Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss… →

Published December 12, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 12

A year passed. Winter changed into Spring. Spring changed into Summer. Summer changed back into Winter. And Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight on into Autumn. Until one day…

~ Monty Python from, The Holy Grail

Some things just stick with you. If you know me well, you know I’m particularly fond of linguistic turns where the sarcasm comes back ’round to flip the original. “This is actually pretty good. [said of anything or anyone] It really grows on you.” Me, “yeah, like fungus.” Etc.. Anyway, that line from Monty Python has always stuck in my mind—something to do with the cutesie animation that goes with it, something about the rapid-fire delivery, and probably just mostly how it stomps all over our deep seated human love of the “seasons” metaphor.

“And now for something completely different.”

I was watching a movie about Ip Man last night. (Grandmaster on Netflix; Chinese-language film, it’s a kung fu film. Anyway.) Ip is narrating in various parts as the movie tells his story. At one point he says, “If life has seasons, the first 40 years of my life [where he was happily married with 3 kids] was Spring…” and all of the above popped into my head at, “…and the Japanese invaded in 1930 and things jumped straight to Winter.”

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The last lecture →

Published December 11, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 11  ·  

The Last Lecture is a summary of all Pausch had learned and all he wanted to pass along to his children. The lecture, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” wasn’t about dying rather just the opposite. It was about dreams, moments and overcoming obstacles because “time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think.”

~ Shane Parrish from, Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

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Perhaps you’ve already heard of this book? I had not. Tidy little article from Parrish makes me want to run—not walk—out and buy this book.

On the other hand: I really have a problem with books. There’s already a few hundred in the anti-library. My wishlist of books contains 410— err, correction, 411 books.

This is such a delightful problem, yes?

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Questions →

Published December 10, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 10  ·  ,

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

~ Naguib Mahfouz

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Adam Echa: Training, travel, and mindfulness →

Published December 9, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 9  ·  

Adam Echa: Training, travel, and mindfulness

How do personal practices in movement, mindfulness, and creativity interconnect and influence an individual’s approach to life and challenges?

At first glance, Adam Echa is a jack of all trades, but all of his practices and interests are connected. He shares the role of music in his life, his interest in photography, and his experiences riding bicycle deliveries in New York City. Adam discusses his parkour training, flips, cross training, and filming. He unpacks his personal mindfulness practices, and reflects on where and why he wants to travel.

I love the filming aspect of Parkour, like by yourself, just filming the line. […] I think I have more fun figuring out how I fit in the frame doing movement than like going from point A to point B.

~ Adam Echa (19:00)

Adam Echa is an athlete, musician, videographer, and overall creative human. As an athlete and a coach, he works to balance his training and develop in both areas. In addition to parkour, Adam plays guitar, writes music, and occasionally performs.

The conversation examines how the interplay of physical movement, creativity, and mindfulness shapes personal growth and perspective. Key topics include the nuances of Parkour and its mental and physical demands, the relationship between personal art forms like music or photography, and the grounding influence of mindfulness practices. These pursuits reveal how discipline in one area can inform and complement another.

Adam reflects on experiences of minimalism, personal transitions, and the importance of authenticity in creative and physical practices. Discussions touch on concepts like control—whether in movement, artistic expression, or life decisions—and how moments of vulnerability can lead to breakthroughs in both performance and personal understanding. The emphasis is on finding one’s path and defining success in ways that align with internal values rather than external pressures.

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He who is not even looking →

Published December 9, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 9  ·  ,

Don’t expect, then, that you can sample the masterpieces of great minds by way of summaries; you must examine the whole, work over the whole. Their structure is a totality fitted together according to the outlines of their special genius, and if any member is removed the whole may collapse.

…

That is why we give boys apothegms, what the Greeks call chriai, to learn by heart, because the childish mind, which cannot comprehend more, is able to grasp them. But for a man advanced in study to hunt such gem is disgraceful; he is using a handful of clichés for a prop and leaning on his memory; by now he should stand on his own feet. He should be producing bons mots, not remembering them. It is disgraceful for an old man or one in sight of old age to be wise by book. “Zeno said this.” What do you say? “This Cleanthes said.” What do you say? How long will you be a subaltern? Take command and say things which will be handed down to posterity. Produce something of your own. All those men who never create but lurk as interpreters under the shadow of another are lacking, I believe, in independence of spirit. They never venture to do the things they have long rehearsed. They exercise their memories on what is not their own. But to remember is one thing, to know another. Remembering is merely overseeing a thing deposited in the memory; knowing is making the thing your own, not depending on the model, not always looking over your shoulder at the teacher. “Zeno said this, Cleanthes that”—is there any difference between you and a book? How long will you learn? Begin to teach! One man objects, “Why should I listen to lectures when I can read?” Another replies, “The living voice adds a great deal.” It does indeed, but not a voice which merely serves for another’s words and functions as a clerk.

There is another consideration. First people who have not rid themselves of leading-strings follow their predecessors where all the world has ceased to follow them, and second, they follow them in matters still under investigation. But if we rest content with solutions offered, the real solution will never be found. Moreover, a man who follows another not only finds nothing, he is not even looking. What is the upshot? Shall I not walk in the steps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old path, but if I find a shorter and easier way I shall make a new path. The men who made the old paths are not our suzerains but our pioneers. Truth is open to all; it has not been pre-empted. Much of it is left for future generations.

~ Seneca, from Letter 33, Maxims

This is Seneca at his mic-drop best. (Unlike the borderline torturous silver point style you also see quoted from on occasion.) Here he’s writing a personal letter to one of his long-time students.

If it’s made you perk up, I recommend digging into this letter further by reading, On the Futility of Learning Maxims, overs on the Stoic Letters web site. That’s also a great introduction to the nuance of translating these very old works; there are significant differences between M. Hadas’s translation circa 1958 and whatever translation Stoic Letters is using, (I looked, but it’s not clear to me.)

Obviously the thread I’m tugging on here is meta: It’s one thing to nod along in the audience of a performance— “yes yes yes I agree I’m doing that yes.” It’s quite another to stand up, and ask to speak next. It was about 10 years ago that I began this blog, and about 5 years ago that I began seriously devoting intentional effort to creating something here.

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I’m not sure that I’m setting much of an example. But trying to walk-the-walk has definitely helped me.

In the spirit of the season: Go read this next, What do you do for fun?

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Second order effects →

Published December 8, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 8  ·  

In short, stop optimizing for today or tomorrow and start playing the long game. That means being less efficient in the short term but more effective in the long term. [… I]f you play the long game you stop optimizing and start thinking ahead to the second-order consequences of your decisions.

~ Shane Parrish from, 10 Principles to Live an Antifragile Life

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Fundamentally, we humans and our lives are not mathematically tidy.

Aside: I had a math course once—I can’t even remember the material—and the professor said, “it’s a very subtle point that mathematics should model and predict reality.” …or something to that effect. It was mind-bending; but math is part of reality so why wouldn’t reality model itself? *smoke-emits-from-my-ears* The scene, the room, the lighting, everything are burned into my brain.

Heuristics are always and in all cases true but sort of false, because they are imperfect. But the purpose of heuristics is to enable us to wrap our meager brains around the vastly complicated universe. Maths, as in compound interest, exponential growth, 1/r^2 forces, and Fourier transformations, provide models of reality. The comment about second order consequences challenges us to dig deeper into our heuristics, (which are otherwise known more generally as “models.”)

I’ve said this before, here on the blog and out loud: Have you intentionally created the models you have of the world?

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Don’t ask for advice →

Published December 7, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 7  ·  

An important, but counter-intuitive, strategy we found essential in this style of research is to avoid simply asking people for advice. When you ask for advice, you’ll often get vague, unhelpful answers. Instead, you need to observe what the top performers in your field are actually doing differently. Act like a journalist not a protege. This can often yield surprising insights about what actually matters to move forward.

~ Cal Newport from, Are You Working In Your Career or On Your Career?

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I’ve found this to be the case as well.

There are some people who give advice well. There are far more people who can give useful answers to good questions. Asking, “what do you think I should do,” isn’t going to get you useful guidance nearly as often as asking, “how did you do that.” You simply must do the hard work of figuring out whom to ask, and what to ask them.

In a recent conversation on the podcast, Thomas Droge brought up the idea of seeking younger persons to be your mentors; maybe not a formal mentorship relationship, but to be open to being a sort of stealth protege (my interpretation, not his words.) These two ideas dovetail: If you try to ask a younger person, literally, for advice, that’s not going to work well nearly as often as asking, “how did you do that?”

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A master of deception →

Published December 6, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 6  ·  

That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them. Pride is a master of deception: When you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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Needs and wants →

Published December 5, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 5

You can’t be generous to others if you’re not in a good place. Adams argues that once your needs are met, you can focus on the needs of others.

~ Shane Parrish from, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

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This is patently obvious, right? Food, shelter, stability, … good old Maslow.

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For me at least, there was a transition period— I might even call it a period of listlessness. Certainly there was frenetic outward activity; this was after all my period of biking, (the second love affair with a bicycle,) and the rise of my interest in Art du Déplacement. But it was definitely a period of inward listlessness.

It took years of reading and rumination before I realized what was missing. At which point I set off on a quest. Only to succeed, and set off on a new quest, and again. And again. Not existential-meaning-of-life quests, but simply, “that seems interesting and maybe I’ll try it,” quests.

In the end it was clear that I have—and maybe you do too—an inherent curiosity that, if I’m lucky, will never be satisfied.

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Discipline →

Published December 4, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 4  ·  

Motivation will get you out the door, but it fades over time. A good book or podcast might give you the momentary impulse to take your first steps along a path, but when the road gets tough only discipline will keep you moving forward.

~ Dan Edwardes from, Motivation is Temporary

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Edwardes is a well-known figure in the world of Parkour. He’s someone I’m proud to call a friend. A little over a year ago, I had a quiet, private, late-evening conversation about businesses and movement and Parkour and I’m pretty sure we touched on motivation. …or at least, I know motivation was something bouncing around in my head. Specifically: lack thereof. I’m not even sure that I realized that at the time, but it’s clear to me now.

At the time though, I definitely experienced a sort of ground-shifting sensation. I don’t generally fan-boy on Parkour people, and I’m pretty sure I never did that with respect to Edwardes. No, it was more like—something I’ve experienced on several occasions with Parkour luminaries—I was suddenly aware that I hadn’t been fawning [for years] over this person. No, here I was, once again, in a cool conversation with a fellow human. Being.

These days, I’m doubling-down on discipline and that quoted blog post and that conversation conspired to inspire me to make a fresh post.

Anyway. Dan Edwardes is someone you should hear of, and now you have. Check out his blog, or the best—call me biased—podcast interview of him, Dan Edwardes: Motivation, efficacy, and storytelling.

Oh— and no, that linked podcast is not the conversation I mentioned up top.

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