Month: July 2021

I was thinking . . . .

This is usually bad 🙃 but I was doing it anyway.

The topic: how does someone start from zero? Minimal skills, no idea how to get a first customer, etc. How do you start?

I imagined someone with minimal web dev skills, for example. Maybe they like it, maybe they don’t. The point is, it’s uncharted territory so how the hell would you know? What would this person do?

Best thought I had: go on Upwork and just look. Use Jordan Peterson’s advice, especially how he tells you to clean your room. First, just open a drawer and look at it. Don’t do anything, just look.

I did this long ago, pre-internet. I opened the newspaper and looked at jobs. Eventually I worked up the courage to send a resume. Then another. And another. And soon enough I had a job.

Back to my mythical person. I would say “just look at Upwork.” Or some other site.

Eventually there is something that my mythical person could do. I would tell this person to take on one job. No more. Just one. Get it done. get paid.

Only then, pick up the next job.

Now for me. I have a huge backlog of work. Let’s apply the sequential attack. One at a time. It would work. Don’t take on anything more until the backlog is gone.

The point is to not get overloaded.

I planned the day. Did what I bargained with myself to do. Got done early so I took a catnap instead of driving myself mercilessly forward. Now I’m eating lunch at the place I decided ahead of time to eat.

This follows the Rule 4 recommendations from 12 Rules for Life. It follows the Goggins admonition to not take a rest day when your whiny poopypants voice tells you to, but take your rest day when scheduled.

Feels good.

EDIT: fucked around and didn’t get done until 11:30 pm. I have a long way to go.

Rule 4 is today’s reading:

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

12 Rules for Life, page 84

I read this chapter for the first time only a few weeks ago. Rereading it . . . well, there are so many actionable suggestions there! There are ways to get on The Path. Or to return to The Path when you’ve detoured into the weeds.

Somehow, I have set up the day more or less in line with his suggestions.

I have defined a task to accomplish today. It’s maybe not as small as he would suggest, but it’s feasible, to my best guess. This is aligned with the inner negotiation: what is there to do that I can — and will — do? Aim small. my life will be measurably better when it’s done.

My personal, specific Monday will be better by getting this one thing done today, on Sunday.

I have added rewards into my day. Explicit breaks in the day to go do something. I have not committed myself to a long, hard, joyless slog.

Let’s see how it works!

Aim small. You don’t want to shoulder too much to begin with given your limited talents, tendency to deceive, burden of resentment, and ability to shirk responsibility. Thus, you set the following goal: by the end of the day, I want my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, “What could I do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward? Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph. Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that’s magic. That’s compound interest. Do that for three years, and your life will be entirely different. Now you’re aiming for something higher. Now you’re aiming for something higher. Now you’re wishing upon a star. Now the beam is disappearing from your eye, and you’re learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That’s worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.

12 Rules for Life, pp. 95-95. Emphasis in original.

Today:

• Exercise for approx an hour. 45 minutes is the aim but it always goes a little longer.
• Shower and dress.
• Do the work laid out. This phase is simple: converting edits on a paper draft into their equivalent in Word.
• Stop. Go get lunch. It’s going to be that pizza place next to the coffee joint. I will patronize both and make my taste buds happy.
• Return. Print the new draft, go through one last edit on paper. Be ruthlessly careful in editing this so anyone (even me) could follow the markup and make the edits in Word without thinking. Output: monkey work. I’m a monkey and I will appreciate not having to think.
• Gym. Go lift. Do the regular things but for the next several visits, start to learn about the squat and doing it right. Later I will need out on other lifts. For now, back to basics. Bodyweight, kettlebell, etc. Don’t worry about barbell, don’t worry about weight. I only care about knowing how to do a squat well. Heavy is later.
• Back to the computer. Paper edits to Word. Monkey mind in action. Final version done.
• Output: PDF emailed.
• Ahh. Now here is the question. What’s my reward when shipping the PDF? I was going to say Mocha Frappuccino but it will be late in the day so no caffeine for me. Hmm. I will let the brain make suggestions. Maybe a burrito from the list of places I saw yesterday.

That’s my plan. It’s laid out in Cal Newport-style time blocks. Let’s do it.

“Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.”

People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it.

12 Rules for Life, page 75.

Implications?

Assume you are in the “unwilling” category of people. (We are either unable or unwilling, and the only person with hope of a better life is the unwilling one who becomes willing.) This is the only reasonable perspective to have. The other perspective (that you are physically unable to make a change due to lack of intelligence, etc.) is black pill thinking that leads to unhappiness and cynicism.

In other words, are you a “cannot” or are you a “will not?” Don’t take the fatalist’s “cannot” path.

Assume your life tools are faulty until proven otherwise. It’s a reasonable assumption. Someone else is always smarter, faster, etc. Even masters seek to hone their skills.

Test that assumption by embarking on a never-ending effort to learn. Learning reveals gaps in your prior knowledge. By acquiring new knowledge and skills you will reveal the limits of your old knowledge.

In short:

• Willingness. Believe (despite evidence to the contrary you may believe exists at the moment) that it is possible to change.
• Openmindedness. Believe that it is possible to know and do different stuff than you know and do now.
• Action. Learn and do.

[E]very good example is a fateful challenge, and every hero, a judge. Michelangelo’s great perfect marble David cries out to the observer: “You could be more than you are.” When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future.”

12 Rules for Life, page 83.

This chapter of the books is about choosing better friends and companions. “Make friends with people who want the best for you” is how the chapter ends.

Important! But first, let’s make and keep that inner resolution to aspire upwards and . . . keep trudging.

In my clinical practice I encourage people to credit themselves and those around them for acting productively and with care, as well as for the genuine concern and thoughtfulness they manifest toward others.

12 Rules for Life, page 61.

Ouch. I have nothing good to say to myself about my day-to-day performance, in the inner monologue. Ever. I’m self-critical to the extreme.

Time to change this. Recognize that I kept going when things were bleak, and raised three happy, productive, healthy children. That’s no insignificant task. Good marriage. I was right long ago when I mused “I could go the distance with her.” (Where did that thought come from? It was those exact words.) I showed up this week when my dad needed me. Things are ok. I’m ok.

Right now I’m sitting on the back patio, reading. It’s early morning. I have a cup of coffee. Gentle traffic noise and the intermittent interruption of a crow’s call.

My life is good. I’m ok.

Edgy and discontented right now. Irritated, not with anything in particular — just everything in general.

Watching my dad’s household goods being loaded into the moving truck. Thinking I have so many things to do for work. Not wanting to do them at all, ever. Feeling in limbo.

In a few minutes, take my dad to the airport. Come back to the house for the movers and the final packing and walkthrough. Then hit the road myself. I have a long drive home.

I want to get going.

Do one thing at a time. Right now the thing to do is sit.

I found the word “grindset” on one of my rare visits to Twitter.

It’s mine now.

I didn’t see the value of grindset quite the way I do now, mid-75 Hard.

I’ve learned a lesson from David Goggins that serves me well.

1. Rest days are important.
2. My brain will sometimes tell me I deserve a day off, or some such shit. (In the little video I watched he used the word “poopypants” to describe that mental conversation. Bang. That bookmarked the concept in my head forever.)
3. Never take the day off that Mr. Poopypants tells you to take off. “I deserve it” is poison.
4. Instead, schedule rest days and take those days off.

I don’t schedule rest days often enough. I need to. That way I won’t fall prey to the poopypants mentality.

We manufacture ourselves from our thoughts. Our moods, our physical being. Our future condition. Our present.

Memories are just thoughts. We can have different thoughts. Even about the same thing.

Don’t be a slave to the past. The past is gone, and you chose thoughts to cling to about the past. Let those thoughts go, and have different thoughts. Or keep a thought for a while, and polish and buff it to make it shine. then let it go when it’s time for that thought to go.

Just know that thoughts have expiration dates. A reason, a season, a lifetime. Cooperate with the expiration date.

You can change the past. Today, you are not that person, and that environment is not your current environment. You are free.

Helping my father move.

Packing up a home — this goes to storage, that goes to the new place — can be a psychic chore. Packing up someone else is hard enough. I can’t imagine what it’s like for him, packing up his own life.

This is for the second time. The first time he downsized from a 3,000 square foot two-story house to a two-bedroom mobile home. Now it’s a 900 square foot one-bedroom apartment in a retirement facility.

How do you go from fully autonomous to living in a place you know might be your last home? Oof. Heavy thought. How do you continue to shed possessions, simply because you must?

At least he will be living just a few blocks from me.

Many of these things are familiar to me from my childhood. Others are familiar to me for less time, but still identifies with him. To the extent I look at the thing and create an opinion, an attachment . . . it’s hard. To the extent that I show up for duty, purely to be helpful . . . it’s easy.

Lessons exist everywhere we choose to find them.

• Nothing is good or bad except that thinking makes it so. (Or whatever Billy S. wrote 400 years ago.)
• Do you know what feels good? Just show up and help, for fun and for free (as the old timers would tell me long ago when I was a noob).
• And a more practical one: throw shit away, with glee and gratitude. Why do you think they call them possessions? Because they possess you. (Why put a secondhand toaster into paid storage? What possible value is there in keeping it?)

That last one is a son of a bitch to get past. I look at things that I own. Maybe I bought them, maybe someone gave them to me. They are of no value to me today. Yet I can’t bring myself to throw it away. It has some psychic value to me, just because it’s mine. It’s useless (maybe even detrimental), but it’s mine.

Give it away. Throw it away. Don’t even think of selling it. The value is in the “gone.”

This is a lesson I need to apply in my own life.