Author: Reality Laughs

Like the song, I’m starting to see benefits from the tiny action mentality.

First, let’s get books out of the way, and specifically two books: Tiny Habits and Atomic Habits. Useful? Sure. Marginally helpful? Probably.

But nothing happened until I started doing. Started taking action. The Last Resolution Standing game of write daily for five minutes and hit publish — that was the pivot for me. I’m doing that now, in fact.

This showed me it was possible for me to do something to install a new habit. And it showed me that I could do much more if only I planted a seed.

I write much more now. The extra is not published daily but it is published. I applied the tiny start, tiny regular action to running and last week I ran 13 miles.

In LRS there are now five of us. I will be the last one. What happens when they want to take down the website? Maybe they will just start 2024 and I will keep going.

Or I will keep my streak alive all by myself.

I’m training for a half marathon, starting from being able to run two miles.

My objective: finish and don’t walk any part of it. Time/speed is irrelevant.

My strategy: three runs a week, two shorter and one longer. Get the long run to 13 miles by increasing distance 1/2 a mile every week. Today I ran 5 miles. In 16 weeks I will be at race distance.

The short runs also get increased weekly. At the moment they are at 4 miles. I am not sure how I will maintain a sane differential between long and short runs. Right now they are indistinguishable.

Increase overall weekly distance by about 10% each week. I will allocate a bit more to the long run and split the rest between the two short runs.

All the complexity from YouTube is comical. I’m happy.

Now I know what empty nest means. My son came home for spring break and I just dropped him off at the airport. The house is quiet again.

Only a few more of these spring break visits and that’s it. The kids will be self-propelled and this — just me, the wife, and the dog — will be the normal state of affairs.

Seasons.

I’m sad. I don’t know why. This is the way life works, I guess. You want your kids to grow up to be healthy, happy, well-adjusted, self-sufficient adults. And thank God this has happened. Yet I’m sad.

I miss them. I miss the happy chaos of having kids around. I miss being the dad, being the caretaker, the protector, the guide. (To the extent that they listened or paid attention of course. But that’s how I saw myself and my responsibilities).

They share their locations with me and that makes me happy to know where they are. It’s a tiny thread of connection.

When facing a hard decision it helps to keep doing the footwork. What is real? What is imagined? That is what I am doing. Clarity seeps in, and fear creeps out.

The downside is not as big as feared and the upside of being rid of a dilemma is energizing.

Still. I’m not clear about what to do and when, exactly. But the broad strokes are there. Now it’s time to sit quietly and think. That is what I will do today.

The open time in my calendar (well it is not open time so much as a release from a burden of managing a situation that was neither profitable nor thrilling) opens up a new possibility. I can try the idea I have always wanted to try but always stopped three feet from paydirt.

I will sketch that out today. Light up the website with carrd.co or similar just to age the site and start SEO. Then start.

I need to make a hard decision. There are only two possible choices: do or do not do. One is hard (do) and the other is easy (do not do).

The hard choice is the correct one, the easy choice is not. The hard choice is short term painful and long term uncertain in its result. The easy choice just feels like malaise, like kicking the can down the road, like avoiding the inevitable.

It is impossible to predict what will happen in the future because of so many variables. Life in general adds so many different possibilities that I can’t adequately predict outcomes.

The “do” choice has a visible, concrete short term (and perhaps permanent) negative consequence that I fear. It has invisible consequences (what other people think about me) that I fear. It means short-term stress because one of the load-bearing walls has been removed from the building, metaphorically speaking.

Long term the “do” choice opens up time in which other long-term opportunities (possibly higher value) can be pursued because this lower-value activity has been eliminated.

Today I am going to email someone to get a fact. And call another person to get a different fact—someone who didn’t answer my email yet.

I have a week to make the decision. I favor the hard choice.

4.5 hours later . . .

Is when I woke up. Proximate case: internal. Solution tested: Tums. Let’s see if I can get back to sleep.

I need to eat well before bed time.

And I can’t mark off the daily task accomplished yet — LRS still thinks it is yesterday. So I will have to remember and check in later this morning.

No. The decisions are obvious and easy to make. I fear taking the necessary actions.

Awake for an hour already.

Not the place to be, but what are you going to do about it? The short answer is:

• Write for five minutes to keep the string going: then
• Go to the kitchen and have a few strawberries.

It’s surprising (or not) that the solution to angst is simple and instinctive; yummy fruit.

The angst is work-related as always and I’m slowly realizing that this is a hand-to-hand combat with self. What drives me forward and why do I seem to hit the same walls again and again?

Or are they the same walls? Am I repeating behavior and getting the same results or am I subtly changing and getting subtly different results over time?

This is not an introspective piece.

I scoped put a project that is too big to do. I describes what I want to achieve but has five years of work in it. So it will fail.

What will work, however, is a series of smaller projects based on the sub-components of the large blobby impossible project.

There are two items: consolidate position, then launch.

Within each there are many tasks, sub-projects.

Let’s start with “consolidate position.” I have a website that is imperfect, and a newsletter process that is imperfect. Let’s make both work better.

It is telling that I don’t even want to look at my own website. And I know from experience that it’s hard dealing with the software for the newsletter.

So first we are going to optimize for speed for both items.

And I am going to do the proper planning for each project to make it happen.

Another morning, awake before dawn.

Looking forward to the day: fairly open. It’s a rest day between runs. The only Zoom of the day is cancelled. Only a routine dental appointment sits on my calendar.

What to do with that open space? Let’s try the One Thing Theory. One project done to the maximum extent possible.

And Excellence. Put a bit of time into Excellence today. Rewatch the beginning of the video and grab the checklist. Set up a war room on the computer for the project I want for myself, and work through the steps.

I think it is the “agree on the objective” stage. There are people who want to help but I need clarity there, first.

This is an open day. The first of what I have been aiming at. There is an avalanche of stuff waiting for me, sure. But I have an opening, an aim, and some guidance (virtual mentorship, sure) on the next step.

This is what I’m looking for. The beginning of a change.