The most sincere compliment we can pay is attention.
~ Walter Anderson
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On this day
December 7thA quote I cannot find
I’m often pulling up quotes from my own collection. I use them for reminders and inspiration. Today, I had the thought that:
Dreams and passion get you into trouble;
Plans and hard work get you out.
I’m certain this is not a new sentiment. None the less, I couldn’t find it in my collection nor with a few minutes of searching. Does it sound familiar to you? …any idea where a more original source might be?
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Unreasonable
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
~ George Bernard Shaw
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Paralysis
I’ve been up for more than two hours today. I’m completely paralyzed by too many things to do. At this point—this point right here where I’ve opened the text box to write a blog post—I’m simply flailing. Simply grasping at any action.
Where’s the actual problem though? The paralysis isn’t from external pressures; it isn’t that I cannot figure out how to get things done in time, or on budget, to meet other’s expectations. All the expectations come from myself. This is a theme which has come up previously here multiple times.
Luke 4:23 springs to mind. What would I suggest if someone came to me with these exact symptoms, and asked me for help? I’d suggest visualizing what would success look like.
“It would be not this feeling!”
Yes, okay. Can you describe the current feeling?
“It’s a frenetic, cacophony of ideas and options, making me feel like progress—progress is clearly possible upon each idea and option, but progress upon any idea or option feels pointless.”
I notice you said, ‘feels pointless’, … why use ‘feels’ rather than ‘is’?
“Because I know that I could easily finish, at an awesome level of execution, any one of these things. So just picking one of them, arbitrarily, for discussion, progress on that one would move it towards completion.”
Are you saying that working on any of one of them— when you focus on that line of action alone— that actually feels like a good idea?
“Well, yes.”
If considering one feels okay, but considering all of them makes working on them feel not okay…
“But how do I choose? How do I be sure that I can finish all of them— all of these projects?”
You are aware that you cannot be certain to finish anything. This last thing you’ve said is a fact of life, because of the dichotomy of control. If you’ve only chosen to work on virtuous things— let’s take that as a given— then all these things you’re struggling to pick among… they’re all nothing more than preferred indifferents. Pick one, since they are all equally awesome. Chop wood. Carry water.
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Don’t ask for advice
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, https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2017/01/16/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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Artificial constraints
A lot of my thinking, and sometimes even my problem solving, revolves around juxtaposition. What would the inverse of the current this be? Can I gain useful perspective from the other position? Big/small, loud/quiet, perfuse/sparse, etc.; there are many obvious qualities that create striking changes in perspective. However, I find particularly rewarding juxtapositions in unusual dimensions, and there’s one dimension in particular that pays off more than all others: Time.
Have a problem? …how would I solve it if I had 100 years? …what would have to be the case if I were going to solve it in 5 minutes?
It’s become common to talk about “minimum viable product” in the entrepreneurial space, and that’s a form of time constraint. (But it’s a useful idea because it also includes other constraints such as resources and people.)
The famous Getting Things Done system has many critical components. One in particular is paying attention to the next action for any given project. (And in GTD everything you do in your entire life is a ‘project’.) This too is a form of time constraint; it’s not, “I’ll move this project forward at some point in time,” (the perspective of unlimited time,) rather it’s, “if I was going to move this project forward in the next minute…”
Where in your life might a shift to expectation of greater or lesser time yield a huge benefit?
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Comfortable
We tend to think of home as a specific location — a defined physical space where we feel safe and entitled to be ourselves. But home, like so many other things that profess to be something more concrete, is really just an emotion. “Home” is the emotion of belonging you get from very familiar places.
~ David Cain from, http://www.raptitude.com/2009/12/two-simple-tricks-to-be-more-comfortable-in-your-own-skin/
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Sometimes…
—not always, not often. I’m still a deeply flawed human being who is happy to be a work in progress.
But sometimes people tell me I’m “different” or “intense” because I move more slowly than most people, or I seem [they think I “seem”; I actually “am”] to be paying attention, or I seem [again, actually “am”] to be particularly considerate or thoughtful. Sometimes people find this really unsettling; I’ve had people physically twitch in the process of avoiding my glance. To those people, I’m sorry that a heartfelt glance was too much for you at that moment. (Not sarcasm.) But sometimes, a heartfelt “Hello! How are you today?” is just the thing people need.
Often…
—again here with the caveats.
But often I’m wondering why everyone seems to be in such a hurry. I believe I understand why they are; I’m assuming their reasons are the same as my reasons were. Often I sit down and feel perfectly at home. Often after a bit of post-just-sat-down day dreaming, I’ll have a brief moment of a sort of fully immersed realization that I’m not anywhere remotely near my geographic home. And that just makes it all the more enjoyable to feel at home.
Slow down. Relax.
If things are going badly, relax for they will not last.
If things are going well, relax for they will not last.
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Stop aspiring
But if aspiring was our true fulcrum, you’d be on your throne already. Here’s the truth: It’s not the heights we aspire to but the FLOOR WE PUT UP WITH that determines our place.
~ Bryan Ward from, http://www.thirdwayman.com/articles/stop-aspiring/
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A good friend recently said something to the effect of, “Life is full of compromises which you cannot avoid. So don’t compromise with yourself.”
I find both of these things are very useful for me to keep in mind.
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Comfort
Dinah Craik, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinah_Craik
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A teaching moment on sexual assault
This is worse than just “objectification” of women, because we would never tolerate similar thinking about actual objects: If your drive for acquisition overcomes your impulse control, you’re a thief, period. The strength of your greed does you no credit; you’re not complimenting the wealth of the people you steal from; it’s not their fault for having such nice stuff or displaying it so attractively; and we don’t give in to the inevitability of theft whenever valuable objects are visible to people who might desire them. When it comes to object-lust, self-control is the price of staying in civilization; if you can’t muster it, we’ll lock you away”
~ Doug Muder from, http://weeklysift.com/2016/10/17/a-teaching-moment-on-sexual-assault/
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2,000
(Part 8 of 36 in series, 10,000 Reps Project)
Today’s checkin for the 10k project. It will now be a long road to 3,000… so I suspect it will be a while before there’s anything interesting to report.
pushups, pullups, squats and handstand-seconds just passed 2,000 reps !
This is the first day I’ve ever done more pullups than any other activity !!
(granted all the other activities were way too easy ;)Today’s workout is completely as planned. WOOT!
Did excellent for being tired from a good 2hr parkour workout yesterday that involved pushups and handstands…
(Thanks Adam :PI did pushups, squats and precisions in 5×8 sets, and 2×25 handstands — all super easy.
and the 9×5 pullups were all emminently doable
I’ll see how I feel on Wednesday morning: Since this is now a numbers race about pullups, I may stick with sets of 5 pullups, and just add an extra set more often than every fourth workout.
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Pullups pay off
(Part 39 of 72 in series, My Journey)
I clearly remember thinking this seemed inconceivable less than a year ago. Pullups and hard work for the win!
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Where transformation happens
It’s not about perfect. It’s about effort. And when you implement that into your life… every single day, that’s where transformation happens. That’s how change occurs. Keep Going. Remember why you started.
~ Jillian Michaels
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