The Deliberate #26

December 31, 2019

Check-In Round

What’s the best way to spend a snow day?

I’m writing this from Naples, FL, so this is an exceedingly theoretical question given my circumstances. Nonetheless, sledding. Or sitting inside and reading all day.

This year I wrote and published 26 issues of The Deliberate. For a project largely started on a whim and with a minimum of structure or planning, it’s honestly a more impressive number than it actually feels like. I’ve had a vague intention to make this newsletter a weekly affair and it doesn’t take a super strong grasp of math or calendars to know that 26 issues over the course of a year does not equal one per week.

Normally I would let the result of that arithmetic get me down. Instead of celebrating the fact that I started a project that has some vitality and some traction, I would focus on the failure of "only" publishing 26 issues.

Call it turning a new leaf or a New Year’s resolution or maybe just a smidge of personal growth, but I’m going to let myself enjoy the fact that I made something I’m proud of this year. I’ve enjoyed curating a list of links that all hang around a central theme, capturing some thoughts about something that’s been bouncing around my head, and even writing the quick “Closing Round” section that gives a bit of a mundane glimpse into what I’m doing. Curating and writing his newsletter has made me slightly more deliberate in the way I consume information and it has forced me to coalesce my thinking into something consumable by others -- which has the bygone effect of helping me figure out what I actually think. It has all been a lot of fun and the fact that a couple hundred people have stuck around is very cool.

Looking ahead to next year — what’s the plan for this little venture?

Honestly, I’m not too sure. I’d like to say that I’ll get it on a weekly schedule but the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, so that seems unlikely. I will probably keep experimenting with the format a bit. More links? Fewer links? More personal? More philosophical? It’s all kind of up in the air right now and I’d welcome whatever feedback you might have for me.

I do know that I’m going to keep challenging myself to regularly sit down and capture some thoughts about the most important work any of us can do — living meaningful and fulfilling lives in an increasingly complex world. As I figure out what that means (and inevitably stumble from time to time) I’ll try to pass along what I’m learning to all of you.

Thanks for coming along in 2019 and I’m happy to have you on board in 2020!

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Eating: It’s the holiday season — so, everything?
Working: Taking a much needed break this week before headed into 2020 with renewed focus. Working with a handful of freelance writers for The Ready’s early 2020 content marketing has been fun and all-consuming.
Playing: Finished Donut County. Seriously weird but the gameplay was strangely relaxing.
Reading: Read Hyperion by Ben Simmons on a whim and I thought it was incredible.

Until next year!
Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #25

November 24, 2019

Check-In Round

"What’s the best Thanksgiving food?"

Stuffing, duh.

Weeks upon weeks of articles accumulating!

Weeks upon weeks of guilt accumulating!

The combination of which means this edition is rife with other things to read and fairly skint on my own thoughts. When the battery is dead the jump start isn’t always the prettiest of procedures but it tends to get things moving again.

What Has My Attention

Forgiveness, peace, and productivity

This resonates. My inner critic is cacophonous and doesn’t take time off. When I’m able to distract him or quiet him down I feel like a totally different (and better) person.

How to feel nothing now, in order to feel more later

It’s super easy to laugh at privileged tech bros doing “dopamine fasts.” I know, because I’ve done it (the laughing, not the fasting). That being said, I think there’s something to the idea of periodically challenging yourself to do something difficult or different just for the sake of seeing how you handle it. Maybe just don’t do it in such a way that it affects the people around you, eh?

Our guide to daily life

Did not expect a company selling kitchen utensils to have an actually helpful and actually good “guide to daily enjoyment.”

The way of less

I love a good kick in the pants reminder about minimalism. My “way of less” is less (ahem) about physical possession nowadays and more about commitments and projects and hobbies.

Forget Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics: Try being Epicurean

I feel like Stoicism has gotten a bit of a bad rap recently from Silicon Valley tech bros trying to manufacture struggle in their astoundingly privileged lives, but I remain a fan. That being said, this article has made me want to dive deeper into Epicureanism.

Creating the habit of not being busy

I try very hard to never say that I’m busy. But I do spend a lot of my time feeling busy.

A piece of advice I wish I’d included in Digital Minimalism

“When you get home after work, you put your phone on a table in your foyer near your front door. Then — and this is the important part — you leave it there until you next leave the house.”

Discipline challenge: What my mind does when I commit to hard things

Big week for Leo Babauta and Zen Habits in this newsletter. His recap of a 45-day discipline challenge reminds me a lot of the feelings I had during my digital detox (part 1 & part 2).

Updates

Max and I finished season one of Fields of Work. We are planning on a few surprises over the next couple months before coming out with something even better for season two later in the spring. Plenty of time to get caught up with the back catalog.
Say hello on Twitter or Instagram!
I wrote a mini case study for The Ready’s publication.

Closing Round

Working: I’m leading an internal initiative to get some external writers working for The Ready. Want to pitch me something?
Eating: Trying Freshly to see if I can short-circuit my inclination to order delivery when I’m tired and unmotivated. Jury is still out.
Drinking: I did an experiment where I only drank Maxwell House from an automatic drip coffee maker for a week as an exercise in combatting “comfort creep.” Let’s just say I’m glad it was only for a week.
Listening: I’m listening to the audiobook of A Life of One’s Own by Marion Milner and it’s astounding how much of what she does is the same thing I’ve done (or tried to do) with my own commitment to personal experimentation. Pretty eery, considering it was written in the 1930’s.
Playing: Fired up Overwatch for the first time in a long time. Also beat What The Golf which is maybe the best iOS game I’ve played in a long time.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #24

October 13, 2019

Check-In Round

“What has your attention right now?”

I have to play in an 11:00 PM hockey game tonight. Yikes.

*An acorn hat from my parents' backyard.*

Recapping last week's experiment

As a reminder, the experiment was to challenge myself to only use my iOS devices (my iPhone and my iPad) to live my life and do all my work for the week of 9/29 through 10/5.

I ended up picking a good week for it because I was on the road a lot. On Tuesday I traveled from Washington D.C. to Orlando to co-present an all day workshop on Wednesday. We almost ran into a really terrible situation with needing to get a very large PDF off our iPads and onto a client computer without access to the WiFi or any other way to transfer a large file. I luckily packed my dongle bag (every Apple device owner’s best friend) effectively and ended up having what I needed to drive the deck we used during the workshop directly from my iPad via HDMI. Up to that point the iPad was all I needed to put some finishing touches on the deck, prepare a simple facilitator’s guide for my partner and I, and to handle email/Slack while I was killing time in the airport. Flew home to DC super late Wednesday night, went to the client’s office for an important meeting super early Thursday morning (where my I used my iPad to handwrite notes during the meeting) and then ended up unexpectedly flying back to Michigan for a family emergency later that morning.

Lessons learned

Quite simply, I feel even more certain that going iPad only while traveling is completely possible. It’s mostly possible to do all my work, even from home, with just my iPad, too. The new level of capability unlocked by the desktop-class Safari on the iPad (new in iPadOS this year) lets me do a few tasks that used to be nearly impossible. There were two things I ended up not having to do due to the unexpected travel that I was anticipating not even trying to do from my iPad -- recording a podcast and leading an important Zoom call while sharing my screen. Both are possible, I think but it didn’t seem worth the hassle to do it.

As much as I like working from iOS when I’m on the road, it’s hard to beat the ergonomic setup of having an external monitor and a keyboard when I’m working from home. I suppose I could try using the monitor with my iPad — which may be an experiment worth doing at a later time. As a mostly remote worker, I think it’s important that my audio and video be as high quality as possible when I’m on a video call with colleagues or clients. With my laptop, I can use an external mic and a better camera than I can if I’m working from my iPad. Between that and the ergonomic setback of working from a touchscreen all the time I’m pretty sure my optimal setup is some kind of desktop computer when I’m at home and my iPad for when I’m on the road.

When I was initially describing the experiment in the last issue of The Deliberate I mentioned relaxing the “default apps only” experiment I had been kind of unofficially running because I didn’t want to feel hamstrung in what tools I had available during this already inherently limiting experiment. Turns out, I didn’t really need to relax that restriction. Nearly everything I do as a consultant and writer can be done with Apple’s default apps — which is a pretty cool feeling.

The last lesson, which isn’t really anything about the experiment itself, is that I need to have a reminder in Day One show up on my phone in addition to my iPad. I thought I’d be more likely to write a daily reflection if I did it from my iPad but what I failed to account for was the fact that I’m rarely in front of my iPad in the evening. That means I usually didn’t see the notification that I had setup to prompt myself to answer a couple questions about how the experiment was going each night.

In summary:

iOS-only when traveling is very easy to do and will probably be my setup going forward.
macOS at home has some key advantages (namely higher quality audio/video and ergonomics) than working from iOS.
I can get nearly all my work done with default Apple apps — so any time spent fiddling with neato third party apps is probably a huge distraction.
I can’t have my only notification to reflect on how the experiment has gone show up on my iPad because I’m not likely to see it.

Next week's experiment: Lift (almost) every day

The past two weeks have been kind of rough with traveling for work, then traveling home to see my dying grandfather, then traveling back to DC, then traveling back to MI for the funeral. When I travel a lot I don’t eat particularly well or consistently workout. Add to that the emotional turmoil of losing a loved one and it’s safe to say I haven’t been taking care of myself particularly well for the last few weeks. I think I want to do something this week to help push myself into being a bit healthier. I was recently reminded about how much I enjoy lifting weights and prior to this week’s tumult I had been going somewhat consistently. I’d like to get back to that. Therefore:

This week I’m going to lift weights Sunday through Thursday, take Friday off (it’s a travel day to Michigan for the first inaugural Spurlin Brother’s Trip anyway) and then try to go for at least one walk or hike on Saturday or Sunday.

I'm anxious to show myself that I can get back on the bandwagon of doing some kind of meaningful exercise every day (even if it's just an active recovery day). I'm also curious to see whether this feeling of, "Oh yeah, I used to love lifting weights," is actually that or just a feeling of novelty.

What has my attention

This week was heavy on experiment self-reflection and exploration, so I'm going to skip my planned commentary on these articles. I don't think I want to do that in every issue going forward. I think I may end up alternating between experiment heavy issues and link commentary heavy issues. We'll see...

Closing Round

Working: Spending lots of time facilitating and teaching teams how to run this type of meeting.
Watching: Hockey season is back! The Good Place is back! Bob’s Burgers is back! Everything is back!
Listening: I stumbled across The Early November’s new album, Lilac, and rather liked it on the first listen. Very different from what they sounded like back when I was listening to them in high school but still has a certain consistency that brings me back to driving the streets of Auburn Hills in my 1989 Plymouth Reliant.
Reading: Just finished Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. Mostly good. A little trite in places. Easy to snap off a chapter in a couple minutes. I think this is one I’ll be coming back to many times in the future.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #23

September 29, 2019

Check-In Round

“If you had to give an engaging 20 minute presentation with no preparation, what topic would you talk about?”

Either, how to setup your own GTD system or the ins-and-outs of the different power play strategies in hockey. High umbrella. Low umbrella. Overload. I could talk about it all day.

*A mundane still life from a weekday afternoon with 👌 light.*

This Week’s Experiment: iOS Only(ish)

I’ve been thinking, tweaking, writing, and drawing notes and snippets around the broad idea of systematizing the process of personal growth. As I continue to push this idea forward I thought I’d start using this newsletter as an accountability tool for my own ongoing personal experimentation. The why and the how of personal experimentation as a way of life deserves more space than I can give it here so at the risk of this seeming like a jarring transition, I think I’ll just hop straight into it.

What tension am I exploring with this experiment?

It’s inherently simpler to constrain my computing life to one operating system, if possible. Having that one OS be iOS feels like a “skate to where the puck is going” thing. Also, iOS 13 and iPadOS just came out and I want to make sure I truly understand all the ins and outs of the new software. Lastly, I wonder if an iOS-centric work life will just be more enjoyable, in some non-tangible way, than what I’m currently doing? Worked for Federico, right?

What are the details of the experiment?

For the next week I will try to use my iPhone and iPad to get my work done (instead of my laptop). If I run into something I can’t do on iOS (or can’t do without inconveniencing my client or colleagues) I need to write it down and make a list that I’ll share at the end of the week. I’ll also write up an overall summary of what apps I used, what I did, and any other insights.

What steering metrics will I be looking at?

Subjective enjoyment
Subjective sense of friction
Number/nature of tasks I couldn’t complete

What scaffolding do I have in place to help me successfully complete it?

I have a recurring reminder from Day One, with a pre-made template, that will encourage me to reflect on my steering metrics each night. I’ve been doing a “default apps only” quasi-experiment for awhile, so I’m going to go ahead and end that to ensure I have the full suite of apps available to me.

What Has My Attention

I’m only a couple pages into A Life of One’s Own by Marion Milner and I’m already kind of transfixed by it. This book is the result of a 7 year self-reflection/self-experimentation project where Marion was exploring what brings her happiness. I’m very excited to dive deeper into this very soon.
Not only do distractions make it difficult to get into flow and the deep levels of concentration that difficult and worthwhile work demand (see Deep Work for a deep, ahem, dive into that idea) but it looks like new research shows that they may even distort and misconstrue how we view reality. If you needed more evidence that distractions are something worth eradicating, add this to your list. (Distraction’s Cognitive Risks are Worse Than the Time It Wastes)
I disagree with almost every single word in this essay but it was so well-written I feel like I need to come back to it regularly just to remind myself what good writing looks and feels like: “Seasons are taught to us like a foursquare, a perfect schematic in which every part pulls equal weight to form a harmonious whole. This is a lie. The repetition of a cycle does not imply peace. The placement of seasons matters greatly; each must be weighed in conjunction with its neighbors. Like conversations, seasons tend to devolve, but they begin beautifully. Fall comes as temperate relief after summer, which comes as bright release after spring, which comes as capricious but blossoming happiness after so long in the cold. What I mean is that seasons always get better, with one exception: Fall is the only season after which the next is definitely worse.”(Fall is the Worst Season)
Good talk that seemed like maybe it was written directly for me? Especially the part about being a huge geek who somehow missed the boat on learning how to code and feeling like that is a thing you’ll just have to live with for the rest of your life (or not). (Justin Jackson’s talk at Laracon VII)
I’m a sucker for people talking about their tech setups and practices in extreme detail. Shahid Kamal Ahmad has always struck me as particularly thoughtful and I enjoyed this deep dive into his phone and how he uses it. And if you want to crank the geekery up to 11, here’s Paul Ford talking about nearly every aspect of his tech life.
Input/output.
Time seems to accelerate as we get older, but there’s a tested way to tap the brakes (video)

Closing Round

Watching: In a matter of days It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Good Place, and Bob’s Burgers all started up again. It must be fall after all. Also, the TV Time app is good and helpful.
Playing: Apple Arcade is a hell of a deal. Have put a few hours into What the Golf and can’t remember a time a game made me laugh out loud as frequently as this one. Have put a couple minutes into Sayonara Wild Hearts and was pretty impressed. I can’t wait to dig into this catalog a whole bunch more.
Reading: Nemesis Games, done (and Babylon’s Ashes immediately started). As mentioned above, only moments into A Life of One’s Own. Picking through The Non-Designer’s Design Book. Experimenting with Blinkist for management/“work” books so I can have more time for fiction and literature.
Eating: Went to Compass Rose in DC for the first time last week. Amazing world tour of street food inspired dishes. Truly a remarkable experience.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #22

September 19, 2019

Check-In Round

“What’s a skill you wish you had?” (via @oneredcatmedia)

Hands down, programming. I follow indie software developers like celebrities. I love diving into new apps and trying to understand why app designers make the decisions they do. I keep toying with the idea of doing some kind of ultralearning project around teaching myself to code but I tend to talk myself out of it because of the opportunity costs.

*I swam here a couple weeks ago. How neat is that?*

Something To Chew On

I need to write a new issue of The Deliberate, but because I’ve “skipped” a couple weeks I feel like this one needs to be better than usual. That, of course, means I’m even less likely to sit down to do it. Which means I delay it longer which means it needs to be even better. Continue, ad infinitum until I die having never written anything ever again.

My shortcut to getting this thing out the door with as minimal existential angst as possible this week is to tell myself (and you), right now, that I’m fine with shipping a long list of links of great things I’ve read recently and calling it a day. If I decide to add a couple sentences of explanation or other rhetorical gravy, then hooray for all of us. If I don’t, at least I’ve cleared out the backlog and gave you some things to add to your reading queue.

Also, I need to finish writing this thing before I land and the flight from Orlando to DC isn’t that long.

What Has My Attention

Jia Tolentino’s advice for people who want to make a living from creative work

It’s rare that I read some piece of advice from a creative professional and get stopped in my tracks. I’ve heard almost everything already. Most of it has been filtered through countless layers of survivorship bias and tends to read a bit like a fortune cookie. Check out this advice, though, from Jia: “You can’t control anything about this industry. Whether you’ll get paid well, whether you’ll get paid, whether people will read you, what they’ll think when they do. But you can control the amount of pleasure you can generate for yourself in your work. You can make writing fun and hard for yourself so that even if nothing comes of it, it will be worthwhile to have done it. It has to be an end in itself.”

That’s something to aspire to. It has shades of my thinking from It’s Time for a Workism Reformation but written so much more succinctly and punchily (as you would expect from the author of The Land of the Large Adult Son). Obviously, I think this extends beyond writing or any other traditionally creative vocation. I strive for this in my consulting. I help my clients strive for this in whatever they do in their day-to-day work. I want to live in a world where we’re all trying to generate pleasure by doing the right thing and trying to skillfully navigate the world.

Think mystery, not mastery

“That’s why mystery is our friend. Mystery is the unknown. Mystery takes us to our edge. It’s at these outer limits where we grow and evolve. This is also the space where we find the confidence and faith in ourselves and our process. If we allow our true interests and curiosity to lead the way, we expand our boundaries through exploration, inquiry and experimentation.”

This short article really articulated something I’ve noticed in myself for a long time. I simultaneously crave the deep expertise of some kind of domain mastery while at the same time being enamored with the mystery of what else I could or should be doing at any moment. I need to get better at turning that curiosity back on itself and using it to delve deeper, rather than using it as an excuse to go wider.

How Christian Yelich turned himself into an MVP

I’ve been a casual, extremely casual, baseball fan for a long time but I’ve never played the game and I don’t really know the ins and outs of some of the finer details. But, for whatever reason, I found this article and it’s extremely detailed breakdown of how Christian Yelich completely redesigned his swing, both mentally and physically, utterly fascinating. For example, I never really thought about the sheer impossibility of hitting a major league pitch. From the pitcher releasing the ball to it reaching the front of the plate is about 400 milliseconds. We perceive the world about 80 milliseconds behind that. That leaves 300 milliseconds for a batter to do something. The final 150 milliseconds are too late to be useful. That means a hitter has about 150 milliseconds to recognize the pitch, determine its speed and spin, decide to swing, and then move his body through a sequence that hopefully connects the bat to the ball. That is bonkers. Anyway, beyond the geekery this article is an interesting look at the fickle reality of being elite at something as fickle as hitting a baseball and the nearly mystical relationship between an athlete’s mind and body.

A selection from Kourosh Dini

have an intellectual crush on Kourosh Dini. He wrote the weirdest but best book about productivity that I read many years ago. He’s some kind of productivity philosopher. Also, these three articles all came across my radar across the past few weeks: “As far as you can in the moment,” “Dealing with a system’s decay,” “Tired when wrapping up work.”

Do I have a nemesis?

I think Andrew Taggart might be my nemesis. At least, to the extent that one’s nemesis can be someone who doesn’t know you exist, who you think is incredibly smart, you’re pretty sure can run intellectual circles around you, and regularly makes you doubt everything you believe about everything. Why Meaningful Work Rests On Folly is his latest that makes me shake my fist in his general direction while simultaneously nodding along.

Ok, this plane is about to land so no more commentary — just links:

Closing Round

Working: Had a quick one night trip to Orlando where I deliberately didn’t pack any pants other than the ones I was wearing. Part exercise in packing minimalism, part exercise in hubris. I was victoriously stain-free, thus adding to my overconfidence and inevitable tragic downfall.
Eating: I’ve been collecting overripe bananas in the freezer for weeks. Finally reaped that reward into some banana bread (with the excellent last second addition of chocolate chips).
Playing: Nothing. But looking forward to the upcoming Apple Arcade service changing that soon.
Listening: Somehow Twitter sent me down a Yvette Young/Covet YouTube rabbit hole that I was in no hurry to exit. Definitely on heavy rotation now.
Reading: I’m on a Nassem Taleb kick recently because a couple of his books became available for borrowing at basically the same time on Libby. Nearly everything about his personality grates on me but I enjoyed Skin in the Game and Fooled by Randomness.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #21

September 02, 2019

Hi, I'm Sam and this is The Deliberate. You probably signed up at TheDeliberate.net, SamSpurlin.com, or maybe through something you saw on Twitter. Either way, I'm happy to have you. The basic premise of this newsletter is that I'm curious about the role of attention (mine and others) in living well. Each week I share a handful of articles that caught my attention and whatever ideas happen to be bouncing around my head when it's time to sit down and write.

Check-In Round

“What book(s) do you give as a gift most frequently?”

“Deep Work” and “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport. “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “Essentialism” by Greg McKeown. “Ego is the Enemy” and “The Obstacle is the Way” by Ryan Holiday. “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. I would love to know your answer to this question — hit reply and let me know!

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Episodes 14 (“Is Your Dog Bowling?”) and 15 (“Hot Ankles”) of my podcast, Fields of Work, are out. Max and I continue our meandering conversation about our respective work lives while also catching up as brothers. You can find it in your podcast app of choice.
If you’re one of those folks who found me through the world of organizational design consulting, may I humbly recommend checking out The Ready’s weekly newsletter? I work hard on it every week and if you’re looking for information about how work can and should be better, I think you’ll like it.

Something To Chew On

I recently stumbled across Tiago Forte’s 2015 article where he looks at habits as nodes in a network and then does some fancy mathematical analysis to analyze which ones are most important to him. This leads to the concept of a “habit topography,” or the unique array or habits that interact with our lives, our personalities, and our situations. A behavior change intervention may affect two people in vastly different ways because of the differences in their habit topologies. And since these topologies are complex systems, it can be hard to predict ahead of time what kind of effect any change to the system may have.

What I love about this idea is the support it gives to what I’ve been doing and thinking about for a long time — that a commitment to personal experimentation is the only way to successfully change habits. Personal experimentation forces you to become familiar with your own habit topology in an intimate way. You learn the contours and shape of your habit topology only by interacting with it. By prodding it. By poking it and seeing what happens and then trying something else based on what you learned.

I think behavior change is often draped in an air of seriousness that can make it feel oppressive. We aren’t happy with some aspect of our lives so we resolve to change our habits. We are dissatisfied with who we are so we embark on some kind of ambitious change plan. I’ve been trying to approach personal change in a gentler way. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with who I currently am, but that I’m curious about untapped aspects of who I could be. Approaching it with a mindset of wonder and awe rather than desperation.

Does it feel qualitatively different to commit to behavior change that’s driven by a sense of, “How neat is that?” rather than, “When will I finally be different?”

In my experience, absolutely.

What Has My Attention

A life of one’s own: A penetrating 1930s field guide to self-possession, mindful perception, and the art of knowing what you really want

“… writer Marion Milner (February 1, 1900–May 29, 1998) undertook a seven-year experiment in living, aimed at unpeeling the existential rind of all we chronically mistake for fulfillment — prestige, pleasure, popularity — to reveal the succulent, pulsating core of what makes for genuine happiness. Along her journey of “doubts, delays, and expeditions on false trails,” which she chronicled in a diary with a field scientist’s rigor of observation, Milner ultimately discovered that we are beings profoundly different from what we imagine ourselves to be — that the things we pursue most frantically are the least likely to give us lasting joy and contentment, but there are other, truer things that we can train ourselves to attend to in the elusive pursuit of happiness.”

Why you should stop consuming the news and my media diet (August 2019)

If there’s one thing that has helped the quality of my attention more than anything else, it has been deliberately reducing the amount of “news” I have in my life. Here’s a good guide about the why and the how of doing so.

Everyone, unknowingly, has a philosophy of life

“Everyone, that is, each one of us, has a philosophy of life that not only provides the coordinates for how one lives but also shows up in how one conducts oneself. For most people, this philosophy of life remains that to which they remain unaware. You might think, if this is true, that the best way of discovering someone’s philosophy of life would be to ask that person what he or she believes, what gets him or her up in the morning, what is that person’s life for, and so on. Reasonable for sure but mistaken. A far better approach is to just observe how that person conducts himself or herself on a daily basis. What thoughts arise in that person’s consciousness? What habits are sedimented? What actions and what goals recur?”

This Latin phrase will change the way you manage problems

“Bonnie Smith Whitehouse, an English professor at Belmont University in Tennessee, has a marvelously simple answer. Go back to the classics. She offers this Latin phrase for your consideration: Solvitur ambulando. Loosely translated, this means, “It is solved by walking,” and by “it” Whitehouse means practically anything.”

Creating impeccable structure for your life

“The point is, you learn and adjust. It’s an ongoing refinement. You can make it better and better, and more and more impeccable, with some care and attention. Structure is worth the effort, because you can learn to relax into the structure. The people around you can trust you more, and relax into your structure as well. And the structure becomes a way to practice with the uncertainty, resistance and discomfort that inevitably arises in your life.”

A guide to getting unstuck

I’ve bookmarked this for the next time I feel like I’m having a “down” week (which seems to happen every 4-5 weeks). There’s a lot of excellent advice in this article.

Closing Round

Eating: Had a nice brunch at Sanfords Restaurant in Astoria. Had a breakfast burrito that was like a (delicious) brick.
Working: Headed to Sewanee, TN for an in-person working session with my partner. We spend most of our time working remotely so it’s always nice to share physical space with each other.
Listening: Expanded my podcast repertoire, recently. Nice Try! has been very good.
Reading: Taleb is incredibly distasteful as a human being but his books are generally on point and usefully provocative. To that end, I started “Skin in the Game” last week. In the fiction world, still plugging away on The Expanse series (on to “Nemesis Games” now).
Moving: A recap of August, 2019: 20 walking/running sessions. 45.91 miles covered. Average temperature of 80 (high of 93, low of 64). Average humidity of 63% (high of 91%, low of 36%). Locations were Arlington, VA (14 sessions), West Yarmouth, MA (5 sessions) , and Port Washington, NY (1 session).

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #20

August 17, 2019

Check-In Round

"What has your attention right now?"

The Washington DC summer humidity, the pleasant leftover lethargy of a massage, and a little bit of trepidation around feeling like I have nothing to write about in this newsletter. I guess we'll find out, eh?

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Vacation was a delight and so was giving myself permission to not publish anything while I was gone. While I didn't necessarily go completely off the grid I did try to take it easy. I did do a ton of reading while I was gone so this week I have a veritable bumper crop of links to share.
Max and I recorded an episode of Fields of Work in-person while I was on vacation last week. And since I'm late writing this issue of the newsletter, our next episode is already up, too!.

Something To Chew On

I'm still exploring the contours of what it means to have a system I trust that truly limits the amount of work I have in progress at any given time. In addition to using a system like that for the actual mundane work of my career, I've been thinking about what it means for my larger personal development efforts. I'm beginning to think it's the antidote to feeling like I need to be doing everything at once which is something I struggle with in my actual work and also in my larger aspirations of trying to become a better human being. Being able to throw ideas and inspiration onto a backlog and trusting that they will make their way through my system when the time is right has been giving me a much needed sense of calm. A nice bonus to truly limiting WIP is that it has been helping me develop my "finishing" muscle. I'm noticing that I'm driving things to completion in a much more focused way because I can see the things on my backlog that I'm excited about and want to do — but can't due to my WIP limits. The only way to do them is to finish stuff.

From an attention lens, getting better at noticing the things in my environment, whether potential projects or potential personal development endeavors can become overwhelming without any process in place for deciding what to do, when to do it, or how to keep track of what I've decided to do. That's what all this talk about limiting WIP is about. It's me realizing that getting good at paying attention isn't some kind of shortcut to living a better or happier life. It actually needs to be paired with something that can help focus it in a useful way.

What Has My Attention

Learning about work ethic from my high school driving instructor

This whole article is like a better version of my Reformed Workism article and the basic idea that "working well" isn't about making money or even necessarily affecting lots of people — it's simply approaching the most mundane aspects of your work with reverence and skill.

"Should we really demand that the guy who checks ticket stubs at the movie theater hones his craft?

Well, yes. No job is too low to not warrant care, because no job exists in isolation. Carelessness ripples. It adds friction to the working of the world. To phone it in or run out the clock, regardless of how alone and impotent you might feel in your work, is to commit an especially tragic -- for being so preventable -- brand of public sin."

I'm a touch uncomfortable calling it "public sin" but if I were a bit braver or more firm in my beliefs I think I could get on board.

Why walking helps us think

I've ostensibly been trying to become a runner over the past few months (ever, ever,so slowly). Unexpectedly, though, I've become a bit of a walker along the way. Walking has always held a vaguely negative connotation in my mind. It's what my grandma did for exercise and it's what you had to do if you weren't in good enough shape to keep running in gym class or during offseason hockey training. Real athletes don't walk. Turns out, my brain isn't as far removed from my 16 year-old self as I might have expected (or hoped). I've been trying to slowly show myself that walking is worth doing and that my grandma had the right idea with her daily habit. It's starting to work.

Plus, as I've aged I no longer harbor many hopes and dreams about becoming a great athlete, but would like to shift that energy to becoming a writer.

"Perhaps the most profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing reveals itself at the end of a stroll, back at the desk. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental. When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts."

Time to go for a walk.

Mastery

On vacation I read basically the entire back catalog of Craig Mod. He has rocketed to the top of my favorite writers list and this is a link to his latest newsletter. There's so much in here that I could pull out as a quote so instead I'll just implore you to go check it out for yourself. Craig writes about attention and many other topics I'm interested in with what I can only describe as "literary approachability." I feel like he's talking directly to me in a way that I completely understand but he has a way of putting together words and phrases that feel like I should be reading what he has to say from a leather-bound tome. It's the type of writing skill that makes me furious with envy and simultaneously joyous that this kind of skill exists in the world and just shows up in my email inbox from time to time because I clicked a link.

And here's a bunch more links to things worth your time:

Closing Round

Eating: If you've got a halfway decent Indian buffet near where you work you're set for lunch forever. I'm on first name and silent head nod basis with the staff at my local place.
Working: Can't decide if I'm better off working from home, walking to my shared office, or making the trek to the client's office each day. Maybe it's best to have an array of options in order to best match the needs of the day? Part of me thinks I should just pick a place and stick with it, though.
Listening: Vallis Alps is incredible. On repeat all week.
Reading: I finally finished Cibola Burn! And I immediately started the next book in the series, Nemesis Games.
Watching: Veep and Schitt's Creek, ever so slowly.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #19

August 03, 2019

Check-In Round

What kind of tree are you?

Pine tree. Solid, reliable, likes the cold. Probably has a couple squirrels living in it.

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

I mentioned in the last issue that I’ve been working on collecting my entire writing archive. As part of that effort I re-listed all my YouTube videos I had made private before I started my first “real” consulting job. I used to do a weekly update video for awhile and it has been fascinating to go back and see where my head (and hair) was at back in 2012 and 2013. Oh, and one time I recorded a bunch of videos while I was driving across the country.
I was recently on a podcast called That’s a Cult? talking about the idea of “workism.” Specifically, my article “It’s Time for a Workism Reformation.”
I’m going on vacation this week and I’m not planning on bringing a computer or an iPad so I’m giving myself the week off as it relates to writing this newsletter. The next issue should be out on the 17th.

Something To Chew On

As I mentioned in in the Updates section above, I’ve been doing a decent amount of work trawling through my history and bringing out of the shadows pieces of work from my past. Most of these things got shunted to the background when I was trying to make a go of getting hired “in the real world” and I somehow thought that they might reflect poorly on me.

It’s impossible to look at a body of work that was created over a long period of time and not feel embarrassed about what you created. At least, as long as you’ve done some personal growth along the way. I’ve actually been struck by two completely different, and opposite, thoughts as I’ve dug through 10 year old articles and 6 year old videos — I’m both a completely different person than I was in 2011 when I was still striving to be a teacher, living in an illegal studio basement with a roommate, and trying my best to make my side gig of writing on the internet a sustainable business -- and I’m surprisingly the same. One of the first videos I ever recorded I frame what I talk about as “paying attention to what has my attention.” Sounds familiar, eh?

I ultimately decided to do the work of combing through my history and compiling this work at one place not only because I crave order but because I was getting a surprising number of people emailing me and asking about how to get started doing the work I do at The Ready. It seemed that not showing all this early work could potentially give people the idea that I sprang into this scene fully-formed. And I don’t mean this in a toot-my-own-horn kind of way, I just wanted people to see that I wrote and created a bunch of really shitty stuff for a long time before I made anything even slightly less shitty. I’ve been wrestling with lots of these ideas in public for a long time and I plan on continuing to do so for awhile. Basically, I'm always talking about how you don’t need to have things figured out in order to share and I wanted to make sure I was walking the talk.

I love seeing the growth of my favorite writers. Cal Newport’s early days back when he was a student. Leo Babauta when he was just beginning his path into minimalism and simplicity. The McElroy brothers doing The Adventure Zone back when they were just following a standard Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It’s fun to grow along with a creator and it’s even more fun to realize that everybody started somewhere. The best time to start doing anything was 10 years ago, but the second best time is now.

What Had My Attention Recently

Fast Software, the Best Software

I love this essay for what it is but it also introduced me to a new writer whose archives I plan on devouring while I’m on vacation.

“It feels — intuitively — that software (beyond core functionality) should aim for speed. Speed as a proxy for efficiency. If a piece of software is becoming taurine-esque, unwieldy, then perhaps it shouldn’t be a single piece of software. Ultimately, to be fast is to be light. And to be light is to lessen the burden on someone or some task. This is the ultimate goal: For our pocket supercomputers to lessen burdens, not increase them. For our mega-powered laptops to enable a kind of fluency — not battle, or struggle — of creation.”

How I practice at what I do

My background in semi-elite hockey as a youngster has always made me sensitive to potential similarities between athletics and the rest of the “real world.” I’ve talked on and off for awhile about how important practice is and how differently professional athletes and professional knowledge workers practice. Tyler Cowen gives some good examples of how he tries to bring more deliberate practice to his knowledge work career.

These ring true for my own practice, too:

“1. I write every day. I also write to relax. 2. Much of my writing time is devoted to laying out points of view which are not my own. I recommend this for most of you. 3. I do serious reading every day.”

Overwhelmed by your to-do lists? Try this simple solution

I’ve been really embracing the limit work-in-progress (WIP) lifestyle the past few weeks. It feels like one of those incredibly simple ideas that is actually incredibly profound if you really get it. I’m on the verge of really getting it, I think. Which probably means I’m even further from getting it than I think. Or maybe not.

“The obvious objection is that you have too many demands on your time to limit WIP to three. But that’s a misunderstanding. You already can’t do more than a handful of things at once. If the world demands you do a hundred, that’s an impossible request. Your only options are to choose, consciously, which ones will have to wait – or choose unconsciously. And to be clear, none of this is a magic solution to burnout. Instead, it’s a repudiation of magic solutions, a liberatingly down-to-earth engagement with how things actually are.”

Closing Round

Eating: Ever make a “sauce plate” for when you have roasted sweet potatoes or chicken or anything else that takes a sauce? Dunking roasted sweet potatoes in mayo, 3 different kinds of mustard, Ranch dressing, and/or ketchup is sublime. Long live the sauce plate.
Working: Wrapping up loose ends before vacation. Getting into a groove writing Brave New Work Weekly, I think.
Listening: Just started Bullshit Jobs as an audiobook. So far, better than I anticipated.
Reading: I’m finishing Cibola Burn before I start anything else. Also thinking about going fiction only on vacation…
Writing: Sitting on a partially finished article (“How to Engage With the World” and one pretty good idea (“A Kanban Approach to Personal Development”). Might try to finish the former before leaving for vacation and write the latter by hand while sitting on the beach.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #18

July 25, 2019

Check-In Round

What’s the weirdest thing in your fridge right now?

I mean, it’s not that weird, but probably pimento cheese?

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Max and I have settled into a weekly Saturday release schedule for our podcast, Fields of Work. We’re getting ready to record episode 10 as I write this. Episodes 1-9 have been getting steadily better. Find it at FieldsOfWork.com or by searching your podcast player of choice.
I’ve been cleaning up my 10 year archive of writing on SamSpurlin.com/blog. My writing has lived under several different websites over the past 10 years and for the first time I’m trying to pull it all together under my own name.
As part of that effort, I re-uploaded the archive of my old podcast, The File Drawer, which I did 63 episodes of from 2014-2016 with my friend Eric while we were both in graduate school. Also available in your podcast player of choice or at SamSpurlin.com/the-file-drawer.

Something To Chew On

When you start paying more attention to what you pay attention to it can be overwhelming. Suddenly there are more interesting things to pursue, learn, and explore. Whole worlds that you never noticed before are suddenly beckoning. Google calls. Wikipedia taps you on the shoulder. Unfortunately, the amount of time you have to do all this new exploration doesn’t change. That hard constraint remains constant (sadly).

Lately, I’ve been playing with putting limits on my work in progress (WIP) in more places while simultaneously trying to think of more things as being immune to that structure (video games, TV shows, etc.). When you see everything “to be done” as an open loop becoming more aware is a recipe for overwhelm.

I’m working on it.

What Had My Attention Recently

You are doing something important when you aren’t doing anything

“There’s something to be said for the state of quiet dormancy, where little apparently happens. We might have periods of furious output; to get there, we require periods of faithful input. With input, there’s a restoration of fertile, vibrant thinking. You might need a monthlong fallow after a big project. Or maybe it’s two weeks. You might even do it in a minor way — a half-day mini-sabbatical, say, to achieve what the Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson has called the “absorb state.” This fallow time should apply whether you’re working in an office culture with corporate eyes on you or as a contract worker making your own hours.”

You’re not paying attention, but you really should be

“Part of what plays into this issue is attention management. Everything around us demands our attention, so the way to fight back is to pay attention to what you care about, and to care about what you’re paying attention to, Mr. Walker said. Is it truly worth your time to obsess over feuding YouTube stars, or whatever is trending on Twitter? Maybe it is, maybe it’s not — but you should know the answer.

To be clear: This advice is not the same as advocating for an “unplugged lifestyle,” a silly idea that is an impractical solution to a practical problem. Rather, the point is to notice your surroundings, to be mindful of the world you’re navigating, and to give yourself permission to slow down and just … observe.”

Why Epicurean ideas suit the challenges of secular life

“I imagine Epicurus would see far more consumption than necessary in my own American life and too little self-discipline. Above all, he wanted us to take responsibility for our choices. Here he is in his Letter to Menoeceus:

'For it is not drinking bouts and continuous partying and enjoying boys and women, or consuming fish and the other dainties of an extravagant table, which produce the pleasant life, but sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and drives out the opinions which are the source of the greatest turmoil for men’s souls.’

Do you see the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as a tough research project and kick yourself when you’re glum? You’re Epicurean. We think of the Stoics as tougher, but they provided the comfort of faith. Accept your fate, they said. Epicurus said: It’s a mess. Be smarter than the rest of them. How modern can you get?”

Going home with Wendell Berry

Interviewer: “It’s funny, clarity is often undervalued in art. One of the things I admire about your writing, especially the essays, which feel like polemics, is that you’re very clear in your arguments. They’re beautifully supported. In the new book, you talk about how you often read seeking instruction. I’m curious how you balance that idea with reading for beauty, savoring the visceral pleasure of words.”

Wendell: You’re being fed in an essential way by the beauty of things you read and hear and look at. A well-made sentence, I think, is a thing of beauty. But then, a well-farmed farm also can feed a need for beauty. In my short story “The Art of Loading Brush,” when Andy Catlett and his brother go to a neighbor’s farm, there’s a wagonload of junk, and it’s beautifully loaded. Andy’s brother says, “He couldn’t make an ugly job of work to save his life.”

Interviewer: “We’re talking about pride a little bit too, I think.”

Wendell: ‘Lancie Clippinger said to me, and he was very serious, that a man oughtn’t to milk but about twenty-five cows, because if he keeps to that number, he’ll see them every day. If he milks more than that, he’ll do the work but never see the cows! The number will vary from person to person, I think, but Lancie’s experience had told him something important.

Closing Round

Eating: Pimento cheese, yo! A random impulse purchase that has been my go-to snack (on toast) the past week.
Working: Getting nerdy with a client. Adapting to the unforeseen. On a personal level, consolidating 10 years of writing and other content on SamSpurlin.com.
Reading: Finished Upheaval (good), How to Read the Weather (good), The Minimalist Home (okay), Shape Up (very good), Formula X (very good), Ruined By Design (great). Still working on Cibola Burn.
Playing: Jumped back into Final Fantasy XV after several months away. Still ambivalent.
Sleeping: Pillow mist is making me feel very fancy (and sleepy).
Watching: Looking for a new “together show” with Emily after finishing Brooklyn 99. Trying out Veep and Schitt’s Creek.

Until next time!

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #17

July 13, 2019

Check-In Round

“If you could snap your fingers and go anywhere for 10 seconds where would you go?”

I want 10 seconds in whatever top-secret meeting happens where the existence of aliens are confirmed.

What Has My Attention

As Merlin Mann likes to say, it’s Silly Season. In the podcasting world, it’s the time of year when vacations throw carefully crafted recording and publishing schedules out of whack. In my world, it’s a bit of the same. This newsletter is incredibly overdue for a new issue due to recent travel for a week’s vacation and more travel for The Ready’s tri-annual company retreat.

Instead of feeling too discombobulated, it’s making me think about seasonality and attention. The summer has a different vibe than the winter (just as spring has a different vibe than fall) beyond the simple differences in weather. Fall and winter have always had an air of “seriousness” to them. Back to school (first as a student, then as a teacher, then as a graduate student), hockey season starting up (first as a player then as a coach and now simply as a fan), the period of vacations drawing to a close (both for me and for my clients), and a general “hunkering down” that comes with cooler weather. It has always been a time for focus and deliberate deep work.

Conversely, I’ve been thinking of the summer as a time for exploration and indulging curiosity. Reading things I wouldn’t normally read. Exploring projects that I wouldn’t normally explore. Letting the long and hot summer days creep by without feeling like I need to be on deadline for anything but the most dire of circumstances. Summer is a time for wandering and levity. It can be a tough time of year to really dive into anything too demanding.

When I lived in California I think I missed this aspect of seasonality. The variations between seasons weren’t enough to really trigger these feelings and now that I’m back somewhere with seasons I’m really noticing it and enjoying it.

Do you notice yourself being in a different headspace throughout the year? How does the quality or nature of your attention change as the seasons change?

What Should Have Your Attention

“Digital Minimalism” Review: Gazing into the Abyss

Ostensibly a review of Cal Newport’s latest book but actually something much better and much more thought provoking.

The overwhelming burden of to-do lists can destroy all meaningful activity

The author takes a real sensation, feeling overwhelmed by to-do lists, and comes to the absolute worst conclusion (get rid of your to-do lists). Getting your commitments and anxieties out of your head (which is what to-do lists are) will bring up all sorts of feelings. Hiding from those feelings by leaving them in your head and letting them bounce around indefinitely does not strike me as the best path forward.

How running a little bit every day for two months changed my life

I love the idea of “heroic consistency” because I’ve been susceptible to the overexuberance that fleeting motivation can cause. I’m convinced that taking small but meaningful action every day is really the only way to do anything worth doing. Stories like this help re-affirm that belief.

The solo marathon

Hard things are easier to do when you have a lot of infrastructure around you that makes it difficult to stop (or, I guess a more optimistic take would be that it gives you motivation to keep going). That’s all well and good, but how do you build the muscle of doing difficult things without needing the supporting infrastructure? Hint, see the previous link.

A smattering of other links I found interesting but I’ll spare you my commentary:

Your professional decline is coming much sooner than you think. LINK
You don’t need to clear the decks to focus on important work. LINK
What a former monk can teach us about living simply. LINK
I’m slowly re-hosting the archive of my old podcast, The File Drawer. Search for it in your podcast app of choice or listen on the website. LINK
Max and I recorded two more episodes of our podcast, Fields of Work. Again, available in your podcast app of choice or on the web. LINK
Here’s a short Tweetstorm of some newsletters I’ve been enjoying recently. LINK

Closing Round

Eating: Sugar Shack donuts, baby.
Working: Just finished a two-day company retreat at Cedar Lake Estate in upstate NY. This is the best I’ve felt about The Ready in a long time. We’re cooking with fire.
Listening: GoGo Penguin is still rocking my world. Check out their NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.
Reading: Cibola Burn. How to Read the Weather. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It. Minimalism: Essential Essays.

As always, I can be found puttering around on Twitter, Instagram, and SamSpurlin.com. Feel free to reach out and say hello at any of those places or by replying to this email. Thank you for lending me your time and attention and I'll talk to you again next week.

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #16

June 24, 2019

Check-In Round

“Cake or pie?”

Cake, in almost every scenario. Unless that cake is drowning in frosting and there’s a banana cream pie laying around.

What Has My Attention

I’ve been thinking a lot about generalization versus specialization. I’ve always held such high esteem for extreme specialists. I’m always impressed by someone who has dedicated their lives to understanding something better and more completely than anyone else. In some ways, it seems like the ultimate proof of a life dedicated to focus, concentration, and deliberate practice (some of my favorite things).

This admiration for specialists has always filled me with a little bit of shame, though, because I will never be like that. I was certainly on that path, as getting a PhD is nearly synonymous with deep specialization. However, my dreams of being a specialist probably died when I dropped out of my PhD program. While I haven’t ever regretted that decision I do feel like part of my identity had to change because of it.

Luckily, I recently read a book that helped me see my lack of specialization not as a detriment, but as a benefit. Or, phrased more positively, that there is much to be said for being an effective generalist. In fact, when working in “wicked” environments (as in complex situations, not evil) specialization can actually hold you back and those with a more generalist skill set are more adept at seeing and making the disparate connections that often result in creative solutions. Considering I work in the complex realm of humans and organizations, my generalist tendencies may actually be the better path.

I’ve been familiar with that overall argument for awhile, but until now it always just felt like the kind of excuse a non-specialist would cook up to make themselves feel better. This is the first time I read the argument for generalization and actually felt convinced that a.) it’s a truly good and useful thing to be and b.) that it can be cultivated and refined just as effectively as specialization can. I realize now that I’ve over indexed on the (potentially overly romanticized) belief that deep work and deep specialization are the only, or best, evidence of a life deliberately lived.

The deliberate generalist is a thing. A thing that I’m becoming more and more proud to be.

What Should Have Your Attention

Episode 5 of Fields of Work
Max and I just released the fifth episode of our podcast. It’s the first one where I’m using my new mic and the sound quality is far better than the others. After our usual chit-chat we dive into my origin story a little bit: why I transitioned away from being a teacher and went to graduate school in positive psychology with no real plan for what I was going to do afterward.

A Ribbonfarm Starter Guide
I’ve always really admired Ribbonfarm for being an incredibly well-written, weird, and thought-provoking website. I came to it late, though, and have been intimidated to dig into the archive. This starter guide was remarkably helpful and I’m particularly excited to read through the “Corporations and cultural evolution,” “Experimenting with your sense of self,” “An alternative to MBA-style ‘personal growth’ and self-management,” and “How work and freedom fit together (or don’t),” categories.

Finding chaos and precision in all things — a philosophy of watchmaking
It’s kind of like somebody dove into my brain, extracted a bunch of my beliefs about meaningful work and attention, and then made a very short movie about a man who makes and repairs watches. “It is important how you do things. How you drink tea, how you sit, how you sleep, when you sleep, you eat, what you eat...everything is art. Everything is craft. Everything you do. Even if you just stand on the street that’s craft. Because you are observing, you’re tasing, you are aware. You have an effect on your surroundings. If you practice something, it becomes your life. Whatever you spend your time on, it’s all you have.”

Gosh, these newsletters are getting long. Here’s a few more links that I think are very good, but I’ll go ahead and reserve any extra commentary on them. If you want to talk about them, just hit reply on this email or catch me on Twitter.

Closing Round

Working: This is the last week before my first vacation of the year. Doing my best to make sure I can go into it feeling like I got everything I needed to finish finished and set up my teammates and client for success.
Listening: New obsession, GoGo Penguin, has become a staple in my work music rotation.
Eating: Another heavy podcast advertiser was successful and I’ve been eating my way through Butcher Box. I made BBQ pork ribs in the slow cooker last night. Amazing, obviously.
Watching: Finished the first three episodes of Chernobyl. Hoo boy it’s hard to watch (but good).
Reading: As I mentioned earlier, I read Range and loved it. The Art of Noticing was good and particularly relevant to this newsletter. As was The Supper of the Lamb. Working on Zen Culture now.

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #15

June 15, 2019

Check-In Round

“If you could snap your fingers and instantly be world-class in a specific skill what would it be?”

I was going to say playing guitar, but I’ve actually really enjoyed the process of slowly accruing more and more skill as I’ve deliberately practiced over the past few weeks. So, instead, I think I’ll go with “programming.” I’ve always been an avid watcher/lurker of the tech world and for whatever reason I never really dove into learning how to program other than the hand-coded HTML websites I made back in middle school and high school. It feels like a boat I’ve more or less missed at this point.

Follow-Up

I mentioned “quietly quitting Twitter” in the last issue and at the point of writing that I had been off the service for the better part of three or four weeks. In the past week or so, though, I’ve been slowly re-following some folks. I want to figure out a way to engage with Twitter in a way that feels organic, controlled, and useful without the turmoil and agita that often comes along with it. I’ve taken a step in that direction by being deliberate about who I re-follow: folks I’ve met in real life (or through my office hour) and folks who regularly Tweet about topics I want to learn more about (primarily Apple, tech, and org design). No celebrities. As little news as possible. No companies or organizations. Liberal use of the mute button. No notifications.

What Has My Attention

Introducing my new podcast, Fields of Work

I’m the oldest of five boys. My youngest brother, Max, is 10 years younger than me. He has been working on various farms for the past few years and since that seems to be as close as possible to the polar opposite of what I do, we thought it would be interesting if we started a podcast about work. We’re a few episodes in at this point and still getting our feet under us in terms of flow and sound quality. I’m having a lot of fun talking to him about something I know nothing about and finding some surprising overlap in what we do. It should be searchable in your podcast player of choice (I recommend Overcast if you’re on iOS).

The Surprising Benefits of Relentlessly Auditing Your Life

I’m a sucker for a good spreadsheet so you know an article titled “The Surprising Benefits of Relentlessly Auditing Your Life” is going to catch my eye. I love that the couple in the article discovered some pretty significant life changes they wanted to make by doing some relatively light self-tracking. This is quantified self at its best. In a somewhat related vein, Emily and I have started doing a weekly Action Meeting every Sunday which is a move straight out of my work playbook but is also proving to be a pretty useful relationship move.

An Evening With Griffin McElroy

I’m a huge fan of the McElroy family. From My Brother, My Brother, and Me, Wonderful!, The Adventure Zone, Monster Factory and so much more, I find them to be a hilarious and admirable bunch of creative dudes. This talk from Griffin McElroy (the sweet baby brother) is a more serious side that was a little strange but incredibly endearing to see. In this talk Griffin describes his professional path with all the twists and turns that eventually led him to the independent creative career he’s in now. It may be less engrossing if you aren’t deep into the McElroy catalog but I found it to be pretty great.

A Few Quick Thoughts on WWDC 2019

I’m still not writing as much as I want, but I did crank out a super short reflection after Apple’s recent WWDC keynote.

Your Undivided Attention

I’m conflicted by the Center For Humane Technology. On the one hand, I think what they are working on is super important and it seems like a relatively thoughtful group of folks who are earnest in what they are trying to do. But then I read critiques of them and I realize maybe the situation is more complex than I thought. I DON’T KNOW. CHT is either great or its terrible... but they do have a new podcast out called Your Undivided Attention that I found to be pretty good.

Closing Round

Listening: I did a little more work on my The Sound of High School (2001-2005) playlist (Apple Music only, sadly). If you’re my age and fancied yourself a bit of an emo fan then you’ll probably enjoy this nostalgia bomb.
Working: Not much travel over the last few weeks. Quick trip to Philly next week. First vacation of the year is in sight! Also, I completely revamped my task management system. That’s probably a story for another day.
Drinking: I ran out of good coffee and I needed something to bridge the gap until my new batch of YES PLZ arrived. Turns out the McDonald’s brand “McCafe Premium Roast” is surprisingly drinkable. A perfectly serviceable emergency coffee to keep on hand.
Playing: Emily and I just played a round of Mario Kart while using the JoyCons in the little steering wheels. The hard-earned muscle memory from Mario Kart on the Wii definitely kicked in. I’ve still got it.
Watching: Just started Chernobyl. ‘Tis good. Oh! And The Russian Five! As a kid who grew up as a huge hockey fan in Detroit in the 90s it was a crazy walk down memory lane and I learned a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff that 10 year old Sam was definitely unaware of. A great story, even if you aren’t a hockey fan.

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #14

May 28, 2019

Check-In Round

“What was your first job?”

In 2nd grade my friend and I had two short-lived businesses. The first, my dad taught me how to draw a cartoon penguin so we created a “how to draw cartoons” book, stapled together some copies, and sold them to our classmates. We also got my mom to supply us with candy which we then sold to our classmates and my younger brothers.

As far as jobby-jobs go, though, I started working at Target as a cashier/cart wrangler and as a deck refinisher at basically the same time in high school. Deck refinishing was far and away the better job, although I started to learn about flow during the mundanity of the cart collection job. I used to love figuring out the most efficient way to get all the carts into the store.

Making a "Good" List

One of my favorite things to pay deliberate attention to is my own brain. One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is that I seem to go through cycles of feeling particularly good about myself and what I’m doing followed by cycles of feeling particularly lethargic and crummy. Part of me thinks these cycles are more or less inevitable, but I’m also always looking for ways to make the high times last longer and the low times bottom out quicker. To that end, I’ve been trying to take time to stop and notice when I’m feeling particularly good and then capturing in a simple list the things that I’m doing or not doing. My hope is that I can return to this list when I’m feeling down and see if I can perhaps jolt myself out of a trough and back onto an upward trajectory.

In the interest of transparency (and maybe inspiration?), here’s my list from a few days ago:

I’m not holding myself to an unreasonable expectation of waking up extremely early
I’m spending less time lounging around, drinking coffee, and reading in the morning (less than an hour, generally)
I’m using my calendar to basically “hyper schedule” my day
I’m making a deliberate effort to eat fewer meals out (with lots of room for improvement)
I’m trying to stay as focused as possible on client work Monday through Thursday and am pushing all of my internal work for The Ready to Friday
I’m back to weighing myself consistently
I’m tracking my sleep
I’m trying to take the concept of “limit work in progress” more seriously in basically everything I’m doing
I have a couple side projects going that I care about (The Deliberate and a yet unreleased podcast with my brother)
I’m doing a couple Office Hour sessions per week

The next time you’re feeling particularly good about yourself/life you should give this exercise a try, too.

What Has My Attention

To pay attention is to live

“Well, the loon pays attention to what concerns him and you are to do the same, for attention is of the essence of our powers; it is that which draws other things toward us, it is that which, if we have lived with it, brings the experiences of our lives ready to our hand. If things but make impression enough on you, you will not forget them; and thus, as you go through life, your store of experiences becomes greater, richer, more and more available. But to this end you must cultivate attention — the art of seeing, the art of listening. You needn’t trouble about memory, that will take care of itself; but you must learn to live in the true sense. To pay attention is to live, and to live is to pay attention; and, bear in mind most of all, that your spiritual nature is but a higher faculty of seeing and listening — a finer, nobler way of paying attention. Thus must you learn to live in the fullest sense.”

Novelist Mark Haddon Quit Twitter. Not Because It’s Terrible, But Because It Prevents Him From Being Great

I’ve quietly “quit Twitter” as well over the past few weeks but the notable thing about this article is that Mark Haddon uses precisely the same metaphor I’ve been using in conversations with folks about why I felt the urge to step away. In his words, “I am taking a long break because every tweet had begun to feel like a peep of steam through my whistle — Listen to me! Listen to me! — which reduced the boiler pressure I needed to write another novel.”

In mine, Twitter started to feel like a place where I could blow off creative steam without actually having created anything I was particularly proud of. Now, I let that pressure build until it comes out somewhere with a little more room to breathe... like this newsletter or an article.

Attention is the beginning of devotion

I keep reading things that make me believe I need to read Mary Oliver. Here’s another article to add to the list. “Attention is the beginning of devotion. The idea exhilarates, but it also saddens. If the attention of humans can be so easily filched by a machine—or, more precisely, the companies that operate those machines—then it follows that the capacity for devotion is damaged along the way. Any parent who has felt the twinge of shame that comes with the belated realization that a social-media feed has taken them away from a conversation with their child knows this to be true.”

Closing Round

Eating: Brother and sister-in-law came to visit so we had to take them to Founding Farmers, obviously.
Working: Vacillating on whether I want to keep my dedicated WeWork space or if I should just lean into the simplicity of working from home when I’m not with a client.
Listening: I was skeptical when I found out Tycho’s forthcoming album will feature vocals. That concern has been slightly assuaged by the fact I’ve had Pink & Blue on repeat for the better part of two weeks.
Drinking: I have a seltzer problem. Emily and I don’t let ourselves buy it with every grocery trip but when we do we go nuts on it. Pair it with working from home and HOO BOY. **burp**
Reading: Have read a series of books that are all of a similar theme that have left me mostly dispirited but with a hint of optimism: Utopia for Realists, Betterness, and Winners Take All.
Playing: Overwatch has its tendrils deep inside my brain nowadays. Have started playing some Competitive ranked matches in the past few weeks and have been marveling about how different the game can be when rankings and points are involved.
Moving: Not enough. But realized I was trying to run in pretty dilapidated shoes. Got some new Sauconys and trying to hit the pavement more frequently now.
Writing: Mostly by hand with an Apple Pencil in GoodNotes while sitting on the porch at night, it seems like.

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #13

May 12, 2019

Check-In Round

"What has your attention"?

The newly formed crack(s) on my phone’s screen and how I’m convincing myself not to get it repaired as a reminder to maybe use it less. Like, some kind of digital memento mori.

A Journal Glimpse

This week I’m going to do something a little different and just share something I wrote in my journal the other day. One of my favorite things to do is to fire up the Notes app and use my Apple Pencil to hand write a journal entry that I’ll transcribe into Day One at a later date. I wrote this entry last night as I sat on the balcony and listened to the rain:

“I think part of what I’m wrestling with is that I’m trying to think and write about “big” things (meaning, living a “good” life, etc.) which can be overwhelming, but through the lens of the mundane, which can seem trite. The end result is that I get too overwhelmed to write about the big stuff (“who am I to be writing about this anyway?”) and when I turn my attention to the small stuff it feels inconsequential at best, glib or naive at worst. How do I crack this nut? Simply naming the phenomenon as I just did, is probably a good start. Other than that, I’m inclined to say that I should just start writing about the mundane stuff the best way I know how and try to connect it to the bigger ideas as I can.

Traditionally, I have struggled when I don’t have a clear picture of the whole project in my head and I think that’s why I’m struggling to just write regularly. I don’t have an outline so therefore I think I can’t write.

I think I struggle with figuring out how to write about this stuff in a way that isn’t just my narrow perspective. I keep trying to say things about “work” and then realizing there is no such things as a universal experience of “work.” Maybe I should just start relentlessly writing about the very specific and sometimes weird things I do? Ground it 100% in my experience and don’t even try to make it more broadly applicable? Maybe just literally write about my inability to write cogently about this stuff? And maybe through that process I’ll learn what I actually have to say?

I’m putting too much pressure on myself to be profound. Working at The Ready has made me second guess whether what I have to share is actually worth it. I feel pressure to make sure everything I write will always impress my incredibly bright colleagues. That’s too high of a bar. I need to get out of their heads and crawl back into my own.”

What Has My Attention

Ryan captures a lot of what I think I mean about “deliberate attention” in this article about how you choose to engage with activities or circumstances that are less than ideal. It’s about having a fundamental engagement, rather than disengagement, with what’s going around you. It’s about how you use your ability to pay attention to craft an experience for yourself that ultimately helps you in some way.
Margin is what allows things to run smoothly, especially when plans go awry. Agile software development teams do this when they limit their work-in-progress but somehow it seems like people struggle with adopting this concept when it comes to how they live their own lives. I see it with my clients all the time. Calendars that are booked with back-to-back meetings all day long with no wiggle room to speak of. A schedule like that requires a complete lack of surprises to not get knocked askew and once it does, it sets off a chain reaction of problems. True adaptability and productivity is leaving enough margin in everything to allow you to respond calmly and creatively.
There’s a big difference between snacking on a book and letting yourself sit down to a full course meal. Sometimes I get into periods of time where I read in very short bursts and whenever I’m able to break myself out of that mode I find myself enjoying my reading much more.
I don’t think I have anything insightful to say about this video other than it made me laugh very hard.

Closing Round

Eating: Had an extremely delicious dinner at Jaleo in Crystal City for the second time. And after being kind of underwhelmed by Epic Smokehouse the last couple times I went, I had a pretty incredible rack of ribs and coleslaw this time around. There’s something about that restaurant, though. I’ve been there three times and I’ve forgotten my credit card their twice.

Drinking: Working through a bit of a backlog of my YES PLZ coffee beans. Tasty, as always.

Reading: Still very much on a minimalism/simplicity kick. Finished The Importance of Living (it had its moments of deep wisdom and even more moments of deep misogyny) and am now flipping back and forth between How to Do Nothing and The Abundance of Less: Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan. Oh, also listening to Utopia for Realists on Audible.

Working: Had back-to-back full-day workshops with the client last week and I was struck by how utterly draining that can be. It gave me flashbacks to my teaching days where I was constantly exhausted and dreading the next day. In the moment, when I’m in the room and doing my thing, I love it. It’s the evening after, when I know I have to do the whole thing again tomorrow, that’s tough to handle. This week should be a little calmer, even though I have a quick trip to Raleigh for a half-day workshop.

Playing: Played Super Smash Brothers Ultimate for the first time ever (which is also the first Super Smash Brothers game I’ve ever played). For whatever reason I never really participated in the SSMB craze back in the day. It was fun to play with my buddy across the country, though. We also played some Super Mario Kart, just like old times. When we were roommates in college it was the primary way we divvied up household chores.

Listening: Stumbled across a band called Heron while perusing my New Music Mix on Apple Music. A good addition to my Sound of Productivity playlist.

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #12

May 05, 2019

Check-In Round

"What has your attention"?

Wondering why it took me over a year to buy some chairs to put on my balcony. Sitting outside during summer storms is one of my favorite things.

Follow-Up

I moved this newsletter from Tinyletter to Mailchimp last week. When I sent myself a test email it was sent to my spam folder so I hope this is making its way to everyone. You might want to consider adding samspurlin@gmail.com to your whitelist. Then again, if you’re reading this then you’re probably not struggling with it being marked as spam. Conundrum!

Also, I realized a few folks signed up using the Tinyletter link (it’s scattered around Twitter and in a few article footers, still) after I sent last week's issue. If that was you, you probably missed it. See it here.

A Very Miyazaki Week

Over the past week or so I’ve been devouring documentaries on the legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki. It started with the first three episodes of a four-part television series and then the film The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. It has been a fascinating glimpse into the life and work habits of somebody who is unequivocally one of the masters of his field.

I’m struck by how Miyazaki’s demeanor and outlook on life isn’t at all what I would’ve expected from someone who makes such fantastical and whimsical movies. He’s certainly not an upbeat and happy dude. As he says, “Making films is suffering,” and I don’t doubt that he’s serious when he says that. Large parts of his creative process seem to be utterly wrenching for him.

I also found it fascinating how on the one hand he is kind of a solo creative genius in the sense that he creates the overall story and style of the movies he directs, but at the same time he leads a studio of over 100 animators who he has to work with to actually make his movies come to life. Miyazaki seems like a profoundly difficult person to work for and yet his stature in the field is so rarified I can see why people want to come work for him.

Anyway, it has been fascinating learning more about Miyazaki and the way he works. I guess that means it’s time to actually see one of his movies, eh?

What Has My Attention

I really like finding interest and meaning in the mundane. Greasy spoon diners and familiar fast food are a few of my favorite things. I love this article about artists who have formed strong connections with mundane spaces.
A very cool organization, the Center for Humane Technology, is apparently hiring. If I wasn’t already at my dream job I would probably be trying to figure out how to work here.
I’m guilty of always trying to turn hobbies and interests into paid side gigs. A side effect of my digital declutter last month, though, was the decision to pick up guitar again. I’m striving for mediocrity and loving it, so far.
I can very easily fall into a fiddly hole where I spend too much time playing with new apps and tools rather than focusing on what’s actually important. Reverting to primarily default apps is an interesting exercise in figuring out what I actually need in order to do my work. It’s always less than I imagine.

Closing Round

Eating: Weekends are for pancakes.
Drinking: Working my way through a bag of Ethiopian beans from local roaster Commonwealth Joe and have the latest from YES PLZ waiting for me in the wings.
Reading: I’ve been craving books about minimalism recently, for some reason. That has resulted in re-reading Goodbye, Things and reading The Minimalist Mindset for the first time. Still working my way through The Importance of Living, too.
Work: Last week was one of The Ready’s thrice yearly “dark weeks” where we don’t do client work and instead focus on internal, org-building work. I spent a lot of time clearing out the cruft and little tasks that seem to accumulate throughout the year. I like to think of it as removing friction so that the next trimester can run smoothly.
Playing: Fired up Destiny 2 again after a couple months away. Still working my way through the story and am really enjoying it.
Listening: Say Anything’s latest, "Oliver Appropriate", (Apple Music/Spotify) is making me feel like I'm in high school again and Tycho’s (Apple Music/Spotify) new single has seemingly been on repeat all week.

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #11

April 28, 2019

Check-In Round

What has my attention?

How much traveling wrecks my daily habits. Last week I did a trip from DC to Tennessee for a few days, then drove to Kentucky for a few days, then flew back to DC for a day, and then flew to Orlando for a day and a half. These trips weren’t hectic or stressful but I still managed to adhere to almost none of my daily habits.

I gotta get myself one of these portable routines.

Main Topic

No main topic this week. You may have noticed that there’s been a longer than usual gap between issues and that has largely been a function of feeling like I didn’t have anything good to write about here. I’ve been accumulating links like crazy, though, so I’m going to let those carry the bulk of the work in this issue.

What Has My Attention

Everyone seems to be in the business of giving advice about how to avoid digital distractions. Now, medieval monks are getting into the mix.
Gosh, these principles that Gabrielle Hamilton and Ashley Merriman articulate for their restaurant are top-notch. Particularly this one, “be thorough and excellent in everything that you do, even when no one is looking. Even in the dark. You pull the chair out and clean the corner, even if no one is going to notice.” There’s a lot more that I could pull from this article, too. “That’s the joke of Prune, that we just pretend to be a restaurant. But we’re actually an institute for living. We hide behind the fried eggs, and we hide behind the marrow bones, but really what we’re doing here is trying to change the whole goddamn world, one lamb chop at a time.”
I bring a different kind of attention to my work when I do it on my iPad. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but the primary one is probably the fact that I’m usually running one app at a time whereas an a desktop device I can have way too much going at once. I highly recommend exploring whether you can do your work using an iOS device. You may not be able to, which is totally fine, but it’s an interesting experiment in figuring out what is essential in your workflows. This article made me think about my own iPad-first journey.
I admire and envy folks with a rock solid daily routine so much. As Austin says, “set up a day that work and do it over and over again.”
A really honest and interesting reflection by an elite athlete who gave up Instagram and directly attributes doing so to her new level of success. There aren’t a lot of professional athletes in the world, but there are a lot of professionals out there. I want to be elite in my field, too, so even though I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve climbed in my life I found this article extremely relatable.
Having a “because” is a great indicator that you’ll be able to stave off burnout and find meaning in your work. “When it comes to work, we’re usually not searching for a job that makes us wildly happy all day, every day; we know that’s not realistic. What we’re seeking is work that makes sense in the context of who we believe we are. And because we have to give things up in order to do it — leisure time, rest, seeing our families — the grade-off has to feel worth it.”
On the one hand, this is just another article where a well-meaning old man raises concerns about the spread of digital and social technology. On the other hand, it offers this great framework about what’s tough about getting old: It’s not that you become incurious about the new things that are happening in the world, but that it’s hard to get used to the fact that old things disappear. The stuff I take for granted now, like someone who was born before the rise of automobiles, may become like horses as a primary source of transportation. Namely, absolutely removed from my day-to-day life. That’s weird to think about. Also, this is written by Oliver Sacks shortly before he passed away and it’s hard not to take the writing of someone who knows he doesn’t have long to live extremely seriously.

Closing Round

Eating: I felt like I was in a bit of a rut with my grocery shopping and cooking recently so I literally made a list called “Extremely Healthy Food That I Also Love.” This reminded me that I love mangoes and that I can buy mangoes and eat them whenever I want. Although, I haven’t mastered how to cut a mango so I mostly buy them pre-cut, which fills me with shame.
Working: Gave a talk recently that went fairly well (self-assessed as a B+). It reaffirmed for me that I want to build out the speaking aspect of my career as much as possible. On the personal front, I’m still trying to integrate all of my various writing into one place, SamSpurlin.com/blog. A lot of formatting broke when I imported some of my old writing so it has been a slow process.
Listening: There’s a new Tycho (Apple Music/Spotify) single which means there is a new album not far behind. I’m ridiculously excited.
Reading: I just finished listening to Betterness by Umair Haque and I thought it was really, really good. I also inhaled Robert Caro’s new memoir/advice about writing book called Working the day it came out. Currently reading /The Importance of Living/ by Lin Yutang.
Creating: I’m in the early planning stages of a new podcast project with my brother, Max. If you know about our two chosen career paths you might have a sense of what it’s going to be about. Stay tuned...

Yours in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #10

April 06, 2019

Check-In Round

What has my attention?

This handsome new logo! Thank you to Halee for crafting it. If you have some freelance design needs, you should definitely talk to her.

Follow-Up

I probably should’ve held off on sending that last newsletter until I published my article recapping weeks two and three of my digital detox, since I published it thirty minutes after sending the newsletter, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I attended friend of the newsletter Sean Blanda’s third Pilcrow House event a couple weeks ago with Amazon Chronicles writer Tim Carmody. Pilcrow House is a Philadelphia-centric event series all about having conversations around important ideas. I’m excited to see what else Sean has up his sleeve for this thing and if you’re in or around Philadelphia this should be on your radar.

How to Use Systems Thinking in Your Career

I was recently asked to come to a university class and answer questions from the students in a Systems Thinking class. The idea was that these young folks were going to be graduating soon and would be entering systems (i.e. getting jobs) and the instructor (hi Jeff!) thought advice coming from someone closer to their own age and experience level might be more helpful. These students will presumably want to have influence within the systems they’re about to join but they will lack the currency (reputation, experience, expertise, etc.) to have much leverage. With that in mind, how can young folks use a basic understanding of systems and systems thinking early in their careers?

Systems have nodes, right? Generally, nodes that are extremely well connected to other nodes tend to be more “important” to a system than nodes that are off on the periphery without many connections. Becoming an important “node” in an organization could happen because you are an expert on a specific topic, process, problem, etc. Over time you become known as the person to talk to related to X. This is the realm of Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work books and the general idea that you build career capital by deliberately developing useful skills over time.

Young people should strive for this, but it can be daunting to think this is the only path available to you when you’re first starting out. That’s why I think it’s more interesting to think about being a different kind of “node” when you’re extremely junior in an organization: a super-connector. These aren’t nodes that people seek out because of some kind of deep and narrow expertise, but nodes that are sought out because they are extremely broadly connected to other parts of the system. To bring it back to the realm of specifics, I’m talking about being extremely good at seeing the connections between disparate parts — both within and outside — the organization. It’s about being creative in the sense of seeing connections (relationships, ideas, partnerships, collaborations) that other people don’t (or can’t because of years of intellectual/bureaucratic inertia).

The nice thing about becoming this type of connector is that it’s fundamentally about being insanely curious. Early in your career, that’s probably the most important characteristic to have, anyway. Nobody expects you to be an expert, yet. Nobody expects you to have the answers. You haven’t been indoctrinated by your field/industry so you’re more likely to see connections that are invisible to folks who have been thinking and operating the same way for years.

Anyway, I thought that had the makings of a neat idea. More to come on this topic, I think. I asked on Twitter how people would answer this question and got a couple great answers (see below). If you have something to add I hope you’ll consider hitting reply and letting me know!

Closing Round

Eating: Too much delivery. Chinese food is great. Pho is great. Pizza is great.
Working: I went to SIOP this week. It was... not so good.
Listening: I listened to all the podcasts when I came out of my digital detox and now I have podcast flu.
Reading: Just finished Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey (3 stars). Just stopped reading The Excellence Dividend by Tom Peters, not because I don’t agree with him, but because I don’t think I can take several hundred more pages of what appear to be his loosely organized notes.
Playing: I’m teaching Emily how to play cribbage tomorrow night.
Writing: Not enough.

Until next time!

Your friend in intentionality,
Sam

The Deliberate #9: Unfiltered email is bad for your health

March 22, 2019

Follow-Up

No real follow-up this week. The digital detox is still on (just finished week 3) and I have some thoughts that’ll be captured in a soon-to-be-written article. Otherwise, let’s keep it rolling!

Unfiltered email is bad for your health

A few days ago I remembered you can set up Gmail filters that automatically detect certain types of email and take action on them on your behalf. I’ve been having a lot of fun noticing which emails hit my inbox that could actually be filtered in a useful way. For example, I subscribe to a handful of newsletters but I never actually want to read them in my email program. I want to send them to Instapaper which is where everything I want to read is stored for later. Now, any time a newsletter is sent to me it is auto-archived and immediately forwarded to Instapaper. Similarly, my apartment building emails me when I have a package waiting at the front desk. Now, whenever they send me that email it gets auto-archived and automatically sent to my Things inbox (which is where I keep my reminders about stuff I need to do).

This means fewer emails in my inbox, which is always a good thing. It also eliminates the manual step I usually need to take to get the information where it needs to go.

If you aren’t regularly looking at what’s hitting your inbox with a skeptical eye and unsubscribing liberally, or making filters, then your inbox is probably much worse than it needs to be. If that doesn’t stress you out, good for you. For everyone else, see what you can prevent from ever hitting your inbox in the first place.

Check out Google’s support doc about creating filters if you’ve never made one before.

Closing Round

Working: We re-branded The Ready’s newsletter a few weeks ago. I still write it, though. You should check it out if you don’t already subscribe.
Eating: I dug the crock-pot out this week and used it for the first time in over a year. I kind of forgot how great it is. Throw in some ingredients in the morning, go about your day, and then you have dinner.
Listening: Lots of Post Malone. I heard a song I liked during the new Spider-Man movie and that sent me down a deep Post Malone rabbit hole. This playlist is a good starting point if you’re like me and way behind the times.
Drinking: Yes Plz coffee every morning. Tap water every day. Living large!
Reading: Almost finished with 1Q84. This is my second Murakami book (other than What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which I also love). He’s quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

Your very exciting friend (email, crock pots, and tap water in the same email?!),
Sam

The Deliberate #8: Beyond workism as we currently know it

March 16, 2019

Follow-Up

I just wrapped up week 2 of my Digital Minimalism-inspired digital detox. I accomplished 6 “anchor days” this week (days where I successfully read, write, meditate, and work out) which is far and away the most successful week I’ve ever had when it comes to daily habits. Turns out it’s relatively easy to do those things consistently when you’ve removed almost every other distraction from your life. More to come on this in a future article.

Oh, also, they found our luggage.

Beyond Workism as We Currently Know It

I like work. I studied organizational psychology in grad school, I used to run a website called The Workologist, and I work for a company that helps organizations — and the people within them — work better.

Despite my obsession with the nature of work, I’m on board with those who decry “workism” as defined as a glorification or worship of work for the sake of work. I’m not interested in perpetuating that culture of overwork, burnout, or organizational masochism that has gained in prominence over the past few years.

At the same time, though, I think there’s a whole world of “positive workism,” or what I’ve taken to calling “reformed workism,” that is very much worth our exploration. This is what I tried to tackle in a brief and introductory way in one of the articles I wrote this week. I want to shift the workism conversation toward an internally-focused and subjective experience of work and ask people to wrestle with the difficult task of owning their moment-to-moment reality at work while at the same time helping to create environments, organizational and political, where a healthier relationship to work can be cultivated.

That’s still pretty ambiguous and I think part of this newsletter project and the writing I’ve been doing for the past several years has been poking at the edges of this line of inquiry. There's a lot to untangle, most notably the immense amount of privilege that is just draped over every part of this conversation. It’s something I want to acknowledge and explore without letting it prevent me from following some of the interesting paths that I think we’ve just taken the fewest of steps down.

Good Stuff

Given my focus on workism this week, there’s lots to share about work, why it’s great, why it’s horrible, and better ways to think about it. I’ve shared a few of these in past issues but in the name of keeping a theme together I’ll share them again:

And unrelated, but still interesting:

Closing Round

Drinking: Yes Plz coffee is a coffee subscription (rising from the ashes that once was Tonx) that delivers some of the best beans I’ve tasted in plus a high quality ‘zine each week.
Eating: We, The Pizza has an excellent name for a DC-based pizza joint and they make a pretty good pie.
Listening: I’m firmly back on the Spotify bandwagon and I’ve been exploring some playlists to accompany me during work over the past week. Chill Lofi Study Beats, Mellow Beats, Lo-Fi Beats, Paus., and Minimalism have all gotten repeat listens.
Working: Diving deep into progressive org structure (Niels is always good inspiration) and optimal operating rhythms this week.
Watching: Emily and I are still deep in Brooklyn Nine-Nine land. This is going to be another one of those shows like Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock, that leaves a hole in my heart when it finally wraps up.
Playing: As part of my digital detox I’m not playing any solo video games right now, but playing with a friend is okay, so once or twice a week I jump onto Overwatch to play a few rounds with a good buddy from college. There’s depth to this game that I didn’t perceive when I first started playing it.

Your pizza fueled friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #7: I lost my luggage so apparently also my deliberate attention

March 09, 2019

Follow-Up

Email newsletters are a cruel master for the lazy editor. How many people noticed my attempted joke in last week’s issue that required me to strike through a couple words — that ended up solidly un-struckthrough?

Attention and frustration

I’m writing these words as I sit on a screened-in porch overlooking a golf course (the sounds of an older gentleman saying, “Oh son of a bitch!” As he hacks his way out of a sand bunker just drifted by) on a beautiful and breezy Florida morning. On Friday, Emily and I took an early flight from Washington D.C. to come down to Naples for the weekend to visit her parents. When we got to the terminal, the gate agent asked for volunteers to gate check their bags to their final destinations. We each had a carry-on and since we were going to be boarding pretty late in the process, we figured we’d simplify our lives by taking the offer to gate check.

We landed in Florida (via Atlanta) to no bags to be found anywhere. And now, 24 hours later, still no bags anywhere. They haven’t surfaced at any other airport and nobody at the airline can tell me where they might be. It’s feeling more and more that we may have seen the last of them.

Objectively, this is a relatively minor situation. We arrived to a fully-stocked home full of extra toiletries and clothes we can borrow. We are only here for two days. We have no fancy plans that require us to be dressed in any particular way. We didn’t have any computers in our bags. We’ve mostly just lost clothes, toiletries, and some expensive dental-ware (me, a fitted mouth guard for sleeping; Emily, a retainer — we are sexy people).

The situation is minor and yet I’m struck by how much it has impacted the quality of my attention. Being thrust into an opaque bureaucracy I don’t trust and can’t influence has consumed more of my attention than I would’ve expected. I’m frustrated and annoyed and the vague idea of “improving my attention” seems trite and stupid. My digital detox has been largely ignored over the past 24 hours as I took to Twitter to try to demand satisfaction/information from the airline and well, you know, now that I’m here, maybe I’ll just browse my timeline while I wait for them to DM me back. Oh, what’s that? Thirty minutes of mindless scrolling?

I’m blessed to very rarely have to deal with bureaucratic incompetence and rigamarole (I mean, other than what I do for a living... but that somehow feels different). I suspect that if I were poorer or marginalized in some other way this would potentially be a much larger part of my life. And if that were the case would I still be so interested in personal development? Would I be able to adapt to my surroundings and still carve out some of my attention for personal growth? Or would so much of my attention be consumed by the day-to-day of living that I would look to someone like me, or a newsletter like this, and roll my eyes?

Bonus Reading

• Being poor changes your thinking about everything. LINK

• Your brain on scarcity. LINK

• The good-enough life. LINK

• John Siracusa’s great games list. LINK

• How I ditched my phone and unbroke my brain. LINK

Closing Round

• Drinking: Dunkin’ Donuts K-cup coffee.

• Eating: Two burgers yesterday. Vacation mode, engaged. Beach body, disengaged.

• Reading: Finished Figuring. Ultimate verdict, pretty good. Working on book 3 of The Expanse, Abaddon’s Gate.

• Listening: A little worried that listening to music all the time is becoming another one of my digital detox “leaks.” We’ll see. This week has been more Cloud Cult and also just letting Spotify serve up some tunes from my high school days.

• Watching: The Red Wings continue to lose all the time. The season is mercifully coming to a close, soon.

• Working: Aaron’s book, Brave New Work, has been out in the world for a couple weeks and we’re starting to see some early returns for The Ready. I’ve been thinking through how we can better handle inbound requests.

Until next time!

Your unexpectedly-more-minimal-than-usual friend,
Sam

Check-In Round

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

What Has My Attention

Updates

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Recapping last week's experiment

Lessons learned

Next week's experiment: Lift (almost) every day

What has my attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

This Week’s Experiment: iOS Only(ish)

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Something To Chew On

What Has My Attention

A selection from Kourosh Dini

Do I have a nemesis?

Closing Round

Check-In Round

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Something To Chew On

What Has My Attention

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Check-In Round

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Something To Chew On

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Something To Chew On

What Had My Attention Recently

Closing Round

Check-In Round

A Moment of Self-Indulgence

Something To Chew On

What Had My Attention Recently

Closing Round

Check-In Round

What Has My Attention

What Should Have Your Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

What Has My Attention

What Should Have Your Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Follow-Up

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Making a "Good" List

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

A Journal Glimpse

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Follow-Up

A Very Miyazaki Week

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Main Topic

What Has My Attention

Closing Round

Check-In Round

Follow-Up

How to Use Systems Thinking in Your Career

Links

Closing Round​

Follow-Up

Unfiltered email is bad for your health

Links

Closing Round