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