Month: November 2020

Isn’t it enough to know the true nature of good and bad, and the proper bounds of our desires and aversions, and also of our motives to act or not to act, and to make use of these as rules to order the conduct of our life, and renounce those things that are beyond us?

Fragments, 1

In other words, if you want to get smart, don’t try to figure out what’s going on in the world outside you. Instead, work on the things you control. Motives. Desires. Aversions.

If you know right and wrong and you know your motives, desires, and attitudes, then you will know what to do.

Anything beyond that is out of your control.

A man’s got to know his limitations is one way to look at what he’s telling you to do.

Know right and wrong? This is the eternal challenge. Be content to stumble, confused, for the rest of your life. You’re not going to achieve a goal here (“I know the difference between good and evil and you don’t, so let me enlighten you”). Here, the journey really is the destination.

It’s easy to see someone who has a clear sense of right and wrong. They will stumble frequently. Their idea of right and wrong may evolve over time. But their actions tell you everything you need to know about their principles.

And their principles are, you will find, simple and pragmatic. Don’t ask them. Watch their actions. You will quickly see what you need to see.

This is the recipe: Know your limitations and have simple guiding principles.

Easy to say. Now let’s go do it, just until lunchtime. You can do this for a few hours to the best of your ability.

The same brain that creates the problem is unlikely to solve the problem. This is why we all need outside help. Books. People. Etc.

On the other hand, the Kingdom of God is within. You already know the answer.

Puzzle on that paradox.

I did it today.

Uneventful.

Have hard boundaries.

This works for food intake. I have a hard rule of “no calories until noon”. It’s easy to resist temptation . . . to have a banana, a protein bar, cream in my coffee, whatever.

This has been my rule for several months now, and except for days when I travel, it has worked well. (When I have to be at the airport at 5:00 a.m., well, I am going to adapt to external conditions. Then I get back on track the next day.)

This helps with weight maintenance, but the real benefit is not physical.

I have proven to myself that I can stick to a self-imposed rule, not cheat, and not make excuses for myself. Now I can bring this strength to bear on other things I want to change.

That’s the payoff. I am a man who can live according to his principles, in small ways and big.

I did this with Diet Coke. I used to drink about 4 or 5 a day at work. Now, none. The refrigerator at work is stocked with Pellegrino. We have one of those nice water things with a five gallon bottle on top that gives chilled tasty water. I drink coffee (black) and water at work, nothing else. The rule was simple to understand, and it worked. This change happened in about 9 months ago. There are still Diet Cokes in the refrigerator. I don’t drink them.

Next frontier: the snack cabinet at work. The easy rule here is “No bags of chips. Anything else is fine.” I don’t like chips all that much, but I was gobbling down three or four bags a day. Because the rule is easy to follow and I have plenty of other options if I want a snack, I have succeeded here, and will continue to succeed. The Cheetos are safe.

What’s the action plan here?

• Pick a simple, clear rule. “No calories before noon” is easy to understand. It’s 11:59 a.m. or it’s 12:01 p.m. There’s no room for me to debate myself and bullshit myself into why it’s OK to eat before noon. The clock tells me, and I obey.
• Pick something that is absurdly easy to achieve. I can resist Cheetos because I don’t like them all that much. I give myself permission to have those candy bars that masquerade as healthy protein bars, even though I know it’s bullshit and they aren’t healthy at all.
• Ideally, pick a habit that removes something from your life. Via negativa. Removing Cheetos from my life is easier than adding kale to my life. I would have to shop for kale, prepare it, learn to (ugh) like it, etc. Trying to install a kale habit will not work (at the moment at least).
• Make it easy to get it done fast. I’m on The Tens for exercise right now. It only takes a few minutes. Ten pull-ups, ten push-ups, ten squats (usually holding something that weighs about 10 pounds). I abandoned the 10,000 steps a day for now. That’s it. I feel it a tiny bit of oomph in my muscles, and I feel like a warrior in my mind.
• See the habit build, day by day. Congratulate yourself on it frequently. Multiple times a day. (I am congratulating myself on my achievements right now).
• Resist adding new habits too frequently. That makes your life busier, more complicated. There are more things to remember, more things to do.

Hat-tip to Sebastian Marshall for the idea of hard boundaries. Hat-tip to Tiny Habits for the idea of starting small, simple, and achievable.

Freedom.to is on full lockdown again today, doing for me what I cannot do for myself.

A man’s got to know his limitations.

By that I mean talking to yourself about future or past conversations with other people. Maybe an encounter went poorly, in your mind. “If only I had said x instead of y, then I would have succeeded.” So you rehearse the conversation over and over in your head to make it come out the way you want.

Rehearsal bathes you in self-made toxicity. The event is past. Why are you re-running the script? You can’t make a better outcome.

Or the event might or might not happen in the future. And if it does, you’ll be ready and know what to say. Wrong.

Don’t talk to yourself. If you find the loop running, stop it.

The only way I know to stop rehearsal is to talk to God using an internal conversation.

And remember: You’re not in rehearsal. This is the main event, always.

Up early, feed the dog, make some coffee and sit quietly before the family wakes up. Peace.

The aftermath of Election Day is on the Twitter. Time to block all of it again, using Freedom. At some point I will be able to look at the noise and see it for what it is (beyond my control) but for now, I need training wheels. Know your limitations.

A day of via negativa ahead of me. Maybe do some roadwork in the form of walking to the office.

That’s a time constraint question, and the answer to that question is within my control.

Now, today, is a day that I do not start anything new. Everything I do today is aimed at completing a task, a project, a thought.

Get momentum and don’t lose it, capture territory and don’t let it go, establish position and maintain it, etc.

That’s my aim, and to do it, here is my plan.

Practically speaking, this means a rolling list of open loops where I can establish progress. It means a method of writing down where I am so I don’t have to do the same thing again. “Oh yeah, where was I?” It means giving work to others. It means saying no.

Of all of those nice platitudes, the one I will implement today is “get it to a good resting point where you can’t go any further and write down what you know and where you think you need to go next.”

Use a Google Doc. Not Word. (That is an arbitrary choice that I made simply because it is “not wrong”. Rather than look for “best choice” look for a “not wrong” choice when making a decision. This is an extension of the Munger concept “don’t be stupid” to getting things done.)

Paper is an example of wrong. Paper is good (really good) for creativity and thinking but not so good for tracking and production.

End of day objective: Google document with only the things I worked on today. Brief status and what to do next recorded. Excellent documentation in the file for everyone to see.

Let’s go. The family awakens.