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Now, today, is a day that I do not start anything new. Everything I do today is aimed at completing a task, a project, a thought.

Get momentum and don’t lose it, capture territory and don’t let it go, establish position and maintain it, etc.

That’s my aim, and to do it, here is my plan.

Practically speaking, this means a rolling list of open loops where I can establish progress. It means a method of writing down where I am so I don’t have to do the same thing again. “Oh yeah, where was I?” It means giving work to others. It means saying no.

Of all of those nice platitudes, the one I will implement today is “get it to a good resting point where you can’t go any further and write down what you know and where you think you need to go next.”

Use a Google Doc. Not Word. (That is an arbitrary choice that I made simply because it is “not wrong”. Rather than look for “best choice” look for a “not wrong” choice when making a decision. This is an extension of the Munger concept “don’t be stupid” to getting things done.)

Paper is an example of wrong. Paper is good (really good) for creativity and thinking but not so good for tracking and production.

End of day objective: Google document with only the things I worked on today. Brief status and what to do next recorded. Excellent documentation in the file for everyone to see.

Let’s go. The family awakens.

Your perception is not reality.

To everyone else, you are a stranger at best.

“The world is providing input like a pitching machine. It doesn’t love you, it doesn’t hate you, it’s just pitching. But you have to be ready to stand there and take the pitches, and that to me is a measure of how much reality do you accept. The longer the latency, the longer the pause before you can start responding, the less acceptance of reality there is.” -William Aprill

Ballistic Radio podcast for August 5, 2020

A good analogy about reality.

Stand there and swing. Hit or miss, depending.

Or stand there right in front of the pitching machine and take a beating.

Question your default actions, that is. And this must start with awareness of your default thinking and actions.

How to do this?

For most people.

But frustration and failure and attitudes. I am frustrated. I judge this event to be a failure.

Assuming that I am not one of those weird people who say “yeah, pain, bring it on!” how do I reframe my perspective and use the same events as energy sources to redouble my efforts? Ju-jitsu in other words.

Somewhere in here is understanding the crawl walk run process and understanding and liking being on that journey.

Think of physics and ammunition. Higher mass in the bullet vs velocity of the bullet is the trade-off.

What’s the trade-off in life? I think mobility and optimizing for mobility (being agile if you like that word) is a useful starting strategy. Later, you can switch to mass.

Be a ninja. Then buy the tanks later when ninja tactics are unsuitable.

How will you act?

Episode 23 of Ultraworking. Episode 1 of Warrior Poet’s podcast.

Consider first the idea from Ultraworking. Ray Dalio says if you are an owner you have to build systems full of people. You are one of those people. Think of yourself as You1 doing the work and You2 bring the outside observer and judge of You1’s performance.

Using this metric, You2 finds many shortcomings in You1’s performance, where “you” is me.

Then the idea of Decision Zombies for Warrior Poet. Is You2 a zombie favoring intellectual completeness and risk avoidance over action?

Survey says “yep”.

So do it.

Edit (later): done. Much relief. Why do I still avoid certain situations? Have I not learned that showing up and telling the truth is liberating? It has happened so many times that you’d think I’d change behavior. Nope, not yet.