I am not required to do something just because the opportunity presents itself to me.
This thought is brought to you courtesy of a breakfast buffet at my hotel. I could sit here for an hour gorging myself: infinite everything is here to eat.
Nope. Have a final cup of coffee and relax. There is enough.
I’m in Singapore, having breakfast. My son sent me a photo of the back of his car—he successfully navigated the DMVs of two states and moved his car registration to where he lives now. New plates!
This made me all teary-eyed. It’s the connection across the world to someone I love. It’s watching a child successful as an adult.
And don’t take that wrong. “New license plates, what’s the big deal?” Nah. He’s extremely capable. This is a no big deal for him.
But! It’s the 10,000 little things that matter.
For him, dealing with the DMV and insurance and not having a screwdriver handy and all of the impediments between him and a goal. These are adult life skills, as essential as remembering to eat.
For me, the utter joy of watching the bird leave the nest and start to soar, higher and higher.
The little things matter. I’m writing this to remind myself—just as I write all this stuff here to remember them. Funny, though. I haven’t gone back to read my old stuff. 😀 That’s the point, innit? Write to remember. Read what I wrote to re-remember.
Do the little things. Make the bed. Eat incrementally healthier than yesterday, if you can. Exercise a bit today. Always create negative entropy. The compounding effect of decades of incrementally directional actions is astonishing. In a good direction and a bad, self-destructive direction. I’m living proof of it.
World without end. Amen.
The Bed of Procrustes was a silly old story until about three minutes ago.
Now I see it differently. It describes mental filters. Biases.
When we wander around with preconceived ideas, we only see what we are looking for. Reality is much, much larger than our pea-sized brains.
So when we approach the world with our own conceptions about The Way Things Are, we fit the world into our own mental Procrustean Bed.
I want you to know that it’s okay if you only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is you.
Taken from @visakanv’s Friendly Ambitious Nerd, and he is quoting someone else who was quoting someone else.
Sometimes I look back at what I have accomplished and I think I only did 10% of what I set out to do.
For the most part, it was the 10% that mattered, though.
A reorientation thought: be prepared to shed 90% of goals in service of reaching the 10% that matters.
My standard operating procedure has been to overcommit, then fail to accomplish everything I overcommitted to.
Reorientation: fewer commitments, frequent pruning and discarding.
the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they don’t want. you might as well joke about the outcomes you do want
https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1394772091660951555?s=21&t=1hVT3DDwm9b7lvVky0kKgw
Everything you allow to remain in your head shapes your reality. Music. Jokes. Images. Conversations with others. Internal dialog with self.
Dick Whittington’s tale goes here as a reminder.
The customary English theatre story, adapted from the life of the real Richard Whittington, is that the young boy Dick Whittington was an unhappy apprentice running away from his master, and heard the tune ringing from the bell tower of the church of St Mary-le-Bow in London in 1392.[5] The penniless boy heard the bells seemingly saying to him “Turn again Dick Whittington”. Dick returned to London upon hearing the bells, where he went on to find his fortune and became the Lord Mayor of London four times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittington_chimes
No joke there, but he heard what he needed to hear and nurtured the thought in his heart. Those who have ears to hear, etc.
A story from 1392. Relevant today and as fresh as it was 600 years ago.
Music is closer to guided meditations than we want to admit. They’re selected to be invasive, then get stuck in our head and eventually merge with us. Make sure they’re the messages you want to be part of you
https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1468000584796020736?s=21&t=R9w-CkyReiAqLCycH8RiyA
Self-programming.
At the moment it’s Palestrina and Purcell.
I am asking myself “what job is my business’s website supposed to do?” I don’t have a good answer.
No one gives me good answers. They just want to build sites on WordPress. “Tell me what you want! I will make it for you!”
No. Fuck you. Tell me what I need.
The world cries out for someone who is more than an order-taker.
Out of desperation I have set up a meeting with a guy next week, just to ask the question “Why does this website even exist? And what should a website do?” No more.
He does not build websites, but I think he may have some wisdom. If not, on to the next person.
To write in concrete terms about what I’m actually doing in real life.
I fear that I’m launching in a dumb direction. dumb meaning it takes me away from where I want to go.
The usual shower thought arose this morning, unbidden. I am actively doing strategic planning for my business.
The planning is designed to build and grow the business with a definite aim: open up time for me to do one of the essential business functions that (a) I have a special talent for, and (b) I actually love doing.
I will, if I proceed down this path, be doing many things I don’t want to do. And in fact a foreshadowing occurred yesterday at the end of the business day. I got a question from an employee: “I know this process is in place for a damned good reason, but please let me ignore the process.”
(General, handwaving explanation here: I want nothing less than absolute excellence. This process achieves absolute excellence in a customer-facing transaction but requires us to absorb a bit of complexity in order to deliver bulletproof confidence to the customer. The request corrodes our confidence—and the customer’s confidence—in the completion of the task.)
Here is the shower thought: why do all of the work to create time in my life to do what I want to do? Why not just do it?
I am going to put myself in the firing line of 10,000 whiny requests for “Can I be lazy, boss?” No. 10,000 times no.
Answer. I have people relying on me. Employees. Including this employee who wants to undercut the process. Customers. I’m building the strategic plan to serve them, not me.
Why? Two reasons. One good, one bad. The good reason is the extreme self-satisfaction of doing Deeply Competent Work. The bad reason is money. I want money.
That’s about as specific as I will get here. Anything more will reveal my business, location, etc. And will identify people (employees and customers) too. They didn’t sign up for that.
I need an alt where I can rant. And a person IRL I can talk to.
From the bird place.
You got to entertain the dumb ideas. Otherwise they’ll never invite their smart friends over.
https://twitter.com/temujin9/status/1257797596845879296?s=21&t=uUMgzYoXtzZQcCaDlmHk3w