Craig Constantine

About notebooks →

Published November 12 · All posts on Nov 12

The problem facing knowledge work in our current moment is not that we’re lacking sufficiently powerful technologies. It’s instead that we’re already distracted by so many digital tools that there’s no time left to really open the throttle on our brains.
Cal Newport, from https://calnewport.com/forget-chatbots-you-need-a-notebook/

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a few months. I recently went back to my lab notebook habit from 30+ years ago. It’s like discovering a bicycle for your mind: It multiplies the power of what my mind is good at. But not too much. (like a car where you’re completely cut off from the world.) Using a notebook I can hold thoughts outside my mind, return to them, and see them.

There’s also the magic that happens when you hold onto a thought long enough to write it down. That’s much longer than we usually hold on to any thought.

What is the actual thing? →

Published May 8 · All posts on May 8 · Creativity

As someone who writes a lot about knowledge work in the digital age, I’m fascinated by this model of cooking, which I define as follows: a workflow designed to enable someone with a high-return skill to spend most of their time applying that skill, without distraction.
~ Cal Newport, from Let Brandon Cook

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For a decade I’ve been aware of this point. I’m, basically, a one-person creative process. If one leans into this way of thinking, then you immediately want to start figuring out how to not do all the other things. Which is fine if I were a one-person business process. But I am not. I’m not only a creator of valuable (in some sense other than money) work. I’m also the person who is nourished, enabling said creative work, by the random other parts. Whichever way you think of it though, Newport makes interesting points.

It matters that you stop →

Published November 15, 2023 · All posts on Nov 15 · 7 for Sunday, Podcasting

“I wonder what would happen if I created a daily podcast, and did nothing else— if I didn’t tell anyone, didn’t share on social media, nothing. Just publish the thing every day.” So I went and made it happen, over 1,300 times. The answer to “what if?” is: I would receive a cornucopia of benefits simply from doing the work, even if no one heard a single one of them. I received: practice speaking extemporaneously, lessons in dramatic reading, countless tiny lessons of microphone technique, countless nuanced insights of physiology, and much much more.

Unfortunately, over the years, I became fixated on the least-important part of my original question: Daily.

I think this dynamic, to one degree or another, impacts anyone who has been fortunate enough to experience some success in their field. Doing important work matters and sometimes this requires sacrifices. But there’s also a deep part of our humanity that responds to these successes — and the positive feedback they generate — by pushing us to seek this high at ever-increasing frequencies.
~ Cal Newport from, Danielle Steel and the Tragic Appeal of Overwork

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It’s become clear that maintaining the pace is a problem, and so I’ve changed the pace. And in a blink, I feel I’m again focused on that still-overflowing cornucopia of benefits.

Setting and scene →

Published May 29, 2023 · All posts on May 29 · On Writing, 7 for Sunday

Lately I’ve been struggling with setting. As many people have noted, excessive fiddling with getting things ready, or “just so”, before feeling one can begin to do something is simply a form of procrastination. It’s a form of hiding from doing the work. Steven Pressfield describes this as the “resistance” which shows up just when you are finally facing the real work that you are called to do.

I tell this story not because I think a method approach, in which you inhabit your characters and their behaviors, is the best way to write fiction. (If this were true, a lot more authors would take a swing at romance novels.) But instead because it’s an extreme example of a more general point that I’ve been emphasizing recently: when it comes to cognitive work, setting makes a difference.
~ Cal Newport from, On Vampires and Method Writing

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Setting is real, and it is important. But there’s a second part to finding (or creating) the optimal environment: Scene. Where are the others who are also doing the same work? It could be the other painters or authors like you, and you’re all living in a neighborhood and regularly gathering and conversing at the local cafes. (The archetypical writers scene of the 1900s was in Paris.) If I’ve imagineered a certain niche of work that I want to do, how do I find (or create) the scene?

Slow, surreal →

Published May 21, 2023 · All posts on May 21 · 7 for Sunday

I’ve embraced this slow philosophy for most of my professional career. As with Stearns, I too have become a believer in how much can be accomplished in normal 40-hour weeks; if you’re willing to really work when you’re working, and then be done when you’re done. It’s nice, however, to see someone so much more eminent than me also find success with this fixed-schedule approach.
~ Cal Newport from, Professio sano in vitam sanam (on balancing work and life)

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The other day I had a most surreal experience. I was at home. The weather was gorgeous and I spent most of the day on the patio. For about half of the day I did nothing in particular. And I felt—in the moments when I was doing nothing—that that was fine.

I have often experienced this surreality, but always when I have been away. Always, critically, when I had intentionally spent time planning and working to create space to be away. Think of it like getting a running start to coast through the away time; the experience of that surreality had always been while coasting.

“…and then be done when you’re done.” But the other day? I dunno. I did stuff, and then I was done, and that was okay.

Dump out the box →

Published March 20, 2023 · All posts on Mar 20 · 7 for Sunday, Self-awareness

In the end, what matters is your lifestyle. The specifics of your work are important only in how they impact your daily experience. As I summarized, when choosing a career path: “Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there.” This idea, which I dubbed lifestyle-centric career planning, subverted popular advice from that period which tended to emphasize the importance of passion and dream jobs. In this widely-accepted schema, the full responsibility for your ongoing satisfaction was offloaded to the minutia of your professional endeavors.
~ Cal Newport from, The Most Important Piece of Career Advice You Probably Never Heard

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Somewhere we each have a box full of specific things. I have a plastic storage tub full of electronic accessories—a spare hard drive, a spare ethernet switch, various cables, an extra mouse, the HDMI cable, and the power adapter for the rest of the world. As a kid, I had a huge styrofoam cooler (it’s a long story) full of Lego bricks and parts. I’m not talking about the proverbial “junk drawer.” I’m talking about a proverbial “box” into which we place specific things. My electronics accessories, my printing supplies, my rock climbing gear, and even all the bookcases considered as one “box.” It’s pretty obvious—I hope?—that since we’re continuously adding things to the boxes, we need to periodically “dump out” the box and cull. The cables that don’t fit anything we currently own… The books we didn’t like or enjoy… Every time I dump out some “box” and toss (or sell or donate etc.) some of the items, my life improves.

This morning I was thinking: When is the last time I dumped out my box of people? …my box of responsibilities? …my box of things I think I should do? …my box of dreams?

Solitude →

Published March 12, 2023 · All posts on Mar 12 · 7 for Sunday

At the slightest hint of boredom, you can now surreptitiously glance at any number of apps or mobile-adapted websites that have been optimized to provide you an immediate and satisfying dose of input from other minds. It’s now possible to completely banish solitude from your life.
~ Cal Newport from, New Study Confirms the Value of Solitude

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Newport is on-point. (Although, “surreptitiously” is not how I would describe some people’s use of our current mobile technology.)

There is also an exquisite and rare variety of solitude found in the presence of others. In such instances, the other serves to reinforce the value of the solitude. The implicit suggestion that those present could choose to end the solitude makes it all the more sublime.

This is the trick →

Published August 12, 2022 · All posts on Aug 12 · On Writing, Motivation

Sanderson argues you should instead experiment to figure out what combination of motivation, and circumstances, and accountability work best for your particular personality. He responds well to tracking a daily word count in a spreadsheet. Others, he notes, thrive under the social pressures of a writing group, while others lean on deadlines to induce work. The key is recognizing that the urge to avoid hard things is human, and should be expected. It’s part of the process.
~ Cal Newport from, Brandon Sanderson’s Advice for Doing Hard Things – Cal Newport

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I’m filing this under “things I wish I had learned 30 years ago”. Some things I really track, and some things I just do whenever I feel like. One way or another though, it’s important that I be honest with myself. “Do I really want to do this?” …or do I just like the idea of being able to say “I did that”?

Reflection →

Published July 3, 2022 · All posts on Jul 3 · Self-improvement

[…] if you applied this approach, there’s not a strengths-weaknesses binary. It’s, “is this particular skill where I need it to be or not?” […] That could be a skill—if I’m understanding this correctly—that you’re identifying, “I need to get this even farther to get where I want to get.” You might be at a skill level there that everyone would say that’s a strength of yours, you’re really good at that. And so it seems like the strength-weakness binary, is not that useful, at least in this framework. It’s just where you’re trying to get, and what skills are not where they need to be to get you there.
~ Cal Newport ~1h9m from, Deep Questions episode 39 with David Epstein, «https://www.buzzsprout.com/1121972/6035176?t=4140»

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David Epstein is, most recently, the author of Range. Newport and Epstein’s conversation ranges—sorry—widely, and nearer the end they get into talking about reflection as a mastery tool. Epstein mentions a particular reflection process as something he had included only in passing in his first book, The Sports Gene.

Newport’s point, quoted above, changed how I think about skill level. Epstein had been discussing how he’d learned of Marije T Elferink-Gemser‘s research. Based in the Netherlands, a team had been running these things called the Groningen talent studies for over a decade studying skills, proficiency and mastery in Soccer athletes.

These were questions that, the first time I asked, she sent and said, you answer these at least every month. What’s your goal has to be as clear as possible, but it doesn’t need to be realistic at this point. …dreaming is allowed at this point. Do you have any idea of what’s needed to perform at the level you aim for? How do I make sure how do I make sure that I get an even better idea of what’s needed to perform at that level? How am I going to arrange that? Who are the people I need to reach that goal? And how can I make sure that they’ll help me to reach that personal goal? Am I sure I want to reach the goal and why? Those were the original set of questions that I received.
~ David Epstein, ibid.

That’s a tremendous set of questions for self-reflection!