Author: Reality Laughs

“Yes, yes, never mind that,” he said, waving me away. “But have you ever considered, what’s the assumption that someone makes if they say they have no talent?”

I kept quiet.

“It means that they think their problem is technical.They believe they do not have the skills.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And so I thought that your problem was technical! I trained you as if your problem was technical. But it wasn’t! No matter what I taught you, you didn’t seem to improve. Your problem is a matter of will, not a matter of skill. I taught you everything you needed to know in the first two months, but you just didn’t seem to apply it! You were not willing to apply it.”

https://commoncog.com/mental-strength-judo-life/

Memo to self. “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m not good enough” masks an underlying assumption and uncovering that assumption—“I’m not willing to will my way forward”—is essential to progress.

I wonder if the inverse also is true. The self-talk of “I’m a fart in a windstorm” masking some deeper truth?

Also true: “I’m not talented enough”. But that’s a realization you get after you have applied extreme will and still have not reached your goal.

It’s time to stop learning the new. Mastery does not come from learning new things. Mastery comes from returning to basic principles and mastering them even more — which causes the new.

This is a “wet roads cause rain” problem.

I like the new. The shiny. The new software that will suddenly make everything better. The new best-seller that will of course have that blinding flash of insight that makes all the difference and transforms my life.

No.

If you are having trouble performing to the highest standards, it is not a signal that you lack sufficient knowledge or the latest tools. It is a signal that you do not have sufficient mastery over the applicable basic principles.

Don’t worry so much about latest developments. Study the basics. Learn, teach, and by doing so learn again.

As usual this is an exhortation to self.

1981 Berliner Philharmoniker recording, Herbert von Karajan conducting.

“By their deeds you will know them. Does a man gather grapes from thorns or figs from briars?”

Matthew 7:16

What am I doing?

Memo to self: STFU. Just do.

Get as close to unmediated truth as possible. Not interpreted. Not collated. Not curated for me. This music playing. Curated. This carpet. Designed. That food. Pre-decided by bureaucrats. Not that there is anything wrong with it, except it’s all a facsimile of what someone thought would be good.

Is. Just look for what is.

• Security opens for business at 4:00 a.m.
• Delta Skyclub in T3 opens for business at 4:15 a.m.
• Take care of your state of mind at 4:00 a.m. Life is not as bleak and pointless as it appears to be at that time of day, on little sleep and no food.
• So many of us, stone-faced, trudging towards the gates. Where are you going?
• Why? No, really — why?
• I do not have a good answer to that.
• Atlanta.
• Why?
• Conference.
• Why?
• Learn stuff, I hope.
• Why?
• Do a thing I better — a thing I don’t really like doing.
• Why?

There is a reason for first class seats, Skyclubs, fancy hotels to exist. It’s to entice you to do things you don’t want to do. To keep your soul quiet.

Why?

The LRS daily practice chain breaks and then the daily posting chain breaks.

Again, it’s before dawn. I had a rocky sleep night, including the dog whining to get outside at 3 am for (I guess—I didn’t check) biological imperatives. The rocky sleep, I suspect, is in part from the mid-afternoon nap on Sunday.

Today is the day to be methodical. What is my most important thing? It’s on the calendar now. What is the second most important thing? Research the email question yesterday. What is the third most important thing? Take action based on the answer discovered for the email—there are probably two. What is the fourth most important thing? Don’t know—there might not be time for them.

During the day, do not add to the project list. Keep the project list open on the right monitor.

The last day.

Sleep as usual is the trade-off item for me. I missed the cut-off time last night because I was doing most important work and was on a roll — so I kept going.

I was doing MIW late in the day because it was a busy day at work and I didn’t slot my normal 100 minutes into the front end of the day.

And (the real reason) I had a chunk of time that I used to start next week’s newsletter instead of devoting the time to MIW (the videos).

So it’s a cascading effect of a full day and poor priority handling when the opportunity came up. And all of that culminates with “late to bed” and of course that has a cascading effect on the next day.

In related (to MIW) news: housekeeping matters. I am keeping all of my files and resources in a semi-well organized folder. I am slowly creating a standard system for developing webcasts.

I read a mini biography of Hergé yesterday (author of the Tintin stories) and how he burned out from overwork, then built Hergé Studios with artists doing the time-consuming work, freeing him to conceive stories and ideas. Inspiring. I’m slowly trying to get that system assembled piecemeal around me—not successfully, so far. Meaning: I cannot count on reliable execution, even at the basic levels.

What I am doing, by trial and error, is this:

• Create a separate identity with a throwaway Gmail account.
• Set up a dedicated free Notion account to organize my thoughts, plans, templates, etc. there. Obsidian turned out to be a mess for me.
• Data files for now reside on my laptop. I do not like the GDrive aesthetic experience.
• Slowly and methodically I am finding resources I need: websites and email newsletters right now. The only topic I am deliberately seeking is “how to do email newsletter.” Other tangential stuff I will grab opportunistically, but I’m only looking for one thing.
• Fake email address or iCloud hide my email used to get newsletters.
• NetNewsWire used for RSS. Toying with Readwise Reader too because how do I get a blog post out of RSS and into Notion? This is a technical problem I have not yet solved: newsletter or web stuff into Notion.
• Notion has the Plan Initiation Document and a high level project plan under development.
• I do not have a good method of capturing product I have produced for re-use and repurposing.

The immediate goal is “build the subscriber numbers for the email newsletter.”

Ok. Time to sit with my laptop and put in the MIW.

Early to bed, early to rise. I would love to sleep longer—I never feel completely rested. Ah well.

Friday and it’s showtime today: webcast day.

Let’s reflect on the Pentathlon. 100 min per day MIW gets things done. It also sucks up a big chunk of the day. It is two 30-minute cycles with a 10 minute break in between.

I wonder if I can set up the early to bed arrangement and get up early, let’s say 5 am. I have a workspace set up. Biology, feed the dog, some water and some coffee and I can get an hour + of quiet work before the house starts to stir.

That means early to bed.

It’s a plan worth developing.

And in other news . . .

And on the other hand . . .

It’s time to write the newsletter today. The MIW routine is getting me ahead of the curve for the videos but I have to catch up on the newsletter. And get ahead. I’m not enjoying the JIT lifestyle.

In a perfect world, Fairy Godmother style, poof!

How does “poof” happen?

• List of topics so I don’t go through weekly Phineas and Ferb moments
• 500-600 words instead of 2,000 – 2,500
• Scheduled time to write, à la MIW
• How to write has no friction, meaning all my tools and resources are immediately at hand

I have a stand-alone Notion instance and a folder on my phone with the tools for the big project (not well-executed yet but good idea). The newsletter is part of that project. The resources and plans should go there. With a folder on my laptop for the companion files—drafts and finished product, resources used, graphics created. That is how I’m handling the webcasts.

Boom done. The five minutes a day writing process didn’t pay off with a blinding insight, just a pragmatic suggestion from the brain. Thanks you, brain.

Today is an all-target day. I’m going to hit everything. Boom.

The discipline of a “get to bed by 10 pm, lights out” deadline is useful to me. I would otherwise futz around and go lights-out later. I have a simple brain that needs simple instructions.

There is a parallel between having good taste and being good at a job such as mine, I’m starting to see. It’s not immediately obvious, because mine is a technical occupation, relying on a mental bank of decades of technical experience and constant study.

But there is a distinction between a technician and what I do (he said, modestly and humbly). 🙃 it’s the distinction between a woman who believes that buying Gucci creates style and a woman who assembles a wardrobe around items, regardless of brand, that are Good.

I am not exactly how to articulate this yet but it is part mastery (and self-awareness, for example, of knowing why an old Jaguar is beautiful and a modern Camry merely pedestrian, as if sketched by a seventh-grade boy, bored in math class). Hell, even a modern Jaguar is better than a modern Camry, though vastly inferior to its forebears. The bloodline has been diluted by successive generations of interlopers marrying into the family.

Anyway. It’s a useful exercise to self-reflect and ask self, “Self, explain to me why this is Good. Deeply good.” Grasping to find the words to explain the inexplicable is a worthwhile discipline in the same way that training for the half-marathon is worthwhile: self-discovery.

And most important, when you find Good, seize it and treasure it. Do not accept its cheaper imitation, the OK. Do not compromise. Be opinionated, unapologetically.

Vampires slink away when confronted with the brandished cross.