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The Ramblings: Back on the treadder edition

Just trying to make it a habit to write daily. I’ve bombed Ship 30 for 30 again but there’s always the next cohort to give it a shot. Why write elsewhere when I have a sweet sweet empty void of my own right here?

Some lessons from the week.

  • Maybe you don’t have to work out for 90 minutes before writing: In Sean Anthony’s video about “The Golden Hour of Money” he talks about figuring out his morning routine. Which does mean going through a bunch of other routines and learning what doesn’t work. Movement is good, but a few minutes stretching gets the blood flowing enough. The more important piece is getting a focused block of writing in. For him, it’s a daily email. For you, it might be working on your novel, a video script, a blog post, etc.
  • Tim Ferriss is still the best at asking what the audience wants to ask: He went ahead and asked Cal Newport about his routine from as big as the environment down tot he 0.5mm Uni hall micro pen.

Because even if you say museum, if you’re in a city, there are multiple museums you could choose. So how did you choose a particular place? And then when you are working on some larger problem or project, what does that actually look like? Is it just pen and paper? Is it laptop where you’ve knocked out the Wi-Fi? If you could give maybe one or two real-world examples, that would be super helpful.

  • One physical notebook trick for both of them: each new book they write gets a dedicated notebook. It’s similar to Twyla Tharp keeping new dance routine contents in a banker’s box. Each project gets a box.
  • Tiago Forte points out that maybe you don’t want your note taking system to work like a brain: Our brains can be distracting for a reason. One mistake you’ll see following Evernote, Roam, Notion, etc. is that some people advocate as if there’s only one solution and that they’ve found it. (That goes for plenty of things beyond note taking apps, of course.) Ali Abdaal has returned to simple Apple Notes. Tiago is back to Evernote. David Perell still uses Evernote in his process. And many people get plenty done with Google Docs. Simplicity on the other side of complexity. (If I were writing this in a zettelskan I would write that I heard that phrase from Ali Abdaal.)
  • Speaking of, he did a webinar with David Perell leading into the next Write of Passage cohort. His main takeaway from when he took Write of Passage? POP writing. Remember: Powerful, observational, playful.

Alright enough rambling for today. (Aka I hit 45 mins on the treadmill.)

Lessons from Draymond Green (The Old Man and the Three)

Some lessons from Draymond Green on JJ Redick’s “Old Man and the Three”

  • Your window isn’t closed: Okay this is more of a timing thing, but he admits to JJ Redick that he did think that the championship window closed. Klay has a major injury and you know that KD’s going to leave. You have a terrible losing season.
  • You can be among the best in the world and not love what you’re doing: Draymond talks about how few people understand and love basketball in the NBA. (And he mentions Durant just absolutely loves basketball. He’ll watch 10 year olds play.)
  • Behind Ja’s highlights are instincts showing high basketball IQ: We all love seeing Ja’s game winners and dunks. Even his missed dunks are great. But Draymond talks about how Ja is showing really high basketball IQ in how he plays.
  • Clippers were front runners (but not JJ Redick): If we hit them in the mouth, they’ll fold. He doesn’t name people, but he does say JJ was one of the people who wouldn’t fold in those circumstances.
  • Modern player empowerment began with The Decision: LeBron and team might’ve done some things differently with the announcement, but the decision to join the Heat was a good one. Players realized the negotiation power they have and the platforms that they have.

Arnold gave up his girl, what will you give up?

In “Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder”, Arnold (Schwarzenegger, if you didn’t guess by now) talks about meeting someone really special.

Then in 1969 I met a girl who changed my thinking. Her name was Barbara; she was a waitress in Zuckie’s in Santa Monica, working there during the summer to help pay for schooling at San Diego State. I asked her out and was impressed immediately by something I felt about her, something that was different from most of the girls I had been dating. I could describe it as an inner warmth, the wholesomeness one associates with a hometown girl.

But not special enough:

“Gradually a conflict grew up in our relationship. Basically it came down to this: she was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary, solid life, and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of ordinary life. She had thought I would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and level off. But that’s a concept that has no place in my thinking. For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.” — Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger – https://a.co/6lZsPy1

A little harsh, and it’s definitely a case of “not special enough… for that point in his life”. He’s the best bodybuilder in history and is about to go shift the movie industry with a few other super jacked action stars.

A couple questions that can be helpful:

(1) What do you want right now?
(2) What will you sacrifice for that thing? (And are you willing to make that sacrifice?)

Yes, I do want to drop 10 pounds. What do I have to sacrifice?

More than just time, because I was already carving the time out for workouts.

Not sleep, because that will go counter to the goal, especially when framed in terms of overall health and sustainability.

The joy of food. Yes that’s one thing. So I need to remind myself that that particular joy is fleeting.

The social connection of shared meals. This is a big thing where my beliefs are wired wrong. I can still join in on social meals. I don’t need to eat the most. Finishing the remaining food at the bottom of the container doesn’t make the friendship deeper or bring the money back.

I’m also past the time in life where most of my friends are going out every weekend. So I kind of have it easy!

Being consistently hungry in this goal means literally being consistently hungry and being okay with that feeling.

Info Diet (Jan 26, 2022): Ali Abdaal, Oliver Burkeman, and “The More You Do The Better You Feel”

Check out the full notes for “The More You Do the Better You Feel” by David Parker

Okay just popping the editor open and writing. Back to basics. Kindle notes on the left. WordPress editor on the right.

Instead of having a to-do list that, you take a blank page, write one thing to work on, finish it, cross it off, then write the next thing that you’ll work on. I’m still reading the book but I jumped around to find a description of the technique. From “The More You Do The Better You Feel”, the “Just one thing” method:

You work on the task immediately after writing it down. And these tasks can be super easy. (Example from the book: “Put DVD away”.) In Stephen Curry’s MasterClass, he talks about how he doesn’t come into the practice gym and start bombing threes. He starts with lay-ups and works his way out. The J.O.T. method is like getting right back next to the hoop and building your confidence back up. If you’re a well oiled productivity machine, you don’t need to resort to the J.O.T. method. But if you’ve found yourself completely distracted for days on end, start feeling bad about how little you’re getting done, then ending up more distracted because you’re feeling bad… …time for lay-ups. Some other things that this could help with:

  • You can skip prioritizing and overthinking things that you need to do. Take care of that when you’ve built up a little confidence.
  • You can get some reps in with seeing how short or long things take. One of the all-too-familiar scenarios he describes is choosing to go out and buy disposable plates and utensils because it’s easier than washing dishes. This takes 40 minutes. Then—you do eventually have to wash the dishes—he sees that it takes much less time than expected.

Anyway. Listen to Ali Abdaal and Oliver Burkeman, then go read “The More You Do the Better You Feel” to get some ideas for becoming productive again, then come back to “Four Thousand Hours” to remind yourself that productivity isn’t the ultimate goal. (So you don’t end up feeling too badly when you’re in an unproductive phase.)

Maker’s schedule, manag–oh shoot I should check this other tab out

“Graham embraced this insight and created a company culture at Y Combinator that now runs completely on a maker’s schedule. All meetings get clustered at the end of the day. To experience extraordinary results, be a maker in the morning and a manager in the afternoon. Your goal is “ONE and done.” But if you don’t time block each day to do your ONE Thing, your ONE Thing won’t become a done thing.” – “The One Thing” by Gary Keller

I’ll share something from Deep Work as well, because I’ve been particularly distracted lately. Here he describes someone adjusting their environment to get those beautiful beautiful maker hours in:

A newfound devotee of deep work, he rented an apartment across the street from his office, allowing him to show up early in the morning before anyone else arrived and work without distraction. “On good days, I can get in four hours of focus before the first meeting,” he told me. “Then maybe another three to four hours in the afternoon. And I do mean ‘focus’: no e-mail, no Hacker News [a website popular among tech types], just programming.” Deep Work by Cal Newport

You might not have the perfect environment or schedule for this, but it’s worth working toward.

That said, Polina Marinova recently wrote about the opposite: sometimes life is truly hectic and you just might need to learn to type with one hand for hours on end.

But here’s the shocking answer to the question above: I do have time to write because I make time to write. I work in 2- to 3-hour spurts and write one-handed on my phone in the middle of the night as I feed the baby. (Fun fact: This exact paragraph was written at 3:18 a.m.)

No matter how many times I come across this schedule advice, I check my phone first thing in the morning and don’t start making until maybe right before I’m supposed to sleep.

I’m writing this on the treadmill after a PM workout.

Trying to make it work.

Course Notes (Jan 19, 2022): Credibility as a Beginner, Buy Carrots, Write+Meditate+Run

Some notes as I go through modules of various courses out of order. If I’m not actively applying things, I can at least try to summarize ideas for others (including my future self).

  • Building credibility as a beginner (Ship 30 for 30): A lot of people get hung up on their lack of expertise in an area that they want to write in. Yes, you should study masters in whatever field it is to learn what they do—Dickie Bush talks about wanting to write about writing so he studied successful copywriters and bloggers. Combine that with stories about what you’ve recently done as a beginner. Dickie would write about starting his writing habit. (Shaan Puri has a good phrase for this: be a curious novice.)
  • Buy those carrots (Matt D’Avella’s Master YouTube): He talks about going the extra mile for his videos. And it’s not surprising since he’s known for the quality of his videos. The example he shares is heading to the grocery store to buy carrots specifically to use in a video. It’s a pretty small thing—anyone could do it really. But few people actually do. They’ll just stick to using things around their house. Take the extra step: buy the carrots.
  • Write, meditate, run (Captain Sinbad’s course): Find some activities that you can always return to. For Captain Sinbad, he knows he’s always able to return to writing, meditation, and running. If he hits a creative block, he knows he probably isn’t writing enough (at one point his goal was 2 hours of writing every day). If his mind and body aren’t quite in the right place, he can choose deliberate stillness (meditation) or deliberate movement (running). This combination keeps him centered.

As for me, I can always write 3 notes from courses, books, or podcasts. So this just might be my sort of daily practice. Maybe it’ll add up.