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.
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