Month: April 2021

I’m doing this for me. I’m not doing it for you.

If you see me as selfish, you’re missing the point.

Rise up a level in your thinking. If you don’t know what I mean by rise up a level, read Flatland.

You will see.

Because I’m in the middle of an action cycle, I see cause and effect more than usual. Yes, sometimes it’s correlation. But a few decades of experience tells me otherwise.

Today in Meditations there is a little excerpt that echoes this idea:

Humanity, divinity, and the world: all of them bearing fruit. Each fruitful in its season. Normally we limit the word to vines and other plants. Unnecessarily.

Meditations 9:10.

Then he goes on to talk about the logos.

Which of course reminds me of “by their fruits you will know them.” Matthew and Marcus Aurelius were more or less contemporary so it’s not a surprise that a meme might have circulated from Palestine to Rome. The idea is probably timeless, in any event.

Time for me to look at myself! What fruit am I producing? Fortunately for those of us infused with the logos (that’s me, and you, and probably many other humans) we have the ability to retool and start producing different fruit. Different results. Results more satisfying to me.

The ones who cannot change and produce different results are the “cannot” or “will not” people. The number of “cannot” people is probably quite small. Almost everyone who is producing a life that is unsatisfactory to himself/herself is a “will not”.

If you will not look at yourself, your ideas, your actions . . . all with an open mind and willingness to change . . . you’re doomed. You are a rubber ducky floating down the creek.

I don’t want a rubber ducky life.

The hardest thing to do is be open-minded and honest with self when looking at self. The next hardest thing is taking a contrary action.

Except it’s not hard at all. Say three words out loud: “I was wrong.” Look how absolutely insignificant that sentence was. Now you’re a free man.

What is stopping you from saying those three words?

An attack of The Sads. Response: focused work. Result: I’m not beset by The Sads. Correlation is not causation, but . . . I have seen this movie before. Put your head down, tackle the things in life that are bothering you. It works.

Yesterday had a plan. It was largely ignored. Instead of my target plan I worked on another project (and put wildly too much time into it). I think I am preventing it from going off the rails. Preventing emergencies is better than dealing with emergencies. My future self will thank me.

Today, I am alone in the house again — all weekend. Time to get shit done. Coffee, shower, go. I’ll work in the garage but I’ll have to fire up both heaters.

Act your way into right thinking.

You pay the price for every action you take. And you pay the price for every action you don’t take.

OODA loop your life. That’s the essential element. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.

Your ideas about life and how it works will generate predictable actions. Those actions create predictable results. Those results, if you detach and observe, tell you something about your ideas and whether they are good ideas or not. Adjust your ideas as necessary. Take action. See what happens.

It’s not that fucking hard.

We are currently engulfed in a tsunami of propaganda aimed at all of us all of the time. Almost everyone I know is eager to accept the propaganda as truth. The ideas-actions-results chain follows. To their utter shock the results are an anomaly. So they double down and believe the lies harder.

This is where Taleb’s Lindy principle is so important. Where the Stoics are so important. Where any ancient wisdom is important. Hell, read The Art of War and learn some truth.

The Stoics focus on the self: what is within your control and what is not? I can’t help the human trout mindlessly biting the shiny hooks of propaganda. Why is this wiggly worm floating in front of me? Who cares! It’s lunchtime! Ouch! Why am I being pulled and who is pulling me?

The oxygen masks have popped out of the ceiling and are dangling in front of us.

Time to put on my oxygen mask. Then and only then can I put the oxygen mask on my traveling companions. And if they reject my offer of assistance, so be it.

Yesterday worked. Planned, stuck with the plan.

Lesson learned: days with lots of interruptions and task switching are unproductive days. Well, except that they produce a bunch of tiny results. Phone call accomplished, etc.

Lesson learned: the afternoon is a dead zone for me intellectually and for energy. I’ll have to figure out how to ride the waves. The standard “eat lunch and come back” produces unacceptable results. I might as well leave at noon. Idea: a longer break in the middle of the day, with a run or a gym visit in there.

Let’s plan today.

• Preconfigured call with team member.
• Target task.
• Preconfigured call with customer.
• Target task.
• Lunch. (I’m going to try the gym thing today. The bag is in my car).
• Target task.
• Preconfigured call with team member.

Another lesson learned: I’m going to block out entire days for no calls. And days where I bunch them up.

And use Work Cycles.

I have to say that a few days of steady action like this and The Sads aren’t pressing me hard. That’s good.

One more thing. I got the reading in this morning. Meditations, of course.

It’s what the old guys said: you can’t think your way into right actions, but you can act your way into right thinking.

It goes without saying that you can’t think your way into right thinking, all by yourself. You need external, human help. Your own best thinking got you where you are today. You need someone else’s ideas, and the humility to accept them and put them into practice.

Again. Let’s test the ability of systematic, focused work to change emotions.

• Preplanned call. Administrative.
• Preplanned call. Administrative.
• “Check in” email to keep the plates spinning.
• Target job. Same one I worked on yesterday.
• Lunch.
• Target job.
• Preplanned call. Administrative but building production systems so it’s more than mere hygiene.
• Target job.
• Preplanned call. Administrative.

Again, use Work Cycles.

Is always at the same time, manually set: 5:55 pm GMT. The publication date is more or less accurate. Sometimes I publish on today (in my time zone). Sometime tomorrow. Sometimes 5:55 pm GMT is in the future or is late in my time zone. I might publish in the future or I might publish in the past. I don’t really care.

I started this . . . for reasons I don’t know. Maybe to mask my time zone. But now that I have started, I persist . . . for reasons I don’t know.

Most of these entries are written in the morning while reading. But I also write them during the day when I Have a Thought. That is why I put everything (books and blogging tool) on my phone: to capture an idea.

This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.

Meditations 8:22a.

Persistent mild generalized sadness. That’s where I am right now.

I suspect it’s related to me not working on some tasks at the factory. My stack-ranking efforts are . . . well, I stack-rank my priorities but I don’t do them in that order.

Probably other reasons exist, too. But, let’s attack one thing at a time. What’s in front of me and actionable right now?

That’s why this little excerpt from Meditations hit home today. I reap the rewards (current emotional state) of what I do today. And for too many yesterdays, what I do today is not what I intend to do today.

Today at work, I will match actions to intentions. Here is the plan.

Use Work Cycles for the Target project.

• Prescheduled phone call. Unavoidable, brief. Do it. Be helpful to my fellow human, whoever he may be. EDIT: done.
• Respond to messages in email etc. with “later, can’t today.” EDIT: done.
• Target. EDIT: done.
• Lunch. Necessary to sustain the meat bag that I am. Walk briskly after eating for 30 minutes, for the man I am. EDIT: done and done. (NB: state of mind has improved.)
• Target. EDIT: done.
• Prescheduled phone calls. One is a deferrable administrative matter. Do it anyway. The other is work. Help him in the way he wants to be helped. EDIT: done and done.
• Gym. Go, even if all you do is some kettlebell squats ‘n wimpy lightweight stuff. I am afraid of going back after the fucking lockdown. EDIT: did not do. Will go do some push-ups and pull-ups at home.
• EDIT: did lots more Target instead. And I got a lot done. Yay me.

Will this help with The Sads? Probably not entirely, but I can do it. And it’s a start.

BFOTO! Look at how little attention is spent to Most Important Work. What am I going to do about that?

Exhortation to self: Get Some.

EDIT: net net, I’m in a better frame of mind at the of the workday.

I Got Some.

My brain follows rabbits down trails. The internet helps me with this indulgence.

Today I came back to Martin Luther and the Diet of Worms. I probably hadn’t thought of this since high school.

The power of one man’s conviction. reality always wins. God is not mocked, to coin a phrase.

Funny how the people stifling reality saw themselves to be on God’s side and perceived Luther and Galileo to be on the anti-God side. (Or more subtly, they may have perceived an erosion of their entrenched power).

Don’t fall into smug feelings here. It is easy to justify your belief that you are right, whether you are the Pope or the Heretic. Are you right? That’s another question entirely.

Beware the logical error of the false dichotomy.

Anytime I fall into this trap I find myself full of righteous indignation. How is it possible for me to be so right and that person to be so deliberately, obstinately wrong is such a fundamental way?

That’s a signal.

An emotional reaction is not the only signal. Immediately seeing the one and only extremely easy and obvious answer to a conundrum is another signal.

The problem is not, primarily, jumping to the answer. That is a problem and can cause damage, but it’s not the real problem. The real problem is my misunderstanding of the question. It’s the fact that I am presented with and do not recognize a false dichotomy.

What to do? Always look for the “and”.

It’s not an “or” world. It’s an “and” world.

Even if I can’t see the and.

It’s there, but the problem is me. I can’t see it.

When I’m at my best, I don’t even try to reason out the and. All I have to do is say “It’s not an ‘or’ universe. It’s an ‘and’ universe.” That is enough to pull my head out of my ass.

It’s enough to see a paradox (hint: it’s almost certainly not a paradox) and be willing to entertain it in my head.

I’m writing this for me, today, because I saw something on The Internet and the man’s error is blindingly obvious. 🙄

Your Path is your Path. Mine is mine.

My job is to make sure I have a Path. And stay on it.

Your life is your business. You do you.

I’ve been thinking about this all day today.

A few days before my 33rd birthday, a Path was offered to me, unbidden and unwanted. I seized it with all of the reluctance of a drowning man gasping for air. Many people push it aside. I’ve seen them die.

I didn’t have a Path until I was 33. Until then I was an idiot, seeking pleasure and randomly banging up against the guardrails of life. I was driftwood. Flotsam.

My Path has, at its core, remained the same since then.

How I describe my Path in words to myself, in my head, has changed over the years, but it’s still the same Path.

What I do to stay on the Path has changed over the years. But it’s the same Path.

What I have reaped from staying on the Path has changed, and I expect the results to change and change again, until the day I die.

How lucky am I? I have a Path, upon which great things have and will be built. Because I am on the Path, I have a soul. I own my own life.