July 09, 2023 — #40 →

Published July 9, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 9  ·  

Reading time: About 6 minutes, 1300 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/40

Irrelevant in all circumstances →

Published July 9, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 9  ·  ,

I waffled on my title. I started a draft with the current title, which is simply item #7 plucked from Housel’s post. Later, I misread it as “Irreverant…” and, even after noticing my speling error, still thought myself clever; “Haha, yes, I am irreverant in all circumstances.” Which my mind then toggled back to “irrelevant” and, “Yes, I am probably also irrelevant in all circumstances.” Ouch.

The firehose makes it easy to mirror the poor Oxford boy: since information is free and ubiquitous but adding context has a mental price, the path of least resistance is to know facts without a clue where they go or whether they’re useful.

~ Morgan Housel, from Different Kinds of Information

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And no, it’s not at all a diss on [a]social media. It’s a terrific little post listing different kinds of information. I’d love to be a source of a large amount of #2 and #4. But if I’m being honest, I’m more a source of #5. …and #7, I definitely generate a lot of that. Maybe even some of #8—but only in the, “oh my gawd, no! Spit that out!” sort of way.

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The future →

Published July 9, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 9  ·  

No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.

~ Ian Wilson

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Perspective →

Published July 8, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 8  ·  , ,

Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realize that it’s not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it’s the road that is crossing the forest.

~ Muhammad Ali

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Listening →

Published July 7, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 7  ·  , ,

I was reading a single post, Waste time, from Mandy Brown’s aworkinglibrary.com. It’s worth reading just to realize there are two, contradictory suggestions for how to live a life depending on how you interpret this deceptively simple sentence:

There is so little time to waste during a life.

And then Brown led me to her reading notes from a book by Mary Rueflé where this left me gobsmacked:

I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, “I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say”; but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.

~ Mary Rueflé from, Madness, Rack, and Honey

It is indeed unfortunate that there is so little time to waste during a life! I am redoubling my efforts to find more time to waste.

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Unprecedented →

Published July 7, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 7  ·  ,

Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history.

~ Kelly Hayes

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Calm realization →

Published July 6, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 6  ·  ,

The most important preliminary to the task of arranging one’s life so that one may live fully and comfortably within one’s daily budget of twenty-four hours is the calm realization of the extreme difficulty of the task, of the sacrifices and the endless effort which it demands.

~ Arnold Bennett

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Iteration →

Published July 5, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 5  ·  ,

On any project I can quickly get to the doing. Nearly as quickly I start thinking about how to improve whatever it is I’m doing. Sometimes whatever-it-is has a clear end; I can spend many hours (thank you ADHD) laser-focused on an immense number of trivial steps knowing it will mean I can remove something from a to-should list. But with open-ended stuff, like “publish conversations as podcasts”, it doesn’t take long for my urge to fiddle to get the better of me.

I recently went to a Picasso exhibition. What impressed me the most was not any individual piece of art, but rather his remarkably prolific output. Researchers have catalogued 26,075 pieces of art created by Picasso and some people believe the total number is closer to 50,000.

~ James Clear from, The Shadow Side of Greatness: When Success Leads to Failure

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I think it comes down to motivation. (And I find reading about others’ huge accomplishments to be crushingly de-motivating.) If I have the intrinsic motivation, then the iteration happens; only by great effort could the iteration not happen! Clear points out that Picasso had a very dark side which presented in his interpersonal relationships. I don’t think that dark side—anyone’s dark side—motivates iteration. And a dark side is not a necessary feature either. I really believe one can be a decent human being and be motivated and get great stuff done.

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Change →

Published July 5, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 5  ·  , , ,

If we can accept the idea that all real change is a shift in narrative—a new story as opposed to the received dominant story—then the function of citizenship, or leadership, is to invite a new narrative into existence. Narrative begins with a ride on the wave of conversation. For greatest effect, we need a new conversation with people we are not used to talking to.

~ Peter Block

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Our toil →

Published July 4, 2023  ·  All posts on Jul 4  ·  ,

Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.

~ Bram Stoker

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