouse’s narrow focus helps them clearly remember how many times they’ve taken out the trash and cooked dinner that week, but keeps them from taking notice of all the things their partner is doing. Shifting to a broader focus will help you pick up on the ways your spouse is pitching in too, helping you avoid the tit-for-tat trap and have a happier relationship.

The Benefits of Learning to Manage Your Attention

When you think about the benefits of attention, you probably think how crucial it is in tackling intellectual challenges like writing papers or reading anything longer than 800 words. And indeed, research has confirmed what all of us already knew intuitively — that the ability to manage our attention is the linchpin of success in cognitive endeavors. For example, students who know how to pay attention to their studies for long periods of time do better than students who can’t and these same students typically outperform their less attentive peers later on in life.
But after reading this post, you’re hopefully realizing that attention isn’t just crucial for studying Latin conjugations. Research shows that improving our attention has a wide variety of benefits that extend into every area of our lives:

• Improves relationships – attention allows you to be fully present with another individual which makes them feel acknowledged, understood, and charmed.
• Boosts resilience – having a handle on your attention allows you to direct it to positive events, and away from ruminating on the negative.
• Increases happiness – being able to shift into a broad focus can help you notice good things and see opportunities and connections you would have otherwise missed.
• Increases creativity – purposefully engaging in mind wandering sessions and nudging them in positive directions can help generate new ideas.
• Deepens our wisdom – directed mind wandering sessions can encourage deep thinking, the application of moral reasoning, and productive internal debates.
• Improves our critical thinking – attention not only allows you to read and digest a long text, but truly wrangle with and analyze it.
• Gives us a more flourishing and enjoyable life – all these benefits + not having to miss out on learning the reams and reams of knowledge that can’t be condensed into a soundbite or a list-type article = a meaningful and satisfied life.

Besides the benefits that improved management of attention brings to the individual, several social critics and philosophers argue that our society’s decreasing attention is leading us to a new “cultural dark age” in which individuals no longer have the deep, sustained focus necessary for synthesizing and assessing information or expressing complex thoughts. Instead, we live in a world of “Present Shock” in which everything happens now, information is conveyed via memes and tweets, and we no longer have the skill or wisdom to separate the signal from the noise. One could argue that the crises and general malaise we’ve experienced in the West during the past thirty years is, at its core, a crisis of attention. We’re either paying attention to the wrong problems or too distracted by the next “controversy” to solve the issues at hand.
Bottom line: If you want to improve yourself and the world around you, the first step is to learn how to harness your attention. It’s the locomotive of human progress.

Conclusion

Attention mastery is attention well managed. Like any good manager, you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your different attentional team members and to which task you should assign them. By now you should understand the strengths and weaknesses of your involuntary, voluntary, and mind wandering attentional modes, as well as the pros and cons of having a broad or narrow focus. With this mental framework in place, we can apply this knowledge to creating concrete and specific actions that will improve and strengthen specific aspects of our attention as well as manage its different elements. The end goal is a well-rounded and effective attention ability that will aid you in achieving excellence in all areas of your life.

As always, dear reader, thanks for listening, and there will be more to come soon.

Taking shelter from the storms on the path of adventure: six ideas for alternative shelters.

Hello again, dear reader.

Since we have been talking about adventure in most of our recent conversations, I thought it was about high time we discuss one of the most important aspects of adventure and adventuring, which is shelter. When most people think of shelter, of course, they either think of a cabin or a lodge (the less adventurous, dear readers may even think of a five-star hotel room). However, most inventors think of tents, and when they do. They usually think the modern canvas or nylon dome tent so that every outdoor supply store all over the world. However, there are alternatives to this ubiquitous camping staple and for today's discussion. I thought we would investigate six alternative shelters so that you dear reader, would have more in your shelter taking repertoire. Other than the traditional dome or pup tent...


Since the first dude crawled into a cave and grunted, “Dude, this rocks,” shelter has been one of the big three human needs along with food and clothing. These days we think shelter, and we think house, something fixed and immovable, but for most of our human history we were wanderers.  Portable shelters are part of our genotype.
From the felted yak fur gers of Mongolia and the huge tents of the Bedouin to the five-pound ultra-light pouches of modern backpackers, portable shelter has morphed into something very different.  At some point, people went from comfort to efficiency.
Don’t get me wrong. Super-light backpacking tents are awesome for tucking into your pack for a week-long trek into the mountains.  Five pounds can make a pretty cool portable cave for a few backpackers who drill holes in their toothbrushes and turn their socks inside out for two days of wear.  But for comfortable long-term shelter, crawling into a nylon igloo is pretty stifling. There are other options, many of them considered anachronisms, but they’re still relevant. Today we’re going to talk about a few of the more unconventional shelters a man can make in the outdoors. These aren’t survival shelters–that’s another topic for another time; these are shelters you might willingly choose to make for yourself.

Shelter Materials and Equipment

When it comes to making shelter, there are two types of things you need: things to make the shelter, and things to keep the shelter where you put it up.
Shelter Materials
Canvas
Canvas is often considered an anachronism, associated with leaky, musty army pup tents found in Grampa’s attic and set up hastily in the backyard.  The facts about canvas are much more subtle.
Canvas is durable.  It can take a lot of abuse, can be bone-dry, and is often a superior material.  Throw a log on the fire and send a bunch of sparks downwind into your ultralight tent and you’ll quickly see why.
The canvas used for shelters is often treated with fire resistant chemicals, so you can do more with a canvas shelter when it comes to heating, either with a campfire or a small, collapsible stove.
However, canvas is not light–at all.  Traveling with a canvas shelter usually means an ulterior method of propulsion, like a canoe, dogsled, pack horse, or toboggan.  They are most assuredly not for ultralight camping.
Synthetics
Nylon is a material, not a cloth.  The weaves and fabrics made of nylon number in the hundreds, and all nylon is certainly not created equal.  The coarser the weave, the more durable the fabric is against abrasion. Since most shelters do not require that sort of abrasion resistance, the heavier, courser weaves are almost never used except possibly as a reinforcement.
A wonderful discovery for the outdoor enthusiast showed up when I was a kid in Boy Scouts.  We had a lot of nylon gear, but if we accidentally sliced it, the tear would run like a three year-old’s nose in February.  The wonderful discovery was rip-stop nylon.  By weaving a heavier thread through the fabric, any tear would stop at that thread (hence the name).  Small tears are easy to patch.  Long rips, you’re toast.  Thanks, rip-stop.  You changed my world.
Another wonderful discovery is much more recent.  Ultralight nylon cloth was covered with a super-thin layer of silicone, and siliconized nylon was born.  At 1.1 to 1.9 ounces per square yard, it doesn’t take a genius to see that a nine by nine tarp would weigh well under a pound.  The upside: waterproof and super light.  The downside: sewing siliconized nylon is like sewing two lasagna noodles together after dipping them in olive oil.  The stuff is so slippery that all but the most skilled sewers can experience frustration.
Both canvas and synthetics have their time and place, and a smart outdoorsman uses both as appropriate.
Shelter Equipment
Stakes
With the kinds of unconventional shelters we’ll be discussing today, you need stakes and lots of ’em.  The free-standing backpacking tent has a distinct advantage here, but that advantage is blown away quite literally.  It sucks to watch the drama unfold as a good gust of wind takes your tent down a hillside and over a cliff like a giant synthetic tumbleweed.
There are stakes for every sort of ground: snow and ice, sand and silt, rock and scree.  Snow stakes are large, flat-surfaced, and are designed to resist forces when they are fixed in place.  This is accomplished either by driving them down into crusty snow or burying them.  Snow stakes can be made of skis, shovels, trash can lids–basically anything that’s flat with a place to tie off.

Sand stakes are similar, but sand is so dense you don’t need anything so big.  Sand stakes work better as they increase in surface area, of course.  I made my own because I wanted something lightweight, and I wanted to be able to make various sizes: long for high tension lines, short for staking down a non-stressed tab.  I use these when pitching my lean-to on my favorite river.
We’ve all seen metal tent stakes.  Small aluminum spikes work fine when the ground is firm and subsurface rocks non-existent, but they will bend into a pretzel when you hit a rock but choose to keep pounding away. Good for ultralight, but worthless in many situations.  Steel stakes are better and are generally larger.
In many cases, the stakes that come with your tent are an afterthought, so consider replacing them before the trip.  There are good stakes with some better brand tents, like Mountain Hardwear or MSR.
Cordage
 Outdoor Law Number 43.2: You can never have enough rope.  43.1 is The more you need a piece of cordage, the less the odds you have it with you.  43.3 is You did read 43.2, didn’t you?
All tents need cordage to stake them out properly, and as with stakes, sometimes the cord included with your tent is awful, stiff nylon rope that takes a knot when you don’t want it, and won’t when you do. Do yourself a favor and toss it.  Now.
Good parachute cord is available in many sizes, colors, patterns, and materials.  The cord with reflective tape woven into the sheath if wonderful, especially if you’re walking around camp at night with a headlamp.
I have 100 feet of cord in my kit at any time, usually 50 feet of regular 4 or 5mm cord and 50 of 3mm reflective.

Unconventional Shelters

Now that you have the needed materials and equipment, what can you do with them? Well many things that a great deal of campers who’ve only used a regular tent don’t know about or have never tried, but are quite useful. Let’s take a look at a few.
The Tarp

The simplest shelter of all, the tarp is incredibly versatile when pitched as appropriate for the conditions.  The trick is to understand the weather patterns, prevailing winds, and the odds of inclement weather.
The most common and the simplest set-up is when you put all four corners of a tarp off the ground.  Take each corner and tie it off to a tree or other tall structure, or use poles to elevate the corners.   Raising the center of the tarp is necessary to allow the tarp to shed rain, or else raise one corner and lower the opposite to allow the tarp to drain.  Water will run down the line attached to the lowest corner, which is sort of cool if you’re trying to collect water.
The tarp can also be configured quickly in the case of inclement weather.  Sure, you can set up a tent, but in the ten minutes it takes to get the tent up, you’ll be cold, wet, and miserable.  Instead, you can get a tarp rigged up in a few minutes and remain dry while you do so. The fast way is to keep a line on one corner–tie that to a tree or something else taller.  Stake out the opposite corner tight, facing the wind, to make a ridge, and tack down the corners on each side of the ridge.

A quick pitch in case of inclement weather.

This fast pitch takes less than two minutes (I timed it this afternoon).  You can support the “roof” of your shelter with a canoe paddle. If you don’t have a paddle, use a trekking pole, or the high-tech solution, a stick.

A less secure but less claustrophobic pitch is to stake down one edge of the tarp to create a wall, then angle the tarp over another line or a branch. It’s more open and requires a little more room to set up, but it’s a standard, a portable front porch from which you can watch the world go by.  The higher the ridge line, the more headroom you have.  You’ll notice that I tied the ridge line off to a tree and our coach light.  Improvisation is the name of the tarp game.

Another common pitch out in the West is what I call the tent pitch.  It gets you out of sun and rain, but doesn’t do much for bugs.  Just throw a line between two trees, throw the tarp over and stake down the sides.  Voila, an instant A-frame.  Great where there are few bugs, or if you have a bug net, or if you don’t care about being a feeding station for whatever critter sucks blood in your area of the world.
If there are no trees, you can use poles or paddles or hiking staffs instead.

The Over the Canoe Pitch

One I use fairly often is the OTC (Over The Canoe) pitch.  Like the quick pitch for getting out of the weather quickly, this pitch is somewhat claustrophobic but is bomb-proof.  A canoe with with a lot of curvature in the shear line and higher stems is best.  Stick a paddle in the middle (your spare, most likely) to raise one side of the boat and throw the tarp over the whole thing.  You are out of the weather and ready for a nasty blow, and you’re out of the weather in the time it takes to drive four stakes.

Of course, all this quick set-up stuff means you keep your tarp on the top of your pack, not buried in the bottom under your sleeping bag.  You should be able to find it quickly, and with a few lines already attached, you can pitch it in minutes.
The Lean-To
The lean-to is basically a tarp on steroids.  While you can rig a tarp in a lean-to style and get close, a lean-to is its own creature.
A lean-to is a three-sided tent with a small flap that makes a little roof.  It can be pitched differently depending on the conditions.  It can be battened down tight for a blow or left open and airy for shade from the sun.  I believe it is the most versatile outdoor shelter available to humans.
The most famous lean-to is the Whelen, designed by Army Colonel Townsend Whelen.  Whelen asserted that the only two times a Whelen was inadequate was when the temperature hit 20 below or the bugs were especially heavy.  I must agree with the good colonel.
A few years ago I found myself on a late October  canoe trip. The weather took a sudden turn for the worse, and I went from shirtsleeves to sleet blowing in my face and the winds building to over 30 miles an hour.  I pulled off the river onto a small island with a thicket of protective trees upwind of me and pitched my lean-to as quickly as I could.  It was a sandy island and I needed to use sand stakes, but I got it up and taut, back facing the howling wind.  A small fire of dry aspen stripped of its bark by considerate beavers cheered things up.  Inside the lean-to, all was calm and wondrous.  I pulled out my stove, fried up a lamb chop with some stewed dried apples, a nice bar of chocolate and a cup of tea, and I was in paradise.  If I stuck my hand above the ridgeline, I could feel the icy bullets smack into the back of my palm.

So you see, I’m partial.
With a Whelen, you can also stick a canoe up against the front for a little more shelter when it’s blowing like stink.  Despite my bias, canoes are not necessary, but they sure come in handy once in a while.

Lean-to tents are available in high-tech 1.1 ounce sil nylon, such as this one, complete with a bug net.

If you want the functionality of the lean-to and you travel to where you need a .410 to keep the mosquitoes at bay, consider a lean-to with bug netting.  Synthetics are very light, and the huge door makes for great ventilation.  If the weather threatens, batten down the hatches and ride it out.
The Big Gun – The Campfire Tent

The campfire tent is clearly not ultralight.  It has its place, and its place is in my canoe before May and after September, and often in-between.  It was modified from the original Baker tent design by the late (and great) Bill Mason, a modern day evangelist who was responsible in part for the resurgence of a generation of paddlers.  Built for him by a company in northern Ontario, the tent has become something of a legend in wilderness tripping circles for its versatility.
There is nothing lightweight about these tents.  If a modern backpacking tent is a youth hostel, the campfire tent is a 4-star hotel.  The ventilation, headroom, floor area, and the ability to heat it up in cold weather make this a shelter to live in.
The cotton canvas transmits light beautifully, and it will not leak once the fibers swell up. The old adage about not touching the canvas or it will leak is somewhat true, but mostly you forget about and live your life.  If you must poke something, de-lint your belly button.  Probably could use some attention.

Campfire tents are extremely versatile; you can open them up as wide as a screen porch or lock things down and insert a portable camp stove, turning your tent into a snug, cozy den no matter what temperature outside.

The downside is that set-up is more difficult and takes more time.  Since the walls are vertical, guy lines are critical to keeping the tent storm-worthy.  Site location is also critical, so don’t expect to set this tent up in a driving rain.  Jump under your tarp and wait it out.  In the meantime, figure out in your head how you’re going to set up your campfire tent in one of a thousand ways.
Why a giant tent?  In our climate (there is a fair amount of rain and snow), you can be storm-bound in a tent for days.  If you need to spend a few days laying over and waiting for the weather to clear, would you rather wait in a 4-star hotel with a view of the lake or a bunk bed in a youth hostel with a view of the inside of your tent?
There is also the question of livability.  Homo sapiens, with a few exceptions, don’t like to be confined.  If you’re on the go and moving daily, perhaps this is too big of a project for you, but if you’re staying in place a few days here and there, it’s worth it.  There’s nothing as luxurious as watching a storm roll across the lake while playing cribbage with your partner or reading something by Calvin Rutstrum.  If you don’t know who CR is, you’re missing out.  But that’s for another day.
As always, dear reader, thanks for listening and there will be more to come soon.