A Blog About Things
Begin with the end in mind, because if and when you get there – that’s where you’ll be.
The reason we’re doing all the things is to be happy, free, to experience an abundance of love and joy and beauty in our lives.
So design the path you will walk, to enjoy every step.
[ 23/365 ]
Is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.”
-Charlie McCarthy
[ 22/ 365 ]
“It’s better to be optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right.”
Came across that gem the other day, and had to abruptly stop what I was doing to write it down.
Not sure if I’d call myself a pessimist, but I definitely lean towards being realistic.1
From now on, I think I’ll try and tone down the realism, and pump up the optimisim.
All because of that one little quote!
There is so much wisdom packed in there… Let’s break it down:
1) Mental peace
If you are optimistic about an outcome, but you end up being wrong, you’ll still get the “bad” result – but at least you weren’t suffering for days or weeks in advance.
If you’re pessimistic and right, you’ll suffer in the lead up AND you get the bad outcome as well.
2) You’ll take more shots on goal
By making optimisim your default, you will naturally make more attempts at uncertain things. This is almost always a good thing, and almost always increases your chance at success.
3) The self fulfilling prophecy a real thing, and a powerful phenomenon
The underlying physics of this remain a bit of a mystery, but there is a ton of solid research out there that shows your attitudes about an outcome seem to affect the likliehood of an outcome.
This is the placebo effect in action, but it extends far beyond just medicine.
If you don’t believe me, read this book.
There are obvious exceptions and caveats to being default-optimistic. But for those of you out there who tend to overthink, overanalyze, and look for everything that may go wrong2 – try out optmisim for a while and see what happens.
I’m going to write this here again.
Read it slow.
Think about it.
“It’s better to be optimistic and wrong, than pessimistic and right.”
[ 21/365 ]
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Sometimes going through the motions of something, just to keep your streak alive is actually more admirable than doing a good job.
When you are “in the zone” and your output is of quality, well, that is fantastic and what we aim for… but it only really comes regularly if you are consistent.
It’s the days when you have no ideas, when you feel like shit, when you don’t feel like writing, or going to the gym, or doing your art – it’s these days that are the mortar, holding the bricks in place.
You can’t build a very good wall with just mortar though, so if you’re not laying bricks you’ll need to sort that out.
But the mortar has to be there.
So three cheers for the shitty days – when you just show up and crank out a steamy turd… it makes the good stuff possible!
[20 / 365]
Since we can’t do it all, and we can’t have it all, we will all forgo things that could have been.
I wonder how many people out there actively choose which experiences they won’t get to have, instead of letting circumstance and time prune the branches of possibility for them.
Maybe choosing is no better than just letting nature take it’s course – but at least for the bigger questions, I for one, would like to be the agent.
Although it’s a scary thing, to cut off future possiblities, it’s important to at least acknowledge the dangers of the path you are on, to recognize which doors you may be closing – and to make peace with that.
But when it comes letting go of things to stay true to the core of who you are, banish all fear.
Those are losses worth celebrating!
—
“Be brave, my heart. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing spears. Hold your ground. In victory, do not brag; in defeat, do not weep.”
– Archilochus
[ 19/365 ]
Your self image can really hold you back, and it’s a very tough thing to change.
Identity and a concept of “what kind of person we are” – these mental formations are built over years, usually with a lot of solid evidence to back them up.
If we’ve been lazy about exercise for 30 years, it’s pretty hard to convince ourselves that we actually love going to the gym – no matter what kind of bullshit affirmations we say into the mirror.
BUT… this doesn’t mean you need to be trapped by a negative self image.
Limiting beliefs about who you are definitely become self-fulfilling, so it’s in your best interest to try and break them.
Instead of trying to grit your teeth and force yourself to believe something different about yourself, try opening a small crack in the structure by asking yourself this one question:
“Let’s just see if this is still true”
See how that works?
“I hate going to the gym”
“I’m not good with numbers”
“I’m super shy at social events”
“I’m a fucking loser”
Let’s just see if this is still true.
Try it out.
[ 18/365 ]
I am trying to write daily now (which I’m not always successful at) but I’ve been concerned with just publishing crap every day.
Thus publishing cadence is basically to build a habit, which is just so much easier if it’s something you do every damn day.
I plan to keep this up for 1 year, or 365 posts, and it seems like it would be a shame to write for all this time and only publish things of rough-draft quality. At the end of a year I’d just have hundreds of crappy posts.
The alternative is to basically make writing a full-time job, because editing posts and making them decent would take most of my good energy in a day.
I think I’ve come up with a solution:
Publish every day, and accept the poor quality, BUT, revisit certain topics to write about them again from time to time.
Then, at the end of some months or 1 year – I will have maybe 3 or 6 or more posts on a single topic. Probably a few thousand words, of first draft quality.
But that is then good raw material to edit into a polished final form.
This way I can keep up the daily writing, and more deeply explore some topics that seem to be worth digging in to.
After the writing habit is fully solidified, then I can give myself a break on the cadence and publish less frequently – freeing up time to spend on editing the posts I’ve written on given topics.
Bingo!
A one-year daily writing habit, with some editing, should bake into some solid articles that are worth a damn.
This is my rough plan now anyways… definitely not going to change the commitment to writing daily until I hit at least 100 posts, but hopefully not until I hit 365.
I will need some way to keep track of topics, so I can organize them into bundles and revisit them again later to edit.
Probably simple categories or wordpress tags will work best for this.
[17 / 365]
Another podcast shout out today.
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/269-deep-time
Oliver Burkeman released a book recently called “4,000 Weeks – Time Management For Mortals”
It’s been a big hit, and sometime in the past couple weeks I came across it on Amazon. Was immediately turned off by the title!
“Ugh… another pop-business, productivity book.”
So happy I listened to this conversation between him and Mr. Harris, because it seems like Burkeman wrote an anti time management book!
From the podcast, I gather that the thesis of the book is basically, “you can’t do everything you want to do” … and not only that, but “you can’t do everything that you should do”.
We’ve probably all heard some advice like this at some point or another, reminding us that our time here is limited and we won’t be able to get around to everything, so don’t waste your time on things that don’t matter.
Burkememan goes a step further by telling us (rightly) that, even things that would be very good for us to do, things that we should do – most of these will also be out of reach.
Our imagination and our desires are much larger than our ability to actually act them out.
So where does this leave us?
In some sense it’s sad, but to me it feels mostly liberating.
We’re off the hook of doing everything we want to do, and of being everything that we want to be.
Our experiences and achievments don’t really “accrue” like we think they will. Once we complete something, it’s sort of gone, other than as a vague memory.
The science is pretty clear on the fact that our happiness is not really determined by our achievements.
So the book goes beyond telling us to triage, to prioritize the things that are important – to a deeper place of telling us that, “this is it.”
This = right now.
If you can’t learn to enjoy whatever your day to day experience is, your life is going to be mostly filled with anxiety and stress.
Just listen to the damn interview! I promise it’s worth it!
One of the best I’ve experienced in a while.
Enjoy your day today!
[16 / 365 ]
This morning on my walk to work, I listened to an interview between Chris Do and entrepreneur-author Daniel Priestley.
They were discussing Priestley’s book, Key Person Of Influence, and the conversation is packed full of gems.
One that stood out to me was this (paraphrased):
“All great entrepreneurs make up their own game worth playing”
Meaning, business icons like Steve Jobs, Ray Kroc, Elon Musk – these weren’t people who looked carefully at market conditions and tried to fill a gap.
They didn’t step onto playing fields that others had created before them, and tried to win someone elses game, but they invented their own.
Steve Jobs’ game = get a personal computer in every home in America.
Elon Musk’s game = transition the world away from fossil fuel vehicles, into electric ones
(I hate to use those two guys as they are super cliched examples… but this is who was mentioned in the interview, and they definitely illustrate the idea).
You could easily extend this idea beyond just entrepreneurs, to most people who made a big impact on the world.
Martin Luther King worked towards a vision where people would be judged on the “content of their character” rather than their sking color.
Gandhi was playing a game we could call, “let’s free India from British occupation”.
There are a million examples we can think up using this framework.
The common thread is these people had a creative vision – they didn’t achieve big things by only looking for things they could change in their immediate environment, but first created their game, and then sought out next steps.
So whatever it is you want to do, ask yourself, what is the larger game I want to play here?
This is what will get you out of bed in the morning.
[ Post 15/365 ]
A useful fiction I’ve been toying with:
There are two types of internet users in the world now: those who produce things for others, and those who consume things others have produced.
I genuinely don’t make a value judgement on either side. Production does not necessarily add more value to the world than consumption.
There are certainly “consumers” out there who only use the internet occasionaly for wholesome things, maybe they use it to fuel some kind of offline production – just as there are prolific “producers” of the worst kind of brain-rotting Tik Tok ephemera, who genuinely make the world worse.
(So… I DO make a value judgement on that second bit – I’m not made of stone here!)
I think a more useful question than “is it better consume or produce?” is –> “what am I really using the internet for, and is it strengthening my capacity to be who I want to be?”
The most valuable resources we have are time and attention.
Point your ship towards where you want to go.
If you are consuming, is it serving you? If you are producing, is it serving you?
If either of these is done mindlessly you can get grounded on the rocks.
Careful out there, my peoples.
[ Post 14/365 ]