7 for Sunday

7 for Sunday is a weekly serving of 7 things for you to savor. — It’s an email containing my reflections on interesting things I find laying about, seasoned with some quotes from my collection. See https://7forsunday.com/.

The cake is a lie

April 10

I’ve tried everything. Lists, timers, project management systems, Pomodoro, time blocking, dashes, scheduling, time tracking… everything. It turns out: There are things I enjoy doing; they get done. There are things I don’t enjoy doing; they are a struggle. This is the way.

This lie is often called “work/life balance.” And it’s a deviously demotivating false dichotomy. A narrative designed to stigmatize work and trivialize what work is really all about. It reduces transformation to a mere transaction.

~ Cierra Martin from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/must-we-hate-our-jobs/

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There’s no need to struggle against my nature. It’s futile and that way lies madness. What remains is to reign in my Idea Monster. I also do not need to attempt everything I can possibly imagine that might be fun or productive. Essentialism is the middle road I steer towards more and more. This is the way.

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Priority

April 9

The root of the word ‘priority’ is singular… It was a singular word—the one thing. In modern times, we’ve turned it into ‘priorities,’ but then all of a sudden it turns into eight, ten, 15 things and that defeats the purpose.

~ Shaka Smart

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Open + Curious

April 8

I’m excited to share that Jesse Danger and I have begun a new podcast show, Open + Curious. I’ve been writing up my thoughts around conversation, and this podcast is a new part of the Open + Curious project. Please consider subscribing to support our efforts.

Are you looking for ways to bring conversation alive? Then you are in the right place.

In each 15-minute episode we begin with a question, and work our way to a challenge. Some questions we explore have clear answers, and some lead to more questions and further unknowns. The challenge we seek to find, at the end of each episode, is meant to help you explore each question on your own.

https://openandcurious.org/podcast-supercast/

I accept

April 7

I have had the privilege of standing—not in the exact cedars and mountains you’ll discover below—but nonetheless in cedars, in mountains, in northern Japan. It wasn’t a pilgrimage. But it sort of was. It was a long train ride. A very long walk. A very nearly exhausting long ascent. No guide. Just a curiosity. Just two of us. At the top… I realized that the journey—if we had wanted to continue—had only just begun. Choices about time and commitments to others were made.

As a faint mist settles in among the towering cedar trees (some more than 1,000 years old), our funeral procession slowly ascends Mt Haguro’s stone stairway. It’s summer, but the air here is still cool. When the poet Matsuo Bashō made a similar journey through these holy mountains in 1689, he wrote a haiku describing the summer wind being ‘scented’ with the clearly visible snow of Mt Gassan in the distance. Today, it smells of pine needles and earth.

~ Tim Bunting from, https://psyche.co/ideas/more-radical-and-practical-than-stoicism-discover-shugendo

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Is mine a story I’ve shared, or a suggestion?

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Not me, I’m certain

April 5

Three words matter much: Not me, I’m certain I am uncertain. I’m not simply uncertain. Not simply indecisive, beset by unknowns, nor stymied by possibilities.

The virtue of intellectual humility is getting a lot of attention. It’s heralded as a part of wisdom, an aid to self-improvement and a catalyst for more productive political dialogue. While researchers define intellectual humility in various ways, the core of the idea is “recognizing that one’s beliefs and opinions might be incorrect.”

But achieving intellectual humility is hard. Overconfidence is a persistent problem, faced by many, and does not appear to be improved by education or expertise. Even scientific pioneers can sometimes lack this valuable trait.

~ Michael Dickson from, https://theconversation.com/intellectual-humility-is-a-key-ingredient-for-scientific-progress-211410

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The compass for me is, “so what?” When I’m certain of something, I ask myself: So, what? Connecting that which I’m certain of, out into the world via, “so, what?” challenges me to look at the underpinnings of my beliefs, and the integration with my knowledge in total.

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Always be starting

April 3

Am I too often seeking the sense of safety or control? (And it is indeed only a sense-of. It is only an illusion.) What happened to the simple feeling of joy in being?

What this means, as I understand it, is that when we let go of all attachment to the outcome of our novel publication/album release/opening of our Thai Fusion restaurant … we shift the locus of our enterprise from the ego to the Self (or the soul if you prefer.)

The Muse likes this. Heaven likes this.

We are now operating on the plane of the soul, not the plane of the ego.

~ Steven Pressfield from, https://stevenpressfield.com/2023/12/start-the-next-one-today/

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Sometimes an outcome is important; the measurements, the color, the specific dimensions. When the idea began with the intention of trading the outcome with another. But not every waking moment. Too much of that is obviously an imbalance.

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Path

April 2

I always tell young people to find a path in life that you can embrace and enjoy rather than something that you’re expected to do. That’s what makes life interesting. And once you achieve a certain level of success, no matter where you are, what you’re doing, don’t be content with that level. Push yourself to another level. People that are successful are always pushing.

~ Ed Viesturs

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Knowledge management

April 1

I’ve spent decades wrestling with knowledge management. In the realm of systems administration, capturing obscure incantations, and the why’s and hazards that go with it are critical. I have a digital collection of notes going back more than 20 years. Yes, of course it’s named Grimoire. More recently, I started creating my own person knowledge system and ended up with my own variation of a slipbox.

For most of human history, knowledge was something completely inseparable from a particular person. It didn’t mean anything to point to a piece of knowledge without reference to the person from whose life experience it emerged. The idea of a “piece” of knowledge didn’t even make sense, as knowledge couldn’t be broken down into discrete units as long as it remained in someone’s head.

~ Tiago Forte from, https://fortelabs.com/blog/inventing-the-digital-filing-cabinet/

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My first learning around knowledge systems was that the very act of building them is incredibly helpful at learning. The effort of composing the notes (or whatever) requires careful thinking, rethinking, adding context, imagining the future where the knowledge will be used, etc. All of which is repetition and integration—key components of learning.

My second learning has just clicked into place as I read Forte’s article: Knowledge systems are tools for later use. I used to think that by building the system up, I was somehow creating something (something as yet unknown and unexpected.) Which was silly of me, because Grimoire has taught me, over decades, that any given incantation found therein can never simply be incanted. The knowledge within is only part of the magic. Only if the knowledge within can be combined with experience and expertise will it be useful in some current endeavor. The knowledge system is working and complete as it is, if when I’m doing something, I can find the knowledge I need to continue.

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Branded

March 31

It’s sublime that the little word “brand,” which we toss about so lightly these days, has definitions that are horrific when juxtaposed: A type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name, and an identifying mark burned on livestock or criminals or slaves with a branding iron.

The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from 9-to-5 middle managers to astronauts to housecleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand. For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.

~ Rebecca Jennings from, https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/2/1/24056883/tiktok-self-promotion-artist-career-how-to-build-following

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No one has to go in for being personally branded (in the marketing sense. And it should go without saying, but I will anyway, that no living thing should ever be branded in the physical assault and torture sense.) Everywhere, I do my best to show up just as me.

I don’t try to ram everything down everyone’s throat. I don’t need a personal brand, because I’m not selling myself—I’m not marketing me. Anyone, across everything I do, can easily figure out how to engage with whatever it is that I create, and if that involves paying me, that’s easy enough to figure out. I’m just working with the garage door up. Hi, I’m Craig. This is what I did yesterday, do in general, or am doing today.

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Representation

March 30

[T]his is quite central to my fiction and to my analysis of the problems of creating a new nation today. Obviously, we can’t go back to a system in which every man is turning up in the village square—that’s in the past. But we have to find a way of dealing with the problems created by the fact that somebody says he’s speaking on your behalf, but you don’t know who he is. This is one of the problems of the modern world.

~ Chinua Achebe

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Honka! Honka!

March 29

Godin’s writing frequently—it might be fair to say always—attempts to inspire. But from some quarters he is criticized for being too trite; that he speaks in platitudes.

No need to be part of the circus. If you can find a problem and solve it, you can skip the clown car.

~ Seth Godin from, https://seths.blog/2023/11/turtleneck-confusion/

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Two points: First, the problem with platitudes lies with the listener; if I’ve heard it so often, that it feels like a platitude, then why have I still not yet embodied the lesson? Second, Godin doesn’t get enough credit for his efforts to teach professionalism; and professionalism has nothing to do with getting paid (c.f. Steven Pressfield.)

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Virtues

March 27

One must have a practice. Because the alternative would be to aimlessly wander.

Ancient Stoicism aimed to be a complete philosophy encompassing ethics, physics and logic. Yet most modern Stoics focus primarily on ethics, and they typically adopt four Stoic principles.

The first is that virtue is the only or highest good, including the cardinal virtues of wisdom, temperance, courage and justice. Everything apart from virtue – including wealth, health and reputation – might be nice to have, but they do not directly contribute to human flourishing.

~ Sandra Woien from, https://theconversation.com/stoicism-and-spirituality-a-philosopher-explains-how-more-americans-search-for-meaning-is-turning-them-toward-the-classics-213440

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You’ll have to click to read what the other three principles are…

One thing I particular like about the modern Stoicism is that it is explicitly a practice of doing, not of showing. It’s a central point that one should do the work upon oneself without fanfare or proselytizing. Stoicism is aspirational. I share about Stoicism here, in small part because it’d be great for more people to learn about it. But mostly because I often read about it, and thinking and writing about it helps me in my practice.

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Reflection

March 25

I sometimes talk about the three words, discovery, reflection and efficacy. It’s the reflection that is the force multiplier; the better I get at that, the more it looks like a super-power. Sometimes it’s not possible to view something after I’ve done it, but I can always mentally review.

Ask yourself: what went well? How did you prepare? What did you wear? Who was your audience? What was your internal monologue before you stepped up to speak? In that moment when you got distracted, what had happened? What were you thinking about? How did you get back on track (if you did)? What was on your mind that day?

~ Angie Flynn-McIver from, https://www.ignitecsp.com/blog/good-public-speaking-isnt-magic-2/

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Flynn-McIver is talking about public speaking, but those are wonderful questions for any context.

Unfortunately, I can get caught up spinning in circles over-thinking things. I’ve recently had good luck using a particular question to create an exit–ramp from my over-thinking. I ask myself: If I could answer these questions, would it enable me to do something? Because when I’m spinning in my over-thinking, I’ve forgotten about that third word in my little mantra: efficacy.

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