The Deliberate #19

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

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