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