Author: Craig Constantine

Making space →

Published January 10, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 10  ·  

Suppose I wanted to give something up, but I’m completely baffled by how to decide which thing. I’m not talking about needing to give something up. I mean: This is all nice, and I’d like to have less. It turns out I spend a lot of time thinking about what to give up, and how to give it up. And who would I be once that thing that I do ceased. And why am I still making the mistake of identifying who I am as what I do? (I run, but I am not a runner.) Most of the answers I’ve found to, “what to give up and how?” come from visualization exercises. I know in fact that I will eventually give it all up. Suddenly, it’s no longer about “if”, but more simply “when”. If next decade is fine, why not next year? …why not right now?

To change a habit – whether you’re starting a new habit or quitting an old one – you have to let go of something really important to you. This is why most people struggle with habit change – it’s not easy to let go of your sacred cows.

~ Leo Babauta from, Changing Habits

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As always Babauta’s thoughts and perspective inspire me to pause, breath, relax. We do need space, because without space when are we comfortable simply being? I now often find I do have such space. Although my urge remains to fill the spaces up with doing, not-breathing, grasping— Therefore I continue, slowly. breathing. relaxing. visualizing. being.

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Noticing →

Published January 9, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 9  ·  ,

All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.

~ Elliott Erwitt

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This is nice →

Published January 8, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 8  ·  

If I’m never able to acknowledge that the current moment is nice, then what’s the point? Never noticing it’s nice leads to the aching feeling that—as the thread-bare adage goes—time is slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass.

Time management is a cognitively strenuous task, leaving us feeling harried. As the opportunity cost of time increases, our concern about “wasting” our precious hours grows more acute. On balance, we are better off, but the blessing of high-value time can overwhelm some individuals, just as can the ready availability of high-calorie food.

~ Alex Tabarrok, from The Harried Leisure Class

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Fortunately I have taken steps to ensure that I regularly notice, and think, “this is nice.” I’m not always successful; I can still be spotted being a grumpster, or a petulant three-year-old. But that’s the point: Life is a range of experiences, and once I realized my scale of judgement were always tipped to one side, when that’s clearly not the reality of my existence, I set about adjusting the scale.

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January 07, 2024 — #66 →

Published January 7, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 7  ·  

Reading time: About 4 minutes, 800 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/66

Moving scenery →

Published January 7, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 7  ·  ,

I like Carl Sagan’s point about humans being able to work magic. (I’ll pause here while you read the quote.) Writing enables us to transmit ideas across time and space directly into others’ minds; It’s a natural and obvious development once we had language and storytelling. I am so far, endlessly fascinated by that.

My soul is three generations old

~ Jesse Danger, from My Soul is Three Generations Old

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Does what someone says, or writes, need to make sense? It would be insane to expect it to always, or necessarily, make sense. What about poetry? And what about mental imagery incited by reading or listening? And what about literal imagery? I find there’s a vast range of media, and mediums, that interest me once given a chance. Sometimes I want to read logical and reasoned text. Sometimes I want to relax by the window of the train as the scenery slides past.

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Art →

Published January 6, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 6  ·  ,

The noblest art is that of making others happy.

~ P.T. Barnum

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Intentional action →

Published January 5, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 5  ·  

Elsewhere I’ve talked about the Karpman drama triangle. About learning it’s not even actually fun to be the hero who rushes in. Rushing—doing something quickly sacrificing doing it correctly—is never the right choice.

The most exciting thing about professional project management is that it trades away excitement for systems thinking and intentional action. We make heroes out of people who show up with the last-minute save, but the real work is in not needing the last minute.

~ Seth Godin, from Project management

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Of course, we can delete the word “professional” from the above and it points to something we might choose to work on: If I’m late… If I’m rushing… If I’m “too busy”… Where exactly does that come from? Once I started look at my life this way, and started asking such questions, it didn’t take long to realize the problem was within myself. We choose to take on too many things. We choose to stretch for more connections, activities and things. The details differ. But it’s the same for each of us.

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Silence →

Published January 4, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 4  ·  ,

The path to all great things passes through silence.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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Using structure →

Published January 3, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 3  ·  

I’m aware that I have a habit (or perhaps it’s a dysfunction depending on your perspective) of turning everything into a process. Before I even do something a first time I’m imagining the whatever-it-is as a checklist— imagining it as a process. I’ll be generous, and I’ll call that being detail-oriented and being a planner. I’m also processifying (my spell-checker balks) everything from both ends: The first step I imagine is: What does done look like? I’m building the process from the front (“gather materials,” let’s say) and from the back (“deposit check, dance jig”). In the middle I’ve a place holder: Magic happens.

I refine and sub-divide the stuff at the front. I refine and sub-divide the stuff at the back. I’m creating more and easier steps, and I’m trying to pull as much as I can out of that “magic happens” step in the middle. When I look honestly, I see this everywhere in my life. That ill-defined, magical, central step is the feature. The struggle there is real, and it’s not to be avoided. Once I’ve factored out—moved to before, or move to after, the magic, middle part—all the stuff I’m more or less certain of… what remains is tension, in that magic, middle part. When I do it just right, that tension makes the magic happen.

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Unnecessary →

Published January 2, 2024  ·  All posts on Jan 2  ·  ,

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; Rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

~ C.S. Lewis

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