The Deliberate #40: Good Riddance

#MundaneLife

A new type of hazard on the golf course, apparently. Maybe a "birdie" dropped it?

What Has My Attention

Nothing. I’m on vacation. See you in 2021!

Ok, I guess that's not entirely true. I have been using my time off to do a bit more writing than usual:

• A quick look back at what I wrote in 2020.

• An initial foray into describing the personal development "system" I developed and have been using for myself over the past year.

• A recap of a morning meditation experiment.

• A recap of an experiment to maintain routine during vacation.

• A recap of an experiment quitting coffee for a week.

• A recap of an experiment in doing the things I know I need to do.

As always, I'm curious to read other folks' year-in-review articles so please send me ones you've enjoyed by replying to this email.

Thanks for hanging out with me in this profoundly weird year and here's to a much calmer and pandemic-less 2021!

For Your Attentional Consideration

The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works

Ever since we landed on the “operating system” as the foundational metaphor for how we think about organizations at The Ready I’ve been enamored with using it at the individual level, too.
 

 This Japanese Shop Is 1,020 Years Old. It Knows a Bit About Surviving Crises.

I hate the “growth at all cost” assumption of run-of-the-mill capitalism so stories like this — which seem to be a particularly Japanese phenomenon — are my favorite. 
 

’I’m just measuring myself with myself’ — ping pong as a route to Sufi spiritual practice

“I’m just measuring myself with myself” is maybe the best encapsulation of me and what/why I do what I do. 
 

No Jedi

It’s easy to invest unearned levels of confidence in extremely experienced folks. They’re just trying to get by, too.
 

My Monastic Academy Journey

A fascinating, and ongoing, story of how someone decided to become a monk.
 

No More Forever Projects

If I had to make a personal t-shirt I’d get “I’m just measuring myself with myself” on one side and “no more forever projects” on the other side. I’m going to be taking a hard look at the “forever projects” I currently have ongoing in 2021 and will be figuring out some ways to put some boundaries around them.

Closing Round

• Watching: A new season of Letterkenny dropped on the day after Christmas so you know I’m working my way through that. Have also watched the first episode of The Stand and am excited to see how they handle it.

• Listening: A second Taylor Swift album in 2020? Yes, please. It has been on repeat for the last couple weeks.

• Playing: Hades! It comes highly regarded from my brothers and The Besties, so I had to give it a shot. I’ve loved the other stuff Supergiant Games has made (primarily Bastion) and so far I haven’t been disappointed.

• Reading: Ever since I saw the trailer for the new Dune movie it has been floating around in the back of my head. In preparation for that flick (which is still extremely far away) I decided to re-read the book. I remember loving it the first time I read it — but apparently that’s all I remember because it has felt like I’m reading it for the first time again.

Feel free to respond to this email if you have something you think I should read or just want to say hello. Or pop on over to Twitter. God knows you can find me over there more easily than you probably should...

Until next time,
Sam

The Deliberate 39: Frivolous

#MundaneLife

Let's be honest, most days I'd consider feeling 50% human a win.

What Has My Attention

It’s a tough time to care about individual attention. The swirling forces of racial injustice, the crushing hopelessness of an unchecked pandemic, the exhausting overwhelm of a campaign season devoid of rationality and decency, and a post-election interregnum teetering on a Constitutional crisis. The systems surrounding us often feel like they’re failing and that there’s little one person can do to shift this trajectory. It’s times like these where writing that the deliberate use of individual attention, often at the extreme micro-level, feels crass or woefully out of touch. And yet, it’s when I’m paying attention to how I do seemingly mundane or trivial things that I actually feel most capable of interacting meaningfully with these overwhelming systems. 

Focusing on individual attention isn’t an abdication of responsibility or a sign that I’m ignoring what actually matters. If showing the boring behind-the-scenes work that keeps the lights on in my own battered psyche is helpful to others dealing with the same overwhelming forces then I’m happy to do it. The world can be a serious and overwhelming place -- my writing doesn’t necessarily need to mirror it in its seriousness. 

Ultimately, I’m afraid of being called frivolous. Of being called out for being out of touch or oblivious to what’s going on around me. Of being accused of being some kind of stooge who is all too ready to place an undue burden on individuals instead of railing against the larger societal and organizational forces at play. I get it. It has been easier to hang out on the sidelines the past few months than to throw my hat back into the ring. While there is a certain comfort to not participating in the potentially bruising game of sharing ideas publicly, it comes at a cost of feeling like I’m forgoing one of the things I’m best at -- and for the wrong reasons.

Also, for what it’s worth, my new personal goal is to write a newsletter introduction that isn’t a veiled apology for going months without releasing a new issue. There’s always next time, right?

For Your Attentional Consideration

The Rise of Sleep in Mental Health

When I feel myself not being as productive as I want to be the first thing I think to do is either stay up late or get up early to get something done. Or, in other words, sacrifice sleep. I like to keep a small arsenal of articles like this on hand to remind myself not to be a flippin’ idiot and that the sleepy version of me is the worst version of me. 

The Observer Effect - Daniel Ek

Loving this new series of in-depth interviews with interesting people focused on their processes and approaches to doing whatever it is that they do. The first one with Marc Andreesen was great and this one with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is a worthy follow up.

Oliver Burkeman’s last column: the eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life

There will always be too much to do, when stumped by a life choice choose “enlargement” over happiness, the capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower, the advice you don’t want to hear is usually the advice you need, the future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it, the solution to impostor syndrome is to see that you are one, selflessness is overrated, know when to move on. Can’t argue with that.

How to design the perfect day

A helpful kick in the pants for when you’re feeling like your days are just happening  to you rather than being a thing that you can actually direct or mold into something you actually like.

The rise and fall of Getting Things Done

Considering the topic and the admiration for the people mentioned in this article (Merlin Mann, Peter Drucker, David Allen) and who wrote it (Cal Newport), I feel like I need to do a deeper dive than just a couple sentences here. A couple thoughts to get me started, though — the headline is terrible (which Cal admits), he's putting his finger near something important and I think he’s potentially missing the mark with what to do about it. I’m a little worried about academics pining for the days of Taylorism and the Industrial Revolution when making recommendations about how to create more structure in knowledge work. Cal’s new book should be interesting…

Closing Round

• Eating: I’ve locked in a pretty great Default Breakfast/Default Lunch routine. Oatmeal with brown sugar and blueberries for breakfast and a Sweetgreen buffalo chicken salad for lunch. Can’t be beat.

• Watching: Schitt’s Creek started really slow for us but we’re about to wrap up season 3 and are pretty much obsessed with it at this point. Taking this one nice and slow because the end is gonna be a real bummer.

• Playing: I finally beat Dead Cells. Similar story in that it started slow but once I started to get that taste of progression and learning that roguelike games are so good at the hooks were set deep in my brain.

• Reading: I’m more than halfway into War and Peace and I’m legitimately into it by now. Took me awhile to figure out who was who but now that I more or less have a mental model of the characters and their relationships I can just enjoy the writing.

Feel free to respond to this email if you have something you think I should read or just want to say hello. Or pop on over to Twitter. God knows you can find me over there more easily than you probably should...

Until next time,
Sam

The Deliberate #38: Clearing the Decks

What Has My Attention

If you’re a new subscriber and this is your first newsletter from me...oof. I’m sorry about that. It’ll get better from here, I promise.

For the rest of you...

Hey.

It has been a minute. Or two. Or a few months. What’s a few missed months among friends?

I’m still here, but barely. Well, no, that makes things sound more dire than they are. I’m more fortunate than many. A job that I enjoy. Great relationship. Adequate health. Given the underlying state of the world that’s a pretty stellar combo to have in my pocket.

But I am tired. So very tired. Because of the good things I just listed above (mostly, a job that has just gotten busier and more intense over the past few months) I’ve been slow to realize that a.) I am tired (I mentioned I’m tired, right?) and b.) that it’s okay to be tired. 

A casualty of that tiredness, though, has been this newsletter.

I still care about it very much and I don’t intend to retire it. But, it’s time to face facts and say that a newsletter I haven’t published since June — and that I’m really just scraping out of the bottom of the barrel right now — is not on any kind of real cadence and is unlikely to be for the immediate future (again, the tiredness).

I’m trying to be okay with that. 

Saying it out loud helps.

I’ve gotta keep plugging away at my day job because in the maelstrom of complexity and uncertainty called “life” right now that’s the thing that has to have my attention. You know, for money reasons. And for professional growth reasons. And for keeping my sanity reasons. It won’t be that way forever — but it is for now.

I’ve been collecting interesting links and tweets for weeks at this point, though. Do y’all mind if I just dump them all here? I’m thinking if I clear out the backlog it might free up some pathways for new ideas and perhaps some fresh momentum. 

Let’s go for it.

Links Worth Your Attention

First, into the Twitter bookmarks we go:

• Have —> Do —> Be or Be —> Do —> Have?

• When your confidence shrinks, your future shrinks.

• The products that the most hypercritical man in the world actually likes.

• Could Mickey’s Ten Commandments help your team define their principles, too?

• “...care about surroundings down to the cups you drink from...”

• “...it’s okay to just wander through life finding interesting things until you die.”

• A thread for remembering the times you re-experience something from the Before Times.

• When you’re burnt out it becomes very hard to tell if you’re burnt out.

• How to get better at cooking.

• A lesson in applying extreme constraints leading to the meteoric rise of one of the world’s most influential chefs.

• A thread on operating under information surplus and information deficit.

• Extremely analog checklists, ftw.

• Brave wild failure.

• Let’s talk about work beliefs.

Now, let’s go spelunking into Instapaper:

• I’m pretty sure Fernando is a subscriber and I put his site into my RSS reader many months ago and it seems like he publishes some fire like 2 or 3 times a week. He’s probably going to show up in this list a couple times. Here’s the first one about managing energy rather than time.

• Always be writing. (MicahWalter.com)

• Maker, manager, consumer. (MacSparky)

• Fatigue. (SimonTerry.com)

• You don’t need to be a hero to change your habits. (FernandoGros.com)

• How to use seasonal themes. (FernandoGros.com, told you)

• The art of looking: Eleven ways of viewing the multiple realities of our everyday wonderland. (Brain Pickings)

• What life changing item can you buy for less than $100? (Reddit)

• Watch this woman track her guitar progress over four years. (BoingBoing)

• How to understand things. (Nabeelqu.co)

• Let each task fill up your world. (ZenHabits)

• On the usefulness of photography. (Simon Sarris)

Closing Round

• Playing: Honestly, not much. For the first time in many weeks I picked up my Switch and played Dead Cells for a few minutes. I think it has the potential to grab me, but hasn’t yet.

• Reading: Since last issue? Quite a bit, I’m sure. Right now? War and Peace, mostly. I think I’ve gotten far enough in to have a bit of a mental map of the characters and adapted to the style. I’m starting to dig it.

• Eating: Our go-to Friday pizza delivery has changed to Pizza Sicilian in Arlington, VA. If your local to me, this place is legit good. Don’t sleep on their wings or antipasto salad, too. Wings are huge and well cooked/seasoned and the antipasto salad comes with enough meat on it for a week’s worth of sandwiches.

• Watching: Emily and I devoured the two seasons of What We Do in the Shadows. DEVOURED it. Instant classic and already in my top 3 or 4 shows of all-time.

That wasn’t so bad, eh? Next time, more me (but less self-pity) and fewer links (probably).

But until then — I remain deliberately your friend,

Sam

P.S. Feel free to respond to this email if you have something you think I should read or just want to say hello. Or pop on over to Twitter. God knows you can find me over there more easily than you probably should...

The Deliberate #37: The Privilege of Extra Unused Attention

Hi, I'm Sam and this is The Deliberate. I'm taking a break from the normal format this week to share some thoughts that I've been wrestling with for the last few days. Thank you for giving me the space to explore this and not just carry on business-as-usual.

Experimenting with my attention and then writing about what I’m learning is dripping with white privilege.

I don’t worry about being shot by the police. I don’t have to navigate an inherently racist society that systematically puts me at a disadvantage. I don’t have to carefully protect my attention just to navigate my daily life. Walking out my front door does not put me on alert.

Therefore, I have plenty of attention available for things like personal development and silly experiments like not drinking coffee for a week or trying to run everyday for a week. Creating artificial constraints and challenges to better understand myself and my capabilities has felt like a worthwhile endeavor — until recently.

The past few weeks have made this hobby and intellectual curiosity feel woefully out of touch and more than a little embarrassing.

I’ve always believed that the only thing I should worry about is the way I show up and interact with the world. That if I’m deliberately “not racist” (an admittedly low bar to clear) then I’m doing my part to make the world a better place. This is why I'm so obsessed about attention and what it means to make good decisions about how to use it.

Where I've gone wrong is thinking that the best use of that attention is to direct it mostly inward. To better understand and learn about myself. At best, it’s simply myopic. At worst, it has made me an unwitting accomplice to the construction of the racist society we find ourselves in.

A personal development philosophy built on the deliberate use of attention feels insufficient in this moment. It puts an unfair expectation on folks who rightfully don't have freely available attention because they are using all of it — and then some — just to navigate a racist society.

I don’t know what this means for the future of this newsletter and my other writing. For now, though, I just wanted to say that I’m just starting to scratch the surface of understanding my own privilege and how it permeates everything I do — including writing about meaningful attention and personal development. I’d like to think that this will push me to further develop and improve my ideas to be more accessible and useful for even more people in the future.

For now, though, I’m going to use some of my privileged attention to be quiet, listen, and learn from others who have been thinking about this topic for much longer than I have.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #36: Exploring the Hard Reset

What Has My Attention

Good news! The low period that I’ve been struggling with for weeks and wrote about in the last issue has officially lifted. I feel re-engaged with my work and the world around me. The eclectic checklist I shared last time certainly helped, but I definitely cannot point to one action that can claim the bulk of the credit.

Part of what helped, I think, has been a completely over-the-top and draconian personal experiment that I’ve been calling The Hard Reset.

Inspired by Cal Newport’s “Digital Minimalism” and my minimalism blogging idols from the early 2010’s (Leo Babauta, Patrick Rhone, and a couple others) I’ve radically reduced... well, nearly everything... that I had going on in my life. 

You can see the whole list here.

As I write in the article where I explore this a bit deeper, the idea is not to carry on in this fashion forever. The idea is to do something radical (all the stuff on that list) at a non-radical scale (a couple weeks). I want to see what is actually sacred to my well-being and creative process and what just feels like it’s sacred. What gnaws at me after going without for a few weeks? What do I kind of forget I used to even do/have? 

The early returns on this experiment are telling me that there’s something truly calming about eliminating or holding constant as many variables as possible for awhile. When you remove the inessential what remains? When there’s less battling for your attention where does it seem to go? When there’s less movement around you what can you notice within?

Links Worth Your Attention

1. Before we get into stuff from others, here’s twos from me. First, the article I mention above about “exploring the Hard Reset.” Next, the article that led to the Tweets that I think led to many of you finding this newsletter, “Trying to understand my resistance to second brains, digital gardens, and other interesting note-taking concepts.”

2. If there’s one tiny upside to the the tragedy that is this pandemic, it’s that I’ve become reacquainted with the power and comfort of strong routines.

3. I love the mundane and I love reading about people who love the mundane but are able to incorporate it into art that is anything but mundane.

4. A touch of absurdity can help to wrap your mind around reality.

Closing Round

• Reading: Have been utterly engrossed by “Barbarian Days” by William Finnegan. Prior to this I had never strung together two thoughts about surfing. Today I watched a 20 minute YouTube video of someone explaining the finer points of surfing technique.

• Watching: Other than the aforementioned surfing videos, I caught up on the special episode of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet (Apple TV+). Shot entirely on iPhones with the cast in self-isolation, it was surprisingly funny and touching. Watch the episode and then check out this article about the logistics it required to pull off.

• Trying: Finishing up week 2 of my Hard Reset experiment as well as the final week of my first Month of Read for 2020. Still figuring out the plan for next week and June. Thinking about doing something related to simplicity/space as opposed to getting intense about any sort of habit. We’ll see...

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #35: A Checklist For When You Feel Bad But You Want to Stop Feeling Bad

What Has My Attention

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been wrestling with feeling low, overwhelmed, and generally frustrated by seemingly... everything. This is perhaps one of the most common things I noticed about myself when I started paying more attention to personal development and metacognition. It seemed like every couple months I would go through a cycle of just feeling terrible.

I still haven’t been able to figure out what causes these bouts of lowness. I used to think there was something I would do (or not do) that would trigger one of these periods but now I’m not so sure. This time around, for instance, I noticed that I stopped consistently meditating and writing in the morning. But I can’t pinpoint when the bad feelings started. Did I stop doing these two daily habits because I was already feeling bad or did I stop doing these two habits and then I started feeling bad? I don’t know. And maybe it was something else? Maybe I received some negative feedback that didn’t even really register at the moment I got it but was enough to knock me off kilter? Or maybe a project hit a roadblock and I’m not sure how to get past it and haven’t really sat down long enough to figure it out? Or maybe I’m just not sleeping enough? Or maybe I’m burned out? 

We’re dealing with a complex system here so the right answer is that it’s probably a mix of all of the above — or something completely different.

What I do know, though, is that a combination of time and doing some really simple things seem to help. I’ve been creating a very personal checklist that I pull out when I’ve noticed I’ve slipped into one of these dark periods. It doesn’t always help... but sometimes it does.

If any of this resonates with you, maybe my list might help you, too?

Things To Do That Might Help Me Stop Feeling Bad

• Eat something really healthy. Ideally something that grew out of the ground. Bonus points for making a full meal of something healthy rather than ordering delivery (which I know I want to do because I feel bad and I want to eat easy, unhealthy food when I feel bad).

• Figure out a way to take a nap sometime this afternoon. Shuffle some meetings, knock off early... grab a few minutes of shuteye.

• Clear my next couple mornings (if possible) and sleep “to completion.” Meaning, don’t set an alarm. Just sleep until I wake up and then have a regular day.

• Follow my “Default Day” three days in a row. Just grit your teeth and do it. It’s your Default Day for a reason.

• Find something to declutter. Removing junk out of your life makes you feel light and free. Physical or digital — both count.

• Identify a task that is gnawing at me. Finish that bad boy even if it’s the only thing I do today.

• Spend 20 minutes working on a project that seems overwhelming and impossible. At the end of 20 minutes I can go back into sloth mode.

• Watch the This is Water talk by David Foster Wallace.

• Do a stream of consciousness brain dump/mind sweep in my journal. Set a timer for 20 minutes and just write non-stop about what’s on my mind until the timer goes off.

• Go for a walk. Ideally with no route in mind. Say hello to at least one dog.

• Drink a big glass of water. Like, really big. Maybe two.

• Take a shower. Turn it so hot it hurts. Test out the acoustics while doing a Pearl Jam impression.

• Text a friend.

If I do a couple of these every day I’m pretty convinced that it helps me get back to my normal productive and chipper self. Or not, but at least it feels like I’m an active agent in my own life.

Links Worth Your Attention

I wrote a lot this week, so I’ll keep the links short and sweet.

• I wrote a recap of how my April Month of Write went. (SamSpurlin.com)

• Can we escape from information overload? (1843 Magazine)

• Do the work. (Rick Lepage)

• Fuck the bread. The bread is over. (The Paris Review)

Closing Round

• Playing: Still chipping away at Final Fantasy VII Remake. It’s good, but I haven’t really made time to go really deep into it like any good RPG really warrants.

• Listening: New GoGo Penguin. Heck yes. I know I’ve linked to it before but their Tiny Desk Concert is one of my favorite things ever. I should probably put it on my Things To Do To That Might Help Me Stop Feeling Bad checklist.

• Reading: On to book three of Hyperion Cantos. Just finished something called Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture and Organization in the 21st Century, which was surprisingly good.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #34: Making Space to Write

What Has My Attention

It’s the end of another month which, by definition, means it’s the start of a different month. Funny how that works, right? 

In April I re-dedicated myself to writing everyday because I felt like the first time I tried to do this, in February, I dropped the ball badly. I needed redemption. I needed to see if I could learn from what happened. And redemption I’ve found! Well, at least partially. I wrote about 11,000 more words in April than I did in February, had five more days of writing, and published significantly more. Much of that was due to a very quick start to the month and very little of it happened near the end of the month... but hey, a win is a win.

I’m working on a longer article diving into what I experienced last month but I thought I’d pick one insight and share it here first. The main thing that got in the way of making April truly epic as it pertains to my writing output was the fact that I started to feel like my day job responsibilities needed to impinge on my morning writing time. In the second half of April I was consistently shaving off some of my supposedly sacred writing time in order to “get caught up” or “make sure I’m ready for this work thing.” It always felt like the right call in the moment but in retrospection I have to wonder if this was just my brain scrambling for something, anything, else to do rather than the difficult task of writing (which, as much as I love it, is not particularly easy).

What I’ve learned, though, is that the best way to make sure I feel like I have the time and space to write in the morning is to make sure that I have an excellent 9-5 block of work the day before. If I wake up feeling like I used my work time productively (and was actually effective the day before) it’s much easier to tell my brain that everything is fine and that nothing is going to blow up if I spend the first hour and a half of my day writing for myself. If I spent the previous day working on work of low consequence or let myself get distracted then it became difficult to feel like I had “earned” the solo early morning writing time.

It has nothing to do with the tool I’m using to write or the time of morning I get up or the environment in which I’m trying to do the writing. It has nothing to do with the coffee I’m drinking or the difficulty of what I’m trying to write. The number one lever that affects my ability to consistently write that I seem to have control over is simply whether I felt like I used my time wisely the day before. 

Kinda neat. Kinda weird. But maybe not that surprising after all?

Links Worth Your Attention

• The computer scientist who can’t stop telling stories. (Quanta Magazine)

• How to make big changes one step at a time. (Matthew Strom)

• Cultivating a deep life. (Cal Newport)

• The running novelist. (The New Yorker)

• Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro: A new breed of laptop. (MacStories)

• Allow Fiona Apple to reintroduce herself. (Vulture)

• Crack the WIP (work in progress). (John Cutler)

Closing Round

• Reading: I thought I gave up on reading Personal Knowledge awhile ago but it’s been mocking me in it’s half-finished state so I picked it up again a few days ago. Maybe it’s wishful thinking... but I felt like I was understanding it more? Also reading A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan.

• Watching: Started watching Joe Pera Talks With You on the strength of Craig Mod’s recommendation. Hoo boy. This show is special. I love it.

• Playing: Still knocking out a couple hours of Final Fantasy 7 Remake each weekend. Playing a couple rounds of Overwatch with my brother once or twice a week in the evenings, too. Have fallen off the Animal Crossing bandwagon a little bit over the past couple weeks (I let a batch of turnips rot and now I hate myself).

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #33: Extracting Some Insights From a Down Week

What Has My Attention

I’ve gone back and forth about what the main part of this newsletter should cover. Most weeks, hopefully, I have some kind of nugget or insight that I think might be helpful and I want to share with you. Other weeks, though, I think I want to use this space to work through something in public. It may be less generalizable but I’m hoping that if I make my thinking process open there might be some bits and pieces that are useful to your situation without me explicitly calling them out. Let’s give it a try, at least.

A few updates about my Month of Write. The intention was to write from about 6:15-7:45 everyday. Basically, the idea was to get conscious enough to make coffee and find my way to my desk and then spend the next hour and a half making as many words appear as possible. Broadly, this is still happening. However, there are a few worrying trends I’m noticing that I thought might be fun to work through in public as an example of how to think through the ups and downs of a monthlong experiment.

• Pretty quickly I slightly shifted the end time from 7:45 to 7:30. That slight tweak gives me a little bit more time to meditate, get ready, and make some breakfast without feeling completely rushed. I try to be sitting at my desk at 8:30 for my regular job and the original timing was making it feel like I had to rush through my morning to make it on time. I hate rushing and I knew if I kept this up I’d end up dropping the newest part of my morning routine (the writing) to get back to that calmer state. Shortening it by 15 minutes has completely removed that problem and still gives me over an hour of writing every morning.

• My word count has gone down each of the past two weeks. I’ve noticed I’ve gotten sloppier with the “don’t touch the phone” rule and I think part of it is because I had been using my phone to log my weight which meant even though I didn’t have to touch my phone to turn off my alarm clock, it was still appearing in my hand within the first couple minutes of the day. No good! Made a slight tweak to weigh myself just before getting in the shower instead since I’ve already lifted the phone restriction by then.

• I’ve also noticed a creeping desire to use my morning writing session to get a “head start” on work stuff. This feeling tends to be stronger when I have an important work activity (like a meeting or workshop) starting early in the morning (say, before 10). It’s also stronger when I don’t really have a great feel for what’s on my plate for the day. This is a sign that I didn’t properly “shut down” the night before. When I actually shut down my day I take 10-15 minutes to review open tasks, review email, review Slack, and generally make sure I know what’s coming up. This lets my brain let go of work tasks which seems to be an important aspect of being able to spend the first hour+ of the next day writing for myself.

• I started to psych myself out when I started calling the stuff I was writing “my book.” It may end up being a book. It may not. Who knows. But if calling it my book suddenly ups the stakes to the point where I can’t regularly sit down and crank out words then I’m doing myself a disservice. Broadly, these morning writing sessions are primarily about drafting. Which means, it’s about sheer output. Editing and crafting and massaging all come later. The quality expectation needs to be as low as possible. Only then will my critic lose interest and let me write in peace. Starting to think of these writing sessions as being related to a future book made my critic far too interested in what I was doing and he is a supremely unhelpful little dude.

Even though I felt like I had a down week regarding my writing, this little exercise has given me a ton of things to tweak and try this week and I’m actually feeling extremely optimistic. I’ve got the bones of a sustainable routine established. Now it’s a matter of just riding through that initial wave of motivation that always accompanies some sort of new personal development intention and finding that new equilibrium which isn’t as grand as that first week — but that’s okay. 

Links Worth Your Attention

• “The distinctive thing about people who do great work is not that they spend every waking hour working on things that matter. It’s that they consistently spend two or three or four hours a day working on things that matter, rather than zero.” (Paul Graham on Twitter)

• “I had no idea that the most inspiring piece about craftsmanship that I’d read today was a profile of Weird Al. It’s so great.” (Eugene Wei on Twitter and the referenced NYT article)

• The housekeeping of the intangible. (Rands in Repose)

• The unbearable lightness of Animal Crossing. (Wired)

• Week 2, barnyard. An edition of Robin Sloan’s video game development diary. (Robin Sloan)

• Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure. (Stephen Wolfram)

• Carving out your space to contribute. (Sam Spurlin)

Closing Round

• Eating: As you may have surmised from the photo accompanying this issue, I did the typical online grocery shopping fail and bought 5 bunches of bananas instead of 5 individual bananas. So, it looks like I’ll be eating banana bread for the foreseeable future.

• Watching: Doing my best to finish some shows before I start anything new. Jumped back into season 4 of The Expanse over the weekend. Also, watched a movie for the first time in months. Emily had never seen Office Space and now that she works in an office environment I felt it was my duty to introduce her to it.

• Reading: I gave up on reading “Personal Knowledge” by Michael Polanyi. I do not have the mental horsepower to read something like that. Thought I’d make myself slog through it but decided life is too shot for reading philosophy books that are way, way, way above your head. Maybe I’ll take another crack at it sometime in the future. Luckily, this means I can focus on finishing book 2 of Hyperion Cantos.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #32: Bottom-Up Personal Development

What Has My Attention

I think David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) personal productivity methodology is so successful because it does something fundamentally different than most “productivity systems.” David writes about it a little bit in the book, but I don’t think it gets enough appreciation: it’s a bottom-up approach to doing meaningful work and being effective. Counterintuitively, David doesn’t ask you what your priorities are or what your values are or for you to figure out your overarching “purpose” in his book. None of that. He simply asks you to start at the lowest and most simple level — the current tasks on your plate.

The basic idea is that you can’t think about that higher level stuff until you get your arms around the stuff that is currently taking your attention. I would go a step further and say that you can’t even figure out that “higher level” stuff until you take a good hard look at how you’re already spending your time and attention. Your values and principles will emerge from that — and therefore be grounded in your actual reality — rather than just being plucked out of the sky based on what you think they “should” be. It’s a simple but pretty radical idea.

The reason I bring it up, though, is because I’ve been playing with a similar concept but in a little bit different domain. David was focused on personal productivity and I’ve been thinking more about personal development broadly. And, in a similar way, I think a lot of advice out there is incredibly top-down: Figure out who you want to be, figure out your “values,” figure out your “purpose,” and then you can work on creating the habits that’ll get you there.

What might bottom-up personal development look like, though? What if you didn’t sweat the bigger picture so much and instead just committed to doing a series of short experiments around whatever happens to catch your eye? What if you noticed what sounded interesting or what piqued your curiosity and you just tried some stuff for awhile? My guess is that you’d start to form a picture of who you are and what you want to be like that’s much more grounded in reality — and not fanciful visions of what you think you “should” be like.

Links Worth Your Attention

• Our post-pandemic selves: Why the virus is an opportunity to grow and develop. (The Guardian)

• Boredom is a pit stop. (Austin Kleon)

• Cal Newport on surviving screens and social media in isolation. (GQ)

• You have 2 minute 28 seconds. (Henri Hypponen)

• Is your organization — and leadership style — adaptive enough for this moment? (The Ready)

• Personal development is an expedition, not an exercise in perfection. (SamSpurlin.com)

Closing Round

• Reading: Finished Indistractable by Nir Eyal (meh). Finished Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. I need to read more Vonnegut, stat. Finally digging back into book two of the Hyperion Cantos series. Personal Knowledge is still taunting me from my digital bookshelf.

• Watching: This YouTube video of a concert pianist realizing she prepared for the wrong concerto, and then nailing the correct one from memory anyway, put me on an emotional rollercoaster (one of the articles I shared above goes into more detail about this, but the video itself is harrowing and inspiring).

• Listening: In this moment, as I sit on my balcony and write these words, the rain. I am stoked for summer rainstorms to finally return.

• Playing: My brothers and I have had a lot of fun playing No Man’s Sky together. Working together to actually complete a mission together or even just each doing our own thing in a shared world has been unlike any video game experience I’ve had in a long time.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #31: Sitting & Writing & Quarantining

What Has My Attention

I’ve just completed my first Month of Sit for 2020 and I guess if there’s one time to really focus on developing a mindfulness practice, the middle of a global pandemic the likes of which the world hasn’t seen for a long time might be a pretty okay time. These topically focused months are part of my Intensity/Simplicity yearly theme. I wanted to make sure I was being intense about the right stuff so I decided to take each of my four daily habits (Read, Write, Move, Sit) and give them each their own month three times in 2020 (four themes times three months = 12 months — math!).

This first go around I haven’t really been setting any specific goals other than, “Do the thing more than I normally do.” With that general intention ringing in my ears I think I can consider March a success since I meditated 23 times and generally did a 15 or 20 minute session whereas prior to this I was usually only going for 10... if I did it at all. The other nice result from this month of focusing on this is that I’m pretty sure I’ve found a slot in my morning routine where it fits and it’s starting to get closer to an actual habit rather than something I need to convince myself to do everyday.

My original intention with April was to make it a Month of Read since that’s the only one I haven’t done at least once, yet. However, February’s failure with Month of Write has been stuck in my craw so I’ve decided to punt Month of Read for a bit and come back around to another Month of Write. This time, I’m coming at it with a bit more of a specific plan.

And that plan is this: Everyday from 6:15ish-7:45ish I must be sitting at my desk and attempting to write. I don’t have a specific word count goal or any kind of restrictions on what I’m going to write. I just need to have my cheeks applied to the chair for 90 minutes every morning to just give myself the opportunity to possibly, maybe, hopefully, write. If I can do this nearly every day for a month I’m pretty sure my output can be staggering. I’ve been doing it for the past week and I’m hitting close to three thousand words every day. 

Considering how long this intro just became it looks like I need to consider a Month of Edit, eh?

Stay safe out there.

Links Worth Your Attention

• Episode 26 of Fields of Work is hot off the presses. Max had his first week at his new farm and has lots of stuff to share.

• Just published an article recapping my Month of Sit. What did I learn by trying to meditate every day? Why am I deciding to do another Month of Write in April?

• Apple bought my favorite weather app, Dark Sky. This simplifies my life because when I’m in the midst of a use-only-Apple-apps experiment I’m always struck by how bad the default weather app is so now when I’m in that mode at least I know I’ll have access to a weather app I like. Dark Sky has been my go-to weather app for many, many years. I really hope Apple doesn’t ruin it.

• This is a super duper early (yet public) prototype of a system I’m developing and writing about to help crazy people like me who want to bring a little more rigor and systematic thinking to their personal experiment process. I’ll hold off on major explanations for now (believe me, they’re coming) and just see if it tickles any fancies on its own.

• On productivity and the deep life. (Cal Newport)

• How we pay attention changes the very shape of our brains. (LitHub.com)

• Who would’ve thought an iPad cursor could be so much fun? (Craig Mod in Wired)

Closing Round

• Reading: Just started Personal Knowledge by Michael Polanyi and Indistractable by Nir Eyal.

• Watching: I’ve been ever so slowly watching Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet on Apple TV and while it’s a little uneven I’ve actually been enjoying it more than not. I think I’m going to ride it out for the rest of the first season. Episode 5 was one of the best bits of TV I've seen in a long time.

• Listening: Part of my Month of Write scaffolding is listening to only Tycho while I’m writing. I’m going to do my best to create a strong association between hearing Tycho and my brain thinking it’s time to write.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #30: Things Fall Apart

What Has My Attention

Current events certainly have a way of making most things feel trite, eh?

I’m generally a fan of the Stoic philosophy (probably somewhat obviously given the name of this newsletter and the things I tend to write about). My whole thesis with this project has been that cultivating the ability to notice what you’re noticing and trying to make deliberate choices about what has your attention is a pretty great way to live. Because, ultimately, the totality of what has held our attention over the course of our lives is our lives. 

But then something like a global pandemic happens and I get incredibly self-conscious about this whole worldview. 

I put a lot of responsibility on the individual when it comes to everything I write about. I’m an unabashed fan of personal development and I find the act of figuring out how to be better (however you want to define that word) to be fun, interesting, and ultimately attainable. But I’m also an extremely privileged, healthy, and relatively young guy who has a quarter of the responsibilities and double the good fortune of many, many people. Is it out of touch or crass to be writing about the deliberate use of attention when the whole world is reeling? Is it fair to expect people to be deliberate about their attention when they’re afraid? When they have loved ones who are sick or who may become sick? When they have lost jobs and aren’t sure where next month’s rent check is going to come from?

I don’t know... but that’s why I haven’t sent this newsletter in awhile. 

The last thing I want to do is make anybody feel shame for just doing what they need to do to survive.

Or perhaps it’s best if we all just gave ourselves a break and understand that we’re doing the best we can to get through a difficult situation. To the extent that you or I can find little snippets of our day to be deliberate about then I think we are on the right path. Choosing a moment of kindness and patience in a hectic grocery store. Choosing to take a breath and extend a little more kindness to the people you’ve been cooped up with for weeks. Noticing and appreciating the fresh air during a short social distancing walk outside. These are the moments of deliberate that are available to us and I’m doing my best to not let them pass by unnoticed or unappreciated. But I’m also trying to extend that same patience and understanding to myself because if there’s one time to take a step back from holding myself to unreasonably high standards it’s when we’re on the brink of societal and economic collapse, right?

ANYWAY.

Stay safe out there.

Links Worth Your Attention

• Episodes 24 and 25 of Fields of Work are out. In episode 24 Max and I talk about the early days of the pandemic -- back before we all realized what it was going to become. Episode 25 has a profoundly different tone, to say the least.

• Why mundane moments truly matter. (The New York Times)

• Personal renewal, by John Gardner. (Farnam Street)

• Live like a hydra. (Buster Benson)

• The pitfalls and the potential of the new minimalism. (The New Yorker)

Closing Round

• Reading: Was reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism and Facebook: The Inside Story at the same time and it was overwhelming and exhausting. I feel good about not using Facebook for the past few years and my recent attempt at dropping Instagram feels even more justified now.

• Watching: Emily and I are re-watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia from the beginning. First, I can’t believe how old season one and two of that show look. Second, I can’t believe how how good every episode has been so far (just finished season two). We’re also staying up to date with Bob’s Burgers and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

• Listening: My GoGo Penguin obsession has led me to a group called Mammal Hands. Who knew weird instrumental jazz/electronic bands had such great names?

• Playing: Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a salve for my anxious mind right now.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #29: Digital Declutter (2020 Edition)

What Has My Attention

About a year ago I embarked on my first official “digital declutter” as inspired by Cal Newport’s book “Digital Minimalism.” This simply gave a snappy name to a practice I’ve been exploring for many years up to that point. The basic premise is to fundamentally rethink your relationship to optional digital technologies by abstaining from all of them for 30 days and then mindfully (one might even say, deliberately) reintroducing them in a values-aligned way.

Last night I decided it was high time to give this another whirl as I’ve felt myself sliding further and further into an unhelpful relationship with some of the technologies around me even as my responsibilities, both personally and professionally, continued to increase.

So, all the usual suspects have been, or are in the process of being culled: podcasts, my RSS collection, newsletter subscriptions, my Reddit habit, social media of all stripes, etc.

This time, though, I took it a step further and actually deleted my Facebook account (it has been deactivated for years but I felt it was time to well and truly pull the plug), deactivated my Instagram account (as a Facebook property it has become more and more sullied in my mind the more I learn about Facebook as a company), unfollowed everyone on Twitter and even deleted my entire archive of Tweets (inspiration).

As always, I’m sure I will share thoughts and insights as we go. And, at the very least, I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that I’m sitting down to write this newsletter for the first time in over a month just after removing all my favorite distractions from my life, right?

Next time? Thoughts on my latest concussion, updates from digital declutter, the Personal Kanban and Codex Vitae, what I’m learning during my Month of Sit, setting up a new office.

Me, Elsewhere

• I’m doing something I’m calling “Focus Months” to help me operationalize my Intensity/Simplicity yearly theme. Each month I take one of my four Anchor Habits and really focus on it as much as possible. January was about exercising more. February was about writing more. And March is about meditating more. Here’s the article that explains the idea.

• February was young and I was so naive and optimistic and hopeful. I wrote an article in which I declared I would write a “shit ton” in February.

• And then the real world smacked me in the face and in the dying gasps of February’s last breaths I wrote an article about why I wrote significantly less than a shit-ton.

• Fields of Work is back! Kind of! Everyone’s favorite podcast where the oldest brother (who happens to be a corporate consultant) and the youngest brother (who happens to be a farmer) talk about their wildly different experiences with work. After taking most of the winter off we’ve recorded three episodes since late January. In episode 21 Max talks about his experiences as a seasonal worker for UPS. In episode 22 I talk about my yearly theme. And in episode 23 Max talks about working in a restaurant as well as his own yearly theme. I think it’s safe to say we’re basically back into the swing of things!
  

Links Worth Your Attention

I’ve been accruing these for awhile — sorry!

• Craig Mod’s talk about using a walk as a platform and using technology to support intentional connection. It’s really good. (YouTube)

• How we do things around here. (Seth Godin)

• Time management is about more than life hacks. (HBR)

• Monkey mind: Shifting the habit of feeling distracted throughout the day. (Zen Habits)

• Be a fast tortoise. (Rad Reads)

• Being a noob. (Paul Graham)

• How and why to make the time to think. (The Sweet Setup)

• Secular monks. (First Things)

• Digital declutter: Reintroducing tech. (The Focus Course)

• It’s okay to leave your headphones at home. (The Atlantic)

• How to write 10,000 words a week. (Medium)

• Three theories for why you have no time. (The Atlantic)

• What’s needed is magic: Writing advice from Haruki Murakami. (LitHub)

• Lessons on success and deliberate practice from Mozart, Picasso, and Kobe Bryant. (James Clear)
  

Closing Round

• Eating: My colleagues sent me a care package from Milk Bar to help me recover from my latest concussion.

• Listening: Listening to the “new” Western State Hurricanes album (Spotify/Bandcamp) while following along with the saga by listening to Roderick on The Line for the past few years has been more rewarding than most new music experiences.

• Drinking: Bought Emily an Aarke for her birthday. Back on that home seltzer bandwagon!

• Reading: Recently re-read Mindfulness in Plain English. Still working on book two of Hyperion Cantos. Just started Steven Levy’s new book on Facebook.

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #28: How to Engage with An Overwhelming World

Check-In Round

We start every newsletter like I start every meeting I run at work — with a quick question to get us checked in and ready to go. Feel free to send me your response to this issue’s question!

“What’s the first concert you went to and what’s the best concert you’ve been to?”

I’m almost positive my first concert was Something Corporate and Rx Bandits at Clutch Cargo’s in Pontiac, Michigan in 2003. Best is probably Manchester Orchestra at House of Blues in Anaheim?

I’ve been exploring life as a 1920’s paper boy/man.

What Has My Attention

It’s possible to be deliberate about lots of different things. When I think about the word — and my obsession with it — I tend to think about it first in terms of information. What’s worth paying attention to? How can you set yourself up to get the information and experiences that will help you live a life you’re proud of while not getting sucked into the distractions that our sorely overmatched brains crave? 

Last week I published an article with my first take at a relatively holistic framework for thinking about how to construct and interact with an “information ecosystem.” To be honest, I wrote the first draft of this article over eight months ago and it had been sitting in a mostly finished state since then. I felt like I had started to put my finger on something profound, or at least interesting, and I wanted to make sure that what I ended up publishing would be as good and as clear as possible. Each week, though, it would fall to the bottom of my to-do list. Finally, I decided to just take it largely as written, fix the obvious typos, and get it out into the world.

Surprisingly, it has garnered the most reaction (primarily on LinkedIn, but also in text messages and on Twitter) out of anything I’ve recently written.

I have a long list of follow-up articles related to this basic idea that I’m excited to dig into: really defining an “information ecosystem” and why you should care about yours, deep dives into each of the quadrants in my framework, an exploration or what types of information are best suited for certain approaches — there’s a lot to dive into.

I’d love if you would check out the article and let me know what questions you have. What would you like to see me explicate more? What’s unclear? What resonates and what doesn’t?

What Has My Attention Elsewhere

After culinary and literary acclaim, she’s moving into the woods. (New York Times)

“After consulting and literary acclaim, he’s moving into the woods.” This is the header of the article they’ll hopefully write about me in like 30 years. 
 

Finding the one decision that removes 100 decisions (or, why I’m reading no new books in 2020) (Tim Ferriss)

I love the essentialism of this. “I’m now asking myself across the board: what can I categorically and completely remove, even temporarily, to create space for seeing the bigger picture and finding gems?” I really like the idea of reading no new books for an entire year. As someone who generally reads over 50 new books every year it sounds kinda bonkers — which is why I think I like it.
 

Your New Year’s resolution has already failed (CGP Grey)

I wrote about the idea of yearly themes in my Year of Intensity/Simplicity article and Grey does a great job explaining the gist of the approach in this YouTube video. If you’re curious about the idea of choosing a yearly (or quarterly) theme to help guide your life this video will set you on the right path.
 

Doing a digital declutter (The Focus Course)

If you don’t want to read all of Digital Minimalism this article extracts the most actionable bit in a really straightforward and cogent way. I think I’m due for a digital declutter and this is the article I’ll use to refresh myself on the parameters.
 

Productivity advice for the weird (I Will Teach You To Be Rich)

If I was more comfortable coming across as a total ass this is the article I would’ve written. A pretty no-bullshit look at what sorts of fundamentals you need to lock in place if you want to be more productive.
 

I’m playing Stardew Valley as Ernest Hemingway and I finally learned how to fish (Polygon)

I’m not sure this has anything to do with attention — I just love the idea of playing Stardew Valley as Ernest Hemingway.

Closing Round

• Work: Last week was a doozy. Back-to-back all day sessions (one of which with a SVP and her entire team). Knocked me off my daily habits a bit but after a nice weekend I feel mostly recovered.

• Play: Because of the aforementioned tough week I haven’t played much of anything recently. I sunk quite a few hours into Card of Darkness (Apple Arcade) over the previous few weeks but I’m feeling like I’ve mostly gotten it out of my system.

• Read: Re-reading Getting Things Done. Re-reading Make Time. Still working on The Fall of Hyperion. Just started Turing’s Cathedral. Listening to Why We Sleep. So much for WIP limits, eh?

• Watch: I have the last two episodes of The Good Place waiting for me and I’m avoiding them because I don’t want the show to end :(

Your friend,
Sam

The Deliberate #27

Welcome to the folks who made the jump from my very old and very defunct Conscious Living Newsletter and are joining us on the latest incarnation of my obsession with attention.

Check-In Round

We always start with a check-in; a quick question and a top of mind answer. You’re more than welcome to send me your answer by hitting reply and sending it my way. This week’s check-in question:

“What new year resolution would have the biggest impact on your life if you were 100% successful in implementing it?”

Something about getting my self-critic to take a hike, probably. Without that guy hanging around I have a feeling I would be a much happier, more prolific, and generally better version of myself.

Apparently my dad is an Instagram advertiser’s dream. Shark socks.

I’ve been putting fingers to keyboard pretty regularly and have managed to get a couple articles out the door since the last time I said hello to all of you. First, I took a look at how 2019 and my “Year of Deliberate” went. In it I try to not go down too many data rabbit holes and instead get in touch with my overall subjective experience of the year — with a little data thrown in as seasoning. Read “Looking Back at a Year of Growth, Grief, and Calm.”

Then I turned my attention to 2020 and explored my yearly theme(s). A yearly theme helps give some structure and guidance to my year and this year I’m trying something a little funky — a dual theme with opposing(ish) intentions. Read “The Year of Intensity/Simplicity.”

What Has My Attention

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I find personal data collection so interesting and useful. I think some people have this idea that I’m running all my various data through complicated algorithms and looking for correlations that give me some sort of counterintuitive insight into how I should be living my life. Some quantified selfers may be into that — but that’s not me. 

Here’s the thing... I don’t really do all that much with the data once I’ve collected it. Once a week I pull it all into a spreadsheet, do some color coding to indicate whether I exceeded, met, or failed to meet my expectations, and then mostly forget about it until the following week. 

That’s because the data collecting I do is more about momentum. The worst thing in the world to a data fan is an incomplete dataset. Once I start collecting data on something I want to have as complete a dataset as I can possibly muster. That means keeping my attention on it and checking in with it from time to time. With my current system, I can’t really go longer than 7 days without interacting with some kind of data. In a world of distractions and nearly infinite things I could be doing my personal data collection habit helps me keep bringing my attention back to what matters. 

It’s that exercise of never letting something I care about fall too far outside my attention that I actually find valuable. Sitting down every Sunday morning and putting in the numbers makes me think about why they’re doing what they’re doing and what that means for how I’ve been (or should be) living my life. That’s where the rubber actually meets the road for me. The data is a MacGuffin. A fun MacGuffin, but a MacGuffin nonetheless.

What Has My Attention Elsewhere

• Improving ourselves to death. (The New Yorker)

• American happiness is plummeting. Could a few words change that? (Vox)

• Build your own intellectual oasis. (Quillette)

• Doing a digital declutter. (The Focus Course)

Closing Round

Work: Using the beginning of a new year as an excuse to introduce new dynamics and practices to the project. Mostly, getting back to basics around some practices that we know work but are easy to let fall by the wayside when you feel busy.

Reading: Apparently I pre-ordered BJ Fogg’s new book, Tiny Habits, so when it unexpectedly showed up on my Kindle I decided to give it a go. Pretty good! Also re-read Watchmen for the first time since 2008 (in preparation for the new HBO show I want to start soon).

Watching: Just finished Letterkenny season 8 and The Expanse season 2. Emily and I are almost finished with Patriot season 1 (new for her, re-watch for me). I can’t wait to start season 2.

Your friend,
Sam