Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Weaving my finisher hat

I’ve got a decent thinking cap. I have a bunch of rough outlines for posts and videos. Some are even pretty thorough drafts.

Now I need the finisher’s hat.

Currently my input/output looks something like this.

Now, I don’t think it should be a full green bar of finished work. Imagining a world where every idea needs to be taken to completion reminds me of a line from The Wise Man’s Fear:

“To carry a sword your whole life, knowing it was only for killing …” She shook her head. “What would that do to a person’s mind? It would be a horrible thing.”

Writing isn’t war, a pen isn’t a sword, a laptop isn’t a bazooka. But what might it do to a person’s mind if they could only write things the entire world could see?

Still, I’d like it to be closer to this:

More finished work. Fewer unfinished drafts.

These two things will be helpful for me to keep in mind:

Taking ideas to outlines is good. With an outline I can see if there are connections to other things. I can see if some shape forms around the idea without much of a time investment. Outlines don’t create the guilt that an unfinished draft does.

Taking outlines to drafts and not finishing them is bad. There’s value in writing, but the reason I don’t finish is hardly ever “this doesn’t meet my standards” (because they’re low!) and usually more along the lines of “I don’t want to add links and revise this”. Let me just start a draft for another idea…

Assuming I have the same amount of time for all of this, it makes sense to stop making new rough drafts and finishing the existing ones. It also makes sense to try following these guidelines.

  • Make videos from posts and posts from videos. At some point in the past, I decided there was enough in the idea to make a video or a post about it. That’s a good starting point for taking it to the other medium. The assumption here is that value is created both ways. Starting with something written makes for a better video. Adding a video to a text post adds something that’s a little more interesting. And (hopefully) increases the chance that someone will watch the video.
  • If starting from scratch, have a quote or two. Because I’m not writing about things I’m a subject matter expert in, it can be really helpful to have at least one quote to work with. It’s like bringing someone in that knows what they’re talking about.
    And now we’ll see if this helps me become a finisher. I’m going to make a blogging about blogging category.

    P.S. I’m liking this setup with the iPad below my monitor. I doodle in the standard Notes app and grab a screenshot to paste into WordPress.

Focus on two minutes (Podcast Notes: James Clear)

 

I’ve been walking more:

When I started, my goal was to get to ten miles daily. After actually getting to ten miles in a day and seeing just how long that took, I’m thinking something like 3 in the morning and 3 at night would be sustainable. Then 4 and 4 or 5 and 5 on weekend days.

I’ll write about this walking routine more (when I’m a few more weeks in). Right now I want to see how it breaks into habits and routines.

On the past few long walks, I’ve been listening to James Clear interviews—he’s been on a lot of podcasts in the past month talking about his book Atomic Habits which is coming out next week. (I can’t wait.)

Focus on what you can do in two minutes. Walking for an hour isn’t really the habit. Just like lifting weights for an hour isn’t really the habit. Though I do see the value in calling it a workout habit, it’s useful to separate habits and routines for thinking through them and executing.

I’ll just break down walking.

  • The routine: Walking for 60-90 minutes first thing in the morning.
  • The habits involved: Drinking water/coffee, showering (cold), brushing teeth, putting workout clothes on, putting headphones on, heading out the door.
  • The key two minutes: Water/coffee and putting workout clothes on.

When I wake up, a tug of war starts between the apartment door and my bed. All those habits If I have coffee, it helps remind me that I won’t be able to go back to sleep anyway. All the other habits are like wrestlers jumping into the tug of war  against a lion (more sleep).

(James mentions that he doesn’t cheat himself on sleep. I do the same. No 4am alarms for me unless I’m asleep by 9pm. Aka no 4am alarms for me ever. If I don’t sleep enough, I walk less in the morning and try to make it up in the evening.)

I use my phone while walking and restrict my first check to when I’m outside. This is an attempt at using some of the enemy’s momentum positively. I’m addicted to my phone. Getting better, but still it tugs at my brain first thing on waking up. Now I use it as a reward. Once you’re outside, you can check your phone.

The key two minutes are the two habits that really get me out the door. If I have water and coffee, I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep even if I lie back down. If I put workout clothes, I’m ready to step out. When you can break something down into two minutes, you can focus on practicing just that small piece. Then I can get out the door as fast as possible.

And then I have nothing else to do but the walking routine.

Write in the editor Vol. ?

I’m writing in the editor again. When I do, I finish posts. When I don’t, I don’t finish posts.

I write in Evernote and Ulysses often. Over the past weekend I broke things down so and made a bunch of different notes in Ulysses to treat as components to put a newsletter together.

Mission accomplished: Now I have a bunch of pieces that I need to put together as a newsletter.

What I don’t currently have is the urge to finish that up. Instead I’m writing this post about finishing things.

When I was planning how I’d break things down it had a familiar feeling of previous times I wrote a little at a time and then let things linger as a giant draft too long. Then I never got around to ever posting anything.

That newsletter post is a few thousand words long and it’s about 80% of the way there. I need to remember just how long everything can take.

Also, the math for motivation doesn’t work that well. Let’s say I have 2 posts:

  1. 500 words long
  2. 2500 words long

It might seem like editing would take 5x as long but it seems to take more like 10-15x as much time and energy. There’s got to be some kind of mountain climbing analogy. It’s a light at the end of the tunnel thing.

(And by editing I don’t really even mean culling words and improving the writing. Pretty much making sure I add links and get rid of all the notes to self. Which is another thing about writing giant pieces. Scanning it end to end takes longer because there’s so much less confidence that you caught everything that could be in there. My point is: Writing a book is probably 1000x worse.)

Ok I’m going to just post this and put it out into the world.

Oh give me a hell yeah (a calm yeah works also)

Stone Cold Steve Austin has a podcast and is pretty much his wrestling character because his wrestling character was him. From an IGN interview (2005):

I didn’t know, so I asked Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat what I’m doing wrong. I was a great mechanic, but the entertainment value was clearly missing, so when I finally began making the transition to “Stone Cold”, and was venting my frustrations through the character, it all sort of fell into place. Letting loose and being myself I owe to those guys.

It’s a great position that he earned and has taken advantage of to have great things post-wrestling. In 1998, he was working the same character that he would be happy to work 20 years later.

That’s worth striving for. Even if you work at a desk.

Jason Fried and DHH released “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work” this week. “The Calm Company” was the working title. If you think calm is a good thing, you’ll enjoy this book.

If you like things crazy, this might go a step toward changing your mind.

Particularly if you think the craziness is only temporary. For now. To kick start things and then you can calm it down later.

From “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work”:

You have to keep asking yourself if the way you’re working today is the way you’d want to work in 10, 20, or 30 years. If not, now is the time to make a change, not “later.”

We always think we can do things later. That things will be better later. After you get through these three years grinding then you can relax. But if you grind for three years (or, hey, ten) and attribute it all to hard work, you’ll be pretty hesitant to take your foot off the pedal.

I like that the book’s themes can apply generally outside of just working in tech. You carry around a portal to be everywhere except where you are. There are notifications for everything. You can over schedule yourself with a few taps here and there. Then fill the gaps in looking at other people’s perfect lives.

It’s great to step back and calm down.

Pair this book with a podcast…

DHH and Jason Fried have each been on Tim Ferriss’s podcast (DHH Oct 2016, DHH Nov 2016, Jason Fried Jul 2018) and they’re some of my favorite episodes of any podcast. On one of those episodes, Tim and DHH talk about people who drive themselves hard to build and sell a company and then end up unhappy on the other side of that.

Something that’s stuck with me and that jives with the idea from that book excerpt above is that you should practice being rich. Because you’re not just going to flip a switch 10 years from now. You have to start changing today.

If you’re on a path to become rich, you better start practicing being rich:

If you want to be good and you hope to enjoy all these things by using your time for fun when you have money, you have to practice that before you have money. It sounds ridiculous, but I think that money is like alcohol in the sense that it just makes you more of who you already are.

Stone Cold always says he was just himself but turned up a notch or two. He became successful being himself so it didn’t really change all that much when wrestling ended.

Lastly, if you remember one thing remember this: if you’re ever in doubt, ask Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat.

Practice directing your attention

Chris Bailey in his appearance on The Art of Manliness:

The more distracted you are, the less you’re able to delve deep into what’s actually complex on a daily basis. One proven way of doing that is meditation. Meditation is a brain training technique where you train your ability to give focus to what’s in front of you in the present moment as opposed to wherever your attention wants to go, to whatever’s novel, pleasurable or threatening. It totally is possible to not only make your attention bigger and not only be able to take on things that are more complex, but it’s possible that your attention can almost wither over time. It decreases as your energy levels falter, for example. It decreases the more distracted you are, with your distractibility level.

I read Hyperfocus (full notes to come) after listening to this podcast episode. Here’s something from the book about directing your attention:

Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing—and then sustaining that attention—is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to.

I’ve been meditating more since reading Hyperfocus. I’ve meditated on and off and always want to meditate more. This book gave me whatever motivation I needed to start it up again. Actually it was this book along with an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast (#1161 – Jerrod Carmichael & Jamar Neighbors) where Jamar talks about his meditation practice. I listened to both of these on a flight to Seattle and meditated a bit on the flight.

Directing your attention is worth practicing. Meditation lets you continually practice it for a set amount of time.

Here comes a workout analogy. For directing your attention, meditation can be like a cardio workout. You’re constantly moving and working out the entire time. You continue to notice your attention wandering and directing it back to your breathing (or other things depending on what type of meditation).

Then there’s a concept called greasing the groove. Often you’ll hear about it for increasing the number of pull-ups you can do. You do pull-ups throughout the day. Not to failure. It should feel easy. Every hour do a few pull ups. The reps will add up.

Similarly, this is valuable for practicing directing your attention. Chris Bailey recommends having an hourly chime for this. Every hour, reflect on what you did in the past hour and what you’re currently doing. It’s a time to refocus.

I’ve been using the pomodoro technique in the past week. It must be the 17th time that I’ve tried it in my life but it’s been pretty effective this time around. One difference is that I’ve been really respecting the 25-minute timer. Meaning that I’ll end when time ends. In the past I would work through it—“I’m focused, why stop now?” Well, because if you stick it through to an hour then you’ll be completely drained. (Think: NBA Live turbo button.)

Each pomodoro is a rep in directing your attention. You’re greasing the groove. Combining that with meditation has been really effective.

I’ll write more book notes (I really enjoyed it, if you couldn’t tell). Check out Hyperfocus for yourself and listen to The Art of Manliness episode.