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 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!.
My primary view during vacation.
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
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.
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.
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