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If I do this for 100 days in a row am I better off or worse off?

Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. A quick visit to Google News, and . . . nausea.

Don’t use that pussy word, “misinformation.” Lies. These are lies.

Propaganda is perhaps a more precise description, but flawed. “Propaganda” is a loaded word and evokes Goebbels and Triumph of the Will. Better to avoid the baggage of that word and use a word that everyone, worldwide, since toddlerhood, has understood intimately and viscerally.

Liar. Lies.

I suppose you can infer some reality from the lies: listen not to what is said, as such, but note who is saying these words and the action or attitude they wish to encourage. Look especially for what they are not talking about.

Above all: know that these are lies. And the people writing these stories or blathering away on TV are all liars. And they know it, yet persist.

Chief among the liars? Google. Google News is a deliberately curated and organized firehose of lies.

The truth shall set you free? Equally, lies will enslave you. Refuse to be enslaved. Actively resist the liars.

Pause when agitated or doubtful. (Sad is a variant of this).

“Thy will, not mine, be done.”

Go down the mental checklist. H.A.L.T.? am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

For me, the H and the T are common. I push myself.

A and L are more subtle, and I have to watch for them and I’m not sure how to cope with them.

Especially being L in a crowd. Being around people is not an automatic antidote to L. It is too easy to feel alone amongst people—even people who know me well and love me.

The A. Too often directed at myself. Recriminations mostly. Self-flogging for some perceived insufficiency.

Today is not a good brain day. I believe it’s the T. Mental fatigue to be precise.

But here is a thought:

Ask yourself, “what good thing could happen if more people read my writing?”

After the Pentathlon and after the LRS, the “five minutes a day” abruptly stopped. There is a lesson in this: gentle, voluntary guardrails are useful to keep momentum.

However, the professional writing has continued. More interesting is the evolution of the professional publishing backend. That has started to move.

In any event, let’s get back to these little posts: pre-dawn (usually) coffee companions, with a contented, well-fed dog at my feet.

Posting something now. The trip to Atlanta threw me off schedule.

“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.