Reflection

What does picking one word a year teach you? →

Published 12 Days Ago  ·  All posts on Apr 28  ·  , ,

In 2012 I picked the phrase will-power and self-possession as a kind of anchor — something to keep in front of me through the year. (I literally wrote it on a card and stuck on the wall above my desk. For a year.) I didn’t know I was starting a practice. In 2015 I chose simplify. I’ve now been picking one word or short phrase a year for thirteen years, and the cumulative practice has become as interesting as each year’s choice.

This thread is a path through what that practice has actually been like — what made certain words land, the year-end reflection ritual that grew up around it, and what I’ve noticed across the arc. It’s about the practice, not the words. Follow this thread if you’re wondering what a small annual ritual can do over a long enough timeline.

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Seven dwelling places →

Published March 11  ·  All posts on Mar 11

This morning I was rummaging through a notebook and I was reminded of a great article I’d read about Saint Teresa of Ávila. More specifically, I was reminded that I had wanted to add some self-reflection prompts about Saint Teresa’s “seven dwellings” ideas. And then after some searching I realized I’d never even posted about the article either— or at least, I can’t find it here in the blog… I digress.

Imagine your inner self as a new love interest. You would get to know them by spending time and doing things together. Similarly, to know yourself better, you intentionally carve out space for introspective reflection.

Skye C Cleary, from Saint Teresa of Ávila

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Self-knowledge. That’s the first dwelling place.

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Reflection →

Published March 25, 2024  ·  All posts on Mar 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, Good Public Speaking Isn’t Magic

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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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Everything combines →

Published December 6, 2023  ·  All posts on Dec 6  ·  

Everything we experience, do, say and think combines with everything. It’s not strictly fractal because it’s not necessarily self-similar. It’s a rolling boil of randomness within which we find meaning. The meaning isn’t everywhere in there. It’s a precious discovery and in searching for it, we develop a scarcity mindset. We build up skills and heuristics for finding and keeping (learning, remembering) that meaning. Things get simplified so we can hold on to them.

In each case it’s easy to underestimate risk—or at least to be surprised at what happens—because the initial ingredients seem harmless. The idea that two innocent small things can combine to form one big dangerous thing isn’t intuitive.

The same things happens with personality traits.

~ Morgan Housel, from Vicious Traps

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The very powers which enable us to interact with the world and to grapple—with varying degrees of effectiveness—with our own minds, are the ones which cause us to err. Everything combines and we’re always gauging the size of the effects of each combination. How do we keep errors from creeping into our mindset and world view? Or rather, knowing that they are continuously creeping in, how do we attempt to weed them out? Self-reflection.

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Take some time to reflect →

Published December 26, 2022  ·  All posts on Dec 26  ·  

On your deathbed, you would do anything, pay anything for one more ordinary evening. For one more car ride to school with your children. For one more juicy peach. For one more hour on a park bench. Yet here you are, experiencing any number of those things, and rushing through it. Or brushing it off. Or complaining about it because it’s hot or there is traffic or because of some alert that just popped up on your phone. Or planning some special thing in the future as if that’s what will make you happy. You can’t add more at the end of your life…but you can not waste what’s in front of you right now.

~ Ryan Holiday from, 35 Lessons on the Way to 35 Years Old

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This blog started initially as a place for me to post a eulogy, and then it grew to serve many more purposes. It’s now solidly a way for me to reflect, and to work with the garage door up. Discovery, reflection, and efficacy are pretty frickin’ important to me and keeping up with the ‘ol bloggin’ forces me to keep up with daily discovery and reflection. I’ve a bunch of other processes beyond this blog.

It’s a rare post where I both have a point and state it explicitly: Whether you go off to Holiday’s article and follow that thread, follow my links in this email or this post, or my series teaching daily reflection matters not. It only matters that you take time to reflect.

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Reflection →

Published July 3, 2022  ·  All posts on Jul 3  ·  

[…] 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!

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The library →

Published May 7, 2022  ·  All posts on May 7  ·  

If you think of your mind as a library, three things should concern you. […] There is no point having a repository of knowledge in your mind if you can’t find and apply its contents (see multiplicative systems).

~ Shane Parrish from, The Pot-Belly of Ignorance

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Don’t panic it’s not simply a catalog of library metaphors. There are great points about being intentional about what you choose to put into your brain, what your brain is good at doing, the utility and danger—which I humorously typo’d as “dander”—of filters, and more. I’m going to go in a different direction here however: Rather than trying to figure out how to assess the library of my mind, I’ve been trying to more often let people see what it’s doing. As I’ve said many times, this blog itself is a form of me working “with the garage door up.” …and I regularly reread these blog posts myself to make sure the thoughts still look reasonable after some time sitting on the digital shelf.

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Tranquility →

Published April 24, 2022  ·  All posts on Apr 24  ·  

I have a sequence of daily prompts for myself. The other morning it was, “Am I an energy-giver or -taker”. (There’s more to each prompt.) I thought about the prompt—as I do with each one, every morning—and something new occurred to me related to this prompt…

Whether I’m an energy-giver or -taker depends on what mood I’m in! There seem to be at least 3 moods. OVER-REVVING: Too many ideas, or a new/big idea, on my mind. Interacting with me in this mood really drains people. There’s just too much information flowing from me, and it’s too fast for anyone to follow—energy-taker! DEPRESSED: I know well what this mood is like. I’m no fun to be around… soul-crushing for others to be around me in this mood—energy-taker! …and finally, TRANQUIL: This is the state to be in. It’s also the state where I have the energy and space to be sufficiently aware of the people I Interact with. Only in this state can I listen.

Sure, “3 moods” is an over-simplification, of course. But it feels like a simple and useful pre-flight check: “About to interact? Which mood am I in? …and how can I shift to tranquil if that’s not where I am.”

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Looking back →

Published December 26, 2020  ·  All posts on Dec 26  ·  

I’ve started thinking about a touch phrase for 2021. (2020’s was the superbly helpful, “Get less done.”) As part of the thinking, I was browsing the old blog, and wondered when I last missed a daily post. That turns out to be November 18, 2019. It’s simply a random day with nothing posted.

For a few weeks leading up to that 18th, there’s a post on each day. But October of 2019 is Swiss cheese—actually, it’s more hole than cheese. But early to mid 2019 things look mostly solidly-posted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I also know that in the very beginning of this blog I wasn’t even intending to post daily; In the beginning it was just a place for me to put things that I felt I needed some place to put. Unsurprisingly, character by character this blog was built like a drifting sand dune. In 2021 this blog will turn 10. Hello World was posted on August 13, 2011. If I continue, and I see no reason to stop, post number 3,000 should appear in late December 2021.

I bring this up because this time of year is traditionally a time for wrapping things up, and striking out anew, perhaps with a fresh start or a new commitment, into the new year. meh. That never works for me. But you know what has been working well—year-round, not just during this completely arbitrary calendar roll-over point—

LOOK BACK!

Look back at some of the things you’ve accomplished or experienced and think: “Well if that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Seriously. I’m not going to end this post on a, “but if you don’t like what you see…”. No.

Take some time during the arbitrary end-of-the-year machinations to look back and think:

Well if that isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

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On knowledge systems →

Published November 10, 2020  ·  All posts on Nov 10

Caution: This post is long-ish but does not have a denouement. ;)

As I commonly do, I went to the mental well this morning to see what I’d find to add to the ‘ol blog. I hauled the bucket, and found two ideas which have been sitting there for months. Every time I go to the well, these two come up on top. Time to try to do something with them.

I’ve been actively thinking for years about getting a handle on learning. There’s a huge amount of things I’m delighted to simply learn from by osmosis. I read something, or experience something, and it affects me to some degree. I’ve had countless experiences where long after, I can clearly see the influence has percolated. I know this type of learning works well, and it’s effortless; I’ve mastered this type of learning and in so far as I can relax about trusting the process, it just works.

But there’s a type of learning which I haven’t been doing at all for years: Organized learning directed at a particular goal. I’ve not even been attempting to make any progress on that. Here’s an example of a specific thing I’d like to learn about:

Psychoactivity is a particular kind of relationship between a person, their body, what they perceive and the context of that perception. Psychoactivity occurs when a person’s thoughts, emotions and body sensations take on symbolic significance in response to what they are perceiving.

…

Space becomes psychoactive once a person’s mind-body starts to react symbolically to their physical surroundings and/or to their imaginative mind-space. David Grove coined the term ‘psychoactive space’ because it seems as if our perceptions are causing us to react and that we have little choice in the matter — which is true to some extent. When our perception of a space and the spatial relations contained therein have an independence from us, we are effectively living in the symbolism of the space moment by moment. Although I am referring to the space as psychoactive, I want to emphasise that psychoactivity is a relationship between the perceiver and the perceived (and/or the perceiver and the context).

~ James Lawley from, «https://cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/29/1/When-Where-Matters-How-psychoactive-space-is-created-and-utilised/Page1.html»

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I stumbled over that article a while back, skimmed it, read it, read it carefully, … and realized I need to spend a lot more time on the topic of psychoactive space. That site itself is large and I’ve not stuffed it through my usual website serialize tools because it deserves more than to be simply “read through.” Also, it is clearly going to point me off to other books, journals, and articles. I feel like I’m standing on a hilltop looking at a vast landscape thinking, “I need to make a map, or something, while I have this perspective because once I descend from this hill it’s going to be rabbit holes all the way across this landscape.”

So that leaves me with my original, (at the top of this post,) general quest for a knowledge system, and this intriguing, specific example in need of a knowledge system. It’s time to start thinking about knowledge systems. (Which, one might realize, unfortunately presents me with the need for some sort of knowledge system to learn enough about knowledge systems to decide which . . . )

When it doubt, I deploy the familiar tools which are at hand. One of my favorite tools is to ask the right questions, in particular these three questions:

Is this a problem I really need/want to solve? Srsly bro’? Yes. Next question please.

Is the scale of the problem sane/do I have sufficient resources? I’m not asking for a knowledge system (time for an acronym! “KS”) to track all human knowledge. I don’t even need it to be collaborative. It doesn’t have to be complete—in the sense that if I’m using this KS to learn “psychoactive space,” it doesn’t have to also store all my knowledge about “architecture” and “bio-mechanics.” I want a KS that’s a power tool—better than a manual screwdriver. I’m not wanting a KS that outsources the driving of screws. I want a KS that one person (me!) can build and use. Glancing out at the universe I can see lots of things which could be a solution. (Things like “Evernote” spring to mind in case you’re eyes are popping out of your head from all this stratospheric cogitation and you just want me to shut up and get to the punchline but sorry this post doesn’t end with me telling you what KS I’m now using.)

So far, so good. Final question:

What would a solution look like? The KS would be easy to get started. I don’t want to spend months figuring it out. I want to start building the house by tossing a sofa in the bare lot and calling it a first approximation. I’ll erect a tarp when the weather threatens, walls in the fall, etc. It’s not important that it be easy to add to—no, some effort should be required to sift and summarize or filter or whatever as the knowledge is built. Stateful: meaning every time I climb back to that metaphorical hilltop to survey the landscape, I don’t want to have to redo any of my thinking from the last time I was there; duck up to the hilltop, achieve instant perspective and return to the landscape. online is also not a requisite: Sure a lot of the material I’d be learning from would be online, but some won’t be… and importantly, I’m a human not a computer so while I use online tools… well, paper and all works fine too. Plus anything online has maintenance. …but it does need to acknowledge and deal with stuff that’s online.

I have ideas. But as I cautioned at the top, this post is just a place where I wanted to think through all of the above.

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