Active Recall!

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Atomic Habits, Chrono Trigger, and making time your ally or enemy

Chrono Trigger used time travel really well so that your actions in the past affect the world in the present and future.

Compared to today’s huge open world games and MMOs with no fixed narrative, though, Chrono Trigger is actually pretty linear. Some of the choices actually do matter, though.

Magus is initially presented as one of the main villains in the game. Depending on your actions, you kill him or he joins you as one of the good guys.

Magus came to mind after reading this passage in Atomic Habits:

Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.

Like Magus, time will be your ally or your enemy.

However you define success, you’ll get there based on your habits over time. We’re not in Chrono Trigger. You can’t change the progression of time, but you can change your habits.

The tiny things compound over time. That goes for tiny good things and tiny bad things. If you want to make a big change, there’s a tiny chance that you can make a giant change overnight. Otherwise it’ll be that tiny positive change over and over. Time becomes your ally and works in your favor.

Another great book about small things is The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson. While we often think about good and bad habits, what if you just stay neutral? Stay on a level course. The Slight Edge emphasizes that stagnation over time can end up negative:

You know what you need to do to stay healthy and feel fit and live a long life. Get your heart rate up, a little over normal, for twenty minutes, three times a week. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. And it’s easy to do.

But it’s also easy not to do. And if you don’t do it today, or tomorrow, or the next day, you won’t suddenly drop dead, and you won’t suddenly put on twenty pounds, and you won’t suddenly lose all your muscle tone.

The next time you face a small choice, imagine that choice propagated over weeks and years. How does that affect your decision?

63: “Atomic Habits”

14:02 — Topical three
18:48 — Book of the week intro
21:45 — 4 step to building good habits and breaking bad habits
29:40 — Stop eating bad food, start working out and vlogging

Links

– Atomic Habits (James Clear, Amazon)

– Better Than Before (Gretchen Rubin, Amazon)

– The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg, Amazon)

Also check out this video I made about Atomic Habits:

Other posts about Atomic Habits:

http://active-recall.com/atomic-habits-initial-impressions/

http://active-recall.com/end-bad-habits/

http://active-recall.com/focus-on-two-minutes/

Other related episodes:

“Better Than Before”: http://active-recall.com/better-than-before/

Build good habits: http://active-recall.com/build-good-habits/

Resolutions from last year: http://active-recall.com/resolutions/

How to follow-through on projects (re-frame, remove reasons, and start moving)

Dr. Bernard Roth was on The Science of Success (Feeling Stuck? This One Question Will Create The Change You Need with Dr. Bernard Roth).

I really enjoyed the framework discussed throughout the episode for solving problems of all sorts.

  • First, recognize there’s a good chance that the problem isn’t actually the problem — You might be able to solve an adjacent problem or something at a different level so that the problem disappears. You might think work is causing most of your stress but it might be that you actually aren’t sleeping enough and are less effective at work as a result (which then leads to underperforming and stress).
  • Ask what this will open up (but don’t go too far up the chain) — You can start looking at what solving this problem would open up for you. Then what would happen if the next level was solved as well? But you don’t want to go so high up this chain to where you’re considering your existence.
  • Don’t let B.S. reasons get in the way — Everyone has reasons for everything. Is traffic the reason you were late or is it that you budgeted enough time to arrive exactly on the dot if there’s absolutely zero traffic? (George Lucas talks about not getting into a film school class but making films anyway while his friends just complained they couldn’t make films because they didn’t get into that class.)
  • Operate from a place of doing — I’ve heard this described in Designing Your Life as “bias to action”. You have to do things and see how they go. If you’re planning your year, the goals you come up with in 20 minutes are probably good enough to get moving on. There’s no need to spend 8 hours polishing them at this point. You’ll be better moving forward and gathering more information. Get moving.

The one connection I have here is the book Are Your Lights On? It’s a bunch of stories (a few pages each) that demonstrate some aspect of business. The book is really helpful for re-framing problems and identifying what the real problems are.

You don’t need two separate signs to let drivers know the hours when they should turn their lights on and off. All you need to do is remind the driver to check their lights—they’ll know whether they should be off or on but they just need the nudge.

Trace, freehand, and then draw from memory

I wanted to share some notes to go with this drawing I posted a few minutes ago.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Brg2mGkHaR9/

I’ve been meaning to post this description and a quote from it ever since walking by it at The Met:

In his only statement on drawing practices published during his lifetime, Delacroix endorsed a three-step pedagogical method: beginning with tracing, progressing to freehand copying, and then drawing from memory.

Happy to repost anything that makes me feel better about drawing other drawings. I also always find it interesting when copywriters suggest copying old sales letters longhand to learn and practice.

Play pick-up basketball, sell your company to Amazon for $13 billion

You’re play basketball with some friends regularly. You find out one of them has money and is into healthy food. Well, you happen to run a health food store. He invests. Fast forward a few decades and you’re selling your company to Amazon for $13 billion.

You might be John Mackey. He tells some early investment stories on the How I Built This with Guy Raz: “Whole Foods Market: John Mackey”

Here’s John Mackey (at 13:30):

I began to hustle anybody I knew that had money. I’d already… people that knew people that I met. There was a guy I was playing basketball with. One day we’d finished playing pick-up basketball and he got into like a BMW and drove off. He was the same age as I was and I said, “Wow what does Jay do?” And they said Jay doesn’t do anything. Jay’s a millionaire, he inherited a bunch of money from his parents.

Well, I gave Jay a call the next day. It just turned out that Jay had had kind of his own food consciousness awakening and started shopping at Safer Way, he loved Safer Way. And Jay said he would put $50,000 in.

I was like, “Wow, okay.” I went back to our board and I said, “I’ve got a guy that’s gonna put $50,000 in.” They were in shock. Several of them decided they wanted to kick more money in as well.

I enjoy hearing these moments of luck

Yes, you make your own luck and all of that:

  • He had to be into basketball
  • He had to have a good enough reputation (friendly, smart, whatever combination it is) that the guy would want to do business with him
  • He had to have a store to invest in in the first place

But it’s still luck:

  • He had to play basketball with this group that happened to have a millionaire in it
  • That guy happened to be into health foods in that period of time

Pairs well with…

This story reminded me of Ryan Holiday’s “Ego is the Enemy”:

With success comes the temptation to tell oneself a story, to round off the edges, to cut out your lucky breaks and add a certain mythology to it all. You know, that arcing narrative of Herculean struggle for greatness against all odds: sleeping on the floor, being disowned by my parents, suffering for my ambition. It’s a type of storytelling in which eventually your talent becomes your identity and your accomplishments become your worth.

Here’s a formula for keeping ego in check.

  1. When planning, plan to work hard (maybe some luck will fall your way)
  2. When reflecting on success, you’ll probably be quick to credit your hard work so remember to be grateful for the lucky moments

Jason Fried: No one should listen to me about how to start a business

Chase Jarvis had Jason Fried on his podcast recently: “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work With Jason Fried” (iTunes, Google Play)

I really enjoyed the self awareness Jason Fried shows when he talks about advice (at 46:30):

I want to say one other thing about this, because part of me doesn’t like what I’m saying. Because I don’t think it’s fair. In that—I shouldn’t be giving a 23-year-old advice, because I’m 44. It’s too far. I’m too far removed. Like I don’t think I should actually be… no one should listen to me about how to start a business. I haven’t started a business for 20 years.

I can talk about how to run a business. I can talk about how to build a profitable business. And how to hire people and how to market and how to build products, how to make decisions… because that’s what I do everyday.

But I haven’t started a business for 20 years. I haven’t been 23 for 20 years.

So I kind of think advice has an expiration date. It certainly does. If you’re starting a business, you’re probably better off talking to someone who just started one six months ago. I don’t care if they’ve made it or they haven’t or they don’t know yet. Doesn’t matter. But they’re much closer to the thing.

A couple other parts I enjoyed

  • Good ambition would be to aim to get to where you enjoy every day. Fried doesn’t like the idea of ambition being getting your name on a building, having the biggest team, and working the most hours. Every single day won’t be good, but it’s something to aim for.
  • Likes Gary Vaynerchuk even if he disagrees with some of his message. Fried acknowledges that they have completely different views on amount of time spent working. Basecamp leans toward 40 hours a week being enough to run a successful business. Gary V, of course, works all the time, takes pride in it, and has built a huge audience around that message. What I like is that Fried acknowledges that each message might work for some people and not for others. As always: it depends1.

I’ll end with this note from Jason Fried and DHH’s book, “It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy At Work” (Check out some notes I wrote about it here.)

We decided that if the good old days were so good, we’d do our best to simply settle there. Maintain a sustainable, manageable size. We’d still grow, but slowly and in control. We’d stay in the good days—no need to call them old anymore.

Aim for the good days and stay there when you find them.