Month: March 2023

Already assigned a task in Slack to an employee. Subtract a task from my plate. He will be slower and require quality control but the QC time is less, than my “do it” time. Not by much, unfortunately but there you are.

My project plan written yesterday is under review and if it looks complete I will assign it for execution to the same employee who is doing the review. With my QC of course.

Write up new project plans for the convo I had yesterday. Two projects with action, one project pending. Those will be assigned off. They will require major QC but what are you going to do? How else am I going to get strong team backup? I can’t hire it (because I don’t know where these people are) so at the moment I’m growing it.

Arthur Ashe’s famous quote:

Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

Arthur Ashe

I’m trying to limit the scope of what we work on to even a smaller niche. Maybe that’s the flag we fly. I’m not that bold yet and anyway I’m about to launch a related one year marketing course of action on a parallel path and I need to ride that pony to the end of the road. But there’s plenty of crossover.

Gotta subtract though.

Subtract. Do less, and don’t replace the activity you subtracted with another activity. E.g., don’t stop doing a low value thing at work and replace it with a higher value thing.

Yes, that’s a good thing to do. It is an improvement. But not the right kind of improvement. What is the end state, if you repeat the cycle again and again? is that where you want to be? A perfectly efficient machine doing . . . what? Why?

Add. How about adding nothing? Add empty space. You can’t have a vacuum in time and in activity—you’re always doing something. So instead of improving the way you have meetings or getting better software or scheduling your life better or publishing more better stuff, insert leisure.

This will put you on a different path with a different outcome. What it is, I don’t know. Will it be a “better” path?

Well, at least it will be less frenetic. Less “find a nail, pound a nail” productive. More internal peace and quiet.

Into action? What do I subtract?

By the way. Today is day 73 and there are 9 of us left out of a starting cohort of 159.

I am awake. It’s dark, because the clock moved while I was asleep. Lights on and we are at full-speed brain. Ugh.

Falling behind. That’s my feeling. Falling behind as in more things piling up than I get done in a day. Ugh.

No new stuff. Back to this philosophy. Just do old stuff. One thing at at time until it’s done. That’s how to reduce inventory.

And . . . stuff handed off to others to do so I don’t have to do it.

I’m thrown off emotional balance easily by the overload.

I’m at least working on my big project due March 31. That’s good.

But what to take out of this? It’s the usual “you know what to do, so do it” dose of reality. Add back the reading and you’re good to go.

Today’s episode starts with coffee at dawn.

Today’s episode is not another in the continuing saga. Today is a brand new show. Come along as we explore the Reality Laughs Show! Thing happen. Hilarity ensues.

What if I look at everything in my life as monocausal? One cause explains all outcomes. Climate change is the current culprit du jour systemwide, but what about me as a human? Do I look at my life through Monocausal Goggles?

Mindset. Grit. You can do anything, given enough time and effort. That kind of stuff. While I don’t believe it to be really monocausal, I often behave that way, excluding other points of view.

It’s like this. Pretend I always bet on red. I get the expected results. I get more and more refined in my Theory of Red. Same results. The wheel doesn’t care about my theory.

The appropriate thing to do is question the theory.

Become a “bet on black” practitioner. 😏 I joke, but it’s a decent breakout move.

Better is to choose a different strategy entirely. Bet on a number. Or (gasp) leave the roulette table entirely.

All I’m saying is I think I’m a highly refined theoretician and practitioner of “bet on the red.” It’s time to break out and test some other ways of looking at life.

What reflexive attitudes and behaviors do I have which are hidden methods I have developed for coping with the world?

This is a @Visakanv idea: destructive behaviors as ways of coping with inner stuff. In his case, smoking.

In my case, I have banished one equivalent destructive habit, but what subtle, seemingly normal behaviors do I have that are supporting mechanisms to help me get through the day but otherwise counterproductive.

I am back to controlling what goes into my mind. Well, somewhat.

Twitter is gone. I simply deleted the app. Even with blocking and muting (of both people and words) I could feel the gravitational pull. At best, it was a time suck. Yes, there is a socialization factor. No, net net it’s not worth it.

Freedom is blazing as soon as I wake up. All of the usual sites are blocked. This breaks the reflexive habits of touring the usual places for the usual stimulus to feel the usual feelings. Or even just break the reflexive patterns.

Spotify is purged. Rachmaninov, Allegri, Palestrina etc. stay. The rest of the playlists and favorites are gone. Even humming a snippet of a song that I deleted evokes the feeling that I want to banish: a sort of settling into a depressive, inert state of mind.

Let’s see how this works.

Podcasts. For the moment they continue, though not in firehose mode. My brain needs quiet time.

Awake at 4 am, feeling well-rested. This is improvement.

Time for coffee and writing. First this, then the other writing project.

The laststanding.app site counts 10 of us still on course since January 1. starting cohort: 159. I am one of the 10. Frankly, that’s why I keep writing every day. I would otherwise lose interest.

This has revealed something interesting, unexpected, and welcome. It’s the Tiny Habits game, sure. That made the daily habit attainable. But the competitive aspect is what keeps me in the game. Competition with self would not have worked.

Also checking in. The sads are still here but not as oppressive. Sleep helps. The sinus infection going away helps. The other external conditions still exist. The internal conditions? If I’m operating on the “within my control, not within my control” point of view, that’s something to be examined.

Write for five minute. That is the task I have set for myself. What about? Don’t know and don’t care. The objective was write five minutes every day and publish publicly every day. For a while the “publish” part was Twitter but I’ve nuked the app from my phone as being net negative. So now publishing is here.

I don’t want to write about what I really want to write about because this is a public-facing site. And I need to get the noise out of my head.

And what I really want to write is that I’m sad.

And I’m making excuses for it: jet lagged, recovering from a sinus infection, all externals. Otherwise everything is fine, right? Well, maybe not. Stiff upper lip and all that. I’m sad, feeling inadequate and unskilled, and unclear how to feel otherwise.

One thing I know from experience: it’s bad news to be thinking and talking to myself using “always” and “never.” Doomsday mentality. Better to get small. Do an actual thing instead of think. A small thing.

I have been awake since 3 am. Get up and get some breakfast.

Don’t forget freedom.to as an aid to sanity.

How do you keep moving? Well, first by cutting out the crap that has slowly re-entered your life. Twitter. Gone from the phone. What else must go?

Second. It’s always darkest before dawn. And “before dawn” is my life at the moment. Jet lag means my body clock is off and I’m awake at 3 am. So don’t take anything too seriously right now.

Third. What works? Keep doing that. If you stop doing that, start doing it again. So . . . what works? Well, Palestrina and Allegri rather than Thievery Corporation, as a start. Inject uplift.

Fourth. Humans. More of them. Optimize for that. But how?