Alexandersmap

    Blog

    • Postcard From New Hampshire, January 2022

      New Hampshire in winter is an oddity of weather. It’s January and there’s no snow in Southern New Hampshire. Not down in the southern border states. No, not here. You’ve got to go north to find any significant snow. The mountains up north are a winter wonderland while down on the southern border just a few clumps of leftover snow wondering when the party’s going to start. The snowshoes sit forlornly in the garage, wondering when I might fly across snow fields once again. I’d have more luck in Virginia than New Hampshire this winter. Such is the way. The snows will come, later and later each year, but they’ll come… won’t they?

      The morning yesterday was unusually dark. Oppressively dark. Longer than a night should be holding on dark. And then the mist started raining down, ever so lightly, coating everything in a fine film of water that quickly skinned over to ice in the frigid air. Black ice. The most dangerous ice you can deal with around here. It made hard surfaces treacherous in minutes, held on stubbornly against the rock salt cast into it, and finally conceded defeat when the temperatures warmed and the mist turned to a heavier rain. Washing ice into tall tails told by white knuckled drivers.

      Rafters of wild turkey roam naked woods and frozen fields, picking at frozen edibles that only a turkey might love. They flow in and out of the neighborhoods carved into the woods like gobbling brown clouds. In this maddening world of pandemics and political strife, we have turkeys thriving in the new normal. More than I can ever recall marching to the base of feeders while squirrels retreat in consternation.

      The joy in winter lies in the stillness it brings, but also in the changing landscape. There’s still plenty of time this winter for snow. For it’s still only January in New Hampshire. But it feels different this time…

      And then, just when I think there’s no magic in the landscape, the sun rises just enough to catch the ice clinging to the branches and turns the brown into a brilliant kaleidoscope of color. And I see the folly in wishing for something that isn’t here instead of celebrating what the world presents instead. Winter, such as it is, offers wonder should you look for it.

    • Scheduling “Accomplishing Great Things” Time

      “A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things in this world.” — Naval Ravikant

      The week after New Year’s Eve is when everything hits the fan. People are back from vacations, tasks that were deferred come due, new initiatives kick in, and most people want to start the year off on the right foot with a high level of activity. You want to push hard on the flywheel to regain any momentum you lost over the holidays, and to have a running start for the year ahead. This buzz of activity inevitably translates into a very full calendar.

      You want to get things done, so you say yes to meetings and projects that you believe will carry you to your goals. In the meantime everyone else’s hopes and dreams need to be met with some of your attention as well–maybe a 30 or 60 minute block of time next Tuesday? And this is where those lofty resolutions begin to hit resistance.

      This is the whirlwind that Chris McChesney speaks of in The 4 Disciplines of Execution. The more you can stay out of the whirlwind, the more you can focus on your real priorities. And the more you can do great things in this world. Don’t we want to do a few great things in our time here in this world?

      It feels like the most important thing to do is to simplify. But that’s a convenient buzzword to throw around. It’s easy to say it, but much harder to do in the crush of daily life. The answer, I think, is to book big chunks of time for thinking and working on your top priorities. To jealously guard the edges of your day when you can do the most. I’d rather get up two hours early and write than sleep in. I’d rather spend two hours reading at the end of my work day than turn on the television. Those four hours don’t make it on to my calendar, but they’re often the most productive time in my day.

      If I were to add one thing to Naval’s quote, it would be this: “A busy calendar, an unfit body and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things in this world.” For I believe we forget sometimes (I do anyway) that a fit body and a productive mind are related. If we aren’t eating well, drinking in moderation, sleeping well and exercising regularly our minds pay for it. Blocking off time for exercise is as essential to accomplishing great things as giving yourself space to think.

      With that in mind, I’m beginning to use my calendar differently than I used to. I schedule more “accomplishing great things” time. I’m keeping myself accountable by listing and checking off the key priorities in my bullet journal. And I celebrate when I draw a box around my top goals of fitness, nutrition, writing, reading and my top work priority when I can check all of them in a day. My goal is to string together a full week of closing the boxes. This turns busy into productive in a visible way. When I do, I know that I’m on the path to greater things.

    • Starting Over

      “Think of yourself as dead, you have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
      — Marcus Aurelius

      It’s time to spread our wings and fly
      Don’t let another day go by my love
      It’ll be just like starting over
      –John Lennon, (Just Like) Starting Over

      Tim Urban posted a clever image on Twitter that illustrates the concept of today being the first day of the rest of your life. Everything that you’ve done to now is in the past, every decision you made that got you to this place, wherever that might be for you, is in the past. And all that’s left is what’s in front of you:

      Source: @waitbutwhy

      New Year’s Day represents that for a lot of people: New Year, new me! But really, it’s every heartbeat. We decide moment-to-moment what we’ll steer ourselves towards in the next. Making decisions and actions, step-by-step into the uncertain future.

      What doesn’t help is regretting the choices you didn’t make along the way. What’s done is done, what’s to be is to be, dependent on the choices you make in this moment. All the past did is place is right here, at this point on the line of human progression on this day. And while that does dictate what our options for the next step might be, it doesn’t dictate the thousands of steps that follow.

      This moment is just like starting over. How fun is that? Be bold.

    • Where Savoring Happens

      “He who is everywhere is nowhere.” – Seneca

      Simplify.

      Focus on fewer things. Focus on important things. Things of consequence.

      Quietly move away from the shallow pool of life into the deeper waters. Less splashing and shouting. You can’t dive deeply in shallow water. You must go deeper—away from the noise.

      Where life is richer. Conversations are more meaningful. Where recognition and realization take place. Where savoring happens.

      Give the mind a bit more elbow room and see where the world might take you when you aren’t constantly distracted by the noise of life.

      See what you may create. What you may come to understand. Where you may go. And who you may become.

      Here.

    • This Will Be Our Year

      Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun
      This will be our year
      Took a long time to come
      — The Zombies, This Will Be Our Year

      Normally I take time to assess the best memories or the favorite stuff accumulated to wrap up a previous year in the final days leading into the new year. This year, other than listing a collection of books read, I am far more inclined to put 2021 to rest and get on with living. I imagine I’m not the only one in that respect.

      So how do you set the table for a great year? We’ve covered some of this already, deciding what to be and go be it is a good attitude to begin with. To realize it, you’ve got to act on it. Book the trip, block off the vacation time, commit to the athletic event, reserve the campsite or the trail hut and you’re halfway there. In some ways you’re forcing your own hand. Or you can look at it as making a commitment to your future self. It’s a high agency way of taking your life in your own hands and not just going with the flow of random events.

      Booking it naturally starts a countdown to arriving at the moment you do it. A to-do list immediately accumulates. Want to run a marathon or hike the Presidential Traverse in the White Mountains? You’d best get in shape before you set off, buddy. The world doesn’t need another unprepared fanatic hitting the starting line. Commit and begin the incremental climb to fitness so you can actually finish what you most want to start.

      Is it that simple? Of course not, but you’re far more likely to do it if you place a financial and time stake in the ground and then give yourself just enough runway to take off. You can’t commit to something so far off that you lose focus on the goal, but it can’t be so short that you aren’t ready when you arrive. Plan, then execute on that plan in a carefully measured number of workouts, vacation days, or paychecks. Use time and money to help you arrive, not as an excuse for not going at all. We become what we prioritize.

      The big moments await your commitment. Put a stake in the ground at the end of the runway and gather some momentum. It’s time to soar.

    • Serious, True Work… Foreseen

      The stamina of an old, long-noble race
      in the eyebrows’ heavy arches. In the mild
      blue eyes, the solemn anguish of a child
      and, here and there, humility—not a fool’s,
      but feminine: the look of one who serves.
      The mouth quite ordinary, large and straight,
      composed, yet not unwilling to speak out
      when necessary. The forehead still naive,
      most comfortable in shadows, looking down.

      This, as a whole, just hazily foreseen—
      never, in any joy or suffering,
      collected for a firm accomplishment;
      and yet, as though, from far off, with scattered
      Things,
      a serious, true work were being planned.
      – Rainer Maria Rilke, Self-Portrait, 1906

      Rilke wrote this after three decades on the planet, with an assessment of himself that doesn’t leap out for its enthusiasm, nor with overt criticism. Here was a man who was planning great things for himself but knew he had a long climb ahead. He apprenticed with Auguste Rodin around the time he wrote this, and got a sense of what the singular pursuit of mastery looks like. And he’d apply it to himself.

      Rilke’s future was hazy, but he could sense his own potential. He sought an apprenticeship to learn how to cross the chasm from average to master himself. The last line betrays his belief in bigger things. I don’t speak German, and thus rely on the translation. Here is his original:

      Das, als Zusammenhang, erst nur geahnt;
      noch nie im Leiden oder im Gelingen
      zusammgefaßt zu dauerndem Durchdringen,
      doch so, als wäre mit zerstreuten Dingen
      von fern ein Ernstes, Wirkliches geplant.

      So here we are, collectively emerging from the shadow of a couple of dark years and looking squarely in the face of a new year. New possibilities. What do we make of it? What do we sacrifice or say no to in pursuit of our plans? For in looking inward for the answer we must wrestle with the question of what we might leave behind. The comfort of the familiar pulls us backwards. The only choice is moving ahead. Should we dare act on what we’ve foreseen.

    • Decide What to Be and Go Be It

      What do we make of this last day of the year business? What do we make of any day, really? 2021 was a tough year, just like 2020 was, but looking back there was still some epic in-country travel, there was still some great hikes (fewer than I’d have liked), there was still time with family and friends of consequence, and there was still productive output in the work I choose to do. Does that make it a bad year? It’s very hard to string together 365 great days, but just as hard to string together 365 bad. Shouldn’t we acknowledge each for what they are? Good or bad, each day carried us to here, and another chance to make a go at it tomorrow. It’s just life.

      So what do we do with the compass and the map on the last day of the year? Do we be so bold as to make big plans? Do we settle into more of the same? Resolutions are like fortune cookies; a thrill of possibility in a stale pastry of will to follow through. Empty promises, empty calories.

      Better to choose the small stepping stones of habit formation that bring you to where you want to be. Streaks are the only thing that work for me. Check the box with whatever measure is the bare minimum for you on writing or exercise or learning a language or reading more books than you did last year. Try to do more than the bare minimum but keep the streak alive.

      December 31st is just another day, just like January 1st is. Every day we get to reinvent ourselves, every day is a journey to becoming. It’s simple, really, when you think about it. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • No Time for Tired

      Mais où sont les neiges d’antan! (Oh, where are the snows of yesteryear!)
      – François Villon, Ballade des dames du temps jadis

      We’re all a bit tired, aren’t we? Tired of the pandemic, tired of political deviants and extremists, tired of people not caring about the environment or really anything but themselves. Tired of things the way they are now. Tired that New Year’s Eve plans were scrapped because Christmas turned into a super spreader event, with half the vaccinated family getting COVID. You think maybe that booster will put you over the top and find your trail leg caught the hurdle.

      Villon was a rogue. He spent time in prison, and spent time writing poetry. He’s a complicated footnote in history. This poem, reflecting on the great women of the past during his time, lives on centuries after he too passed like the snows of yesteryear. And the analogy reminds us we too must pass from this moment. Our time here is short and not meant to be devoid of suffering and the occasional inconvenience.

      All we once knew has changed, all we know now will change again. Tomorrow, should we indulge in the folly of being there for it, will bring more change still. This is the way. Tired doesn’t matter. Billions of people had it worse than we do, right now, right here. Did you do a face plant on this hurdle? No? Then get over the next one. For the universe moves on with or without you. There’s no time for tired. We aren’t done with this race just yet.

    • Water and Wine, Experience and Emotion

      “The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.’ Water is experience, immediate sensation, and wine is emotion, and it is with the intellect, as distinguished from imagination, that we enlarge the bounds of experience and separate it from all but itself, from illusion, from memory, and create among other things science and good journalism. Emotion, on the other hand, grows intoxicating and delightful after it has been enriched with the memory of old emotions, with all the uncounted flavours of old experience, and it is necessarily an antiquity of thought, emotions that have been deepened by the experiences of many men of genius, that distinguishes the cultivated man.” – W.B. Yeats

      “In vino veritas, in aqua sanitas” (In wine there is truth, in water health)

      Water is best when it’s moving. There’s a reason we seek out ocean swells and waterfalls. It taps into out desire for constant change, for movement and action. Stagnant water is usually associated with contamination and sickness. Moving water is associated with vibrancy and health. We seek the fresh and new in our lives for it is life itself.

      Wine is no good at the moment it’s poured into the cask. It must age and mature, and rise to meet its potential depth of flavor. The French call this process élevage, the progression of wine between fermentation and bottling. The term élevage also means procreation. It’s clear the French saw the connection between aging wine and human life.

      Water as experience, wine as emotion. A great life is a proper mix of experience and emotion, new and old. With that in mind, shouldn’t we seek out new experiences? Shouldn’t we mine our deepest thoughts and emotions and create something from it? We need both in our lives, don’t we? Experience to encounter the world, to wrestle with it in real time and find our place in it. Emotion to reflect on what we’ve seen and grow, and ultimately realize our potential through maturity and insight.

      Turning to the Latin phrase, we see that there’s a balance between the two. To be healthy (sanus) we must refresh our bodies with nutrition and hydration and action. To be wise (sapiens), we must learn from this experience, meditate on it and grow. Balancing the two is the key to a vibrant, fulfilling life.

      Slàinte Mhath!

    • My 12 Favorite Books of 2021

      I’ll finish the year having read somewhere between 34-36 books. That includes some heavy lifting non-fiction, some escapist pager turner fiction and a couple of books of poetry. All but one are older classics that I finally tackled in 2021. We ought to live a bit outside ourselves more often, and reading is an easy way to travel back in time, far into the future, or to places we thought we knew better. Here, in no particular order, are some favorites:

      The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods – A. G. Sertillanges
      “If you produce nothing you get a habit of passivity; timidity grows continually and the fear caused by pride; you hesitate, waste your powers in wasting, become as unproductive as a knotted tree-bud.”

      Referenced in Newport’s book (next), I immediately purchased a copy and placed it on the top of the pile. The book is a bit dated, certainly written through the lens of a French Catholic philosopher in the first half of the 20th century, but bits of brilliance shine through. I’ll return to this one now and then in the future.

      Deep Work: Rules For Focused Success in a Distracted World – Cal Newport
      “To learn hard things quickly, you must focus intensely without distraction. To learn, in other words, is an act of deep work. If you’re comfortable going deep, you’ll be comfortable mastering the increasingly complex systems and skills needed to thrive in our economy.”

      Reading this book finally pushed me to delete Facebook from my phone, and to put the phone itself in another room when I want to get deep work done. The world is increasingly distracted, but we don’t have to be. The people capable of focusing and rising to the next level will fare well in a world where artificial intelligence and globalization threaten more and more jobs. Go deeper and differentiate from the shallow, distracted masses.

      The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals – Chris McChesney, Jim Huling, and Sean Covey
      “When a team defines its lead measures they are making a strategic bet. In a sense, they are saying, “We’re betting that by driving these lead measures we are going to achieve our wildly important goal.” They believe that the lever is going to move the rock, and because of that belief, they engage.”

      A classic in business writing, this book outlines the steps needed to identify and execute on the most important goals for an organization. The secret is deep focus on no more than one or two wildly important goals. The magic is in drawing the entire organization in to help make the dream a reality. Most people want meaning in their careers. When they identify the actionable tasks that contribute to the overall win and execute on them, everybody wins.

      Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Erik Larson
      “In his final log entry on the attack, at 2:25 P.M., [Kptlt. Walther] Schwieger wrote: It would have been impossible for me, anyhow, to fire another torpedo into this crushing crowd of humanity trying to save their lives.”
      Schwieger directed his U-boat out to sea. His crew was jubilant: they had destroyed the Lusitania, the ship that symbolized British maritime prowess.”

      Larson is one of the great historians of our time, and he unpacks moments like the Blitz and the sinking of the Lusitania with a style that few can match. We all sort of know the story of the Lusitania, but Larson unpacks the tragedy of it in a page-turner style. This book will fascinate you, and even as you know the inevitable ending you’ll be surprised by many of the details.

      Mastery – Robert Greene
      “Your true self does not speak in words or banal phrases. Its voice comes from deep within you, from the substrata of your psyche, from something embedded physically within you. It emanates from your uniqueness, and it communicates through sensations and powerful desires that seem to transcend you. You cannot ultimately understand why you are drawn to certain activities or forms of knowledge. This cannot really be verbalized or explained. It is simply a fact of nature. In following this voice you realize your own potential, and satisfy your deepest longings to create and express your uniqueness. It exists for a purpose, and it is your Life’s Task to bring it to fruition.”

      How do we reach mastery? Most don’t. Most settle for a life of unfocused and relative comfort, unwilling to spend the hours of apprenticeship to master their craft. For those who want to rise above the average, this is an excellent playbook. Greene walks the talk–few take the time to research and perfect a topic as he does.

      Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
      “We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectively.”

      Enlightening book that reveals how humans got to be who we are. Harari makes a strong case for the rise of humanity being great for us but catastrophic for every other species. This is a foundational book that I’d delayed reading until 2021 despite consistent prompts from friends.

      Keep Sharp: Building a Better Brain at Any Age – Sanjay Gupta M.D.
      “We don’t usually think about dementia when we’re entering our prime, but we should, because it provides a remarkable opportunity. Data from longitudinal observational studies accumulated over the past few decades have shown that aside from age, most other risk factors for brain disease can be controlled. That means you indeed have a powerful voice in controlling your risk for decline. As you might guess, some of the most influential and modifiable factors related to that decline are linked to lifestyle: physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, smoking, social isolation, poor sleep, lack of mentally stimulating activities, and misuse of alcohol.”

      Brain health is top of mind for me, and this book proved a reassuring playbook for controlling some of what happens with my own brain health over the second half of my life. Not surprisingly, what’s good for the body is usually good for the brain. Good nutrition, restorative sleep, proper hydration and exercise all help the brain as much as the body. Knowing this, you can fold the right kind of lifestyle choices into your daily routine and put yourself in a better position to have a vibrant, healthy brain to our final days.

      The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts – Shane Parrish
      “If we never learn to take something apart, test our assumptions about it, and reconstruct it, we end up bound by what other people tell us—trapped in the way things have always been done.”

      A playbook for conceptual thinking, this is one of three books Parrish published on mental modelling. It’s a helpful guide for framing a problem or decision using proven methodology. Parrish has an excellent podcast called The Knowledge Project that builds on this framework by exploring just how the world’s great thinkers frame their own decisions and build great organizations.

      West With The Night – Beryl Markham
      “The air takes me into its realm. Night envelops me entirely, leaving me out of touch with the earth, leaving me within this small moving world of my own, living in space with the stars.”

      This is a breathtaking book that sparkles with magic. Markham writes with an elegance that Hemingway would strive to match, raising the bar for writing in the 20th century. If you want to travel back in time to the barnstorming days of early flight, elephant hunting when the elephants had the upper hand and a glimpse of the changing landscape of Africa between the two World Wars this book is for you.

      Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – Simon Sinek
      “Before it can gain any power or achieve any impact, an arrow must be pulled backward, 180 degrees away from the target. And that’s also where a WHY derives its power. The WHY does not come from looking ahead at what you want to achieve and figuring out an appropriate strategy to get there. It is not born out of any market research. It does not come from extensive interviews with customers or even employees. It comes from looking in the completely opposite direction from where you are now. Finding WHY is a process of discovery, not invention.”

      Why do we align ourselves with brands, political parties or people? Because they speak to us on some level. We desire to belong to something. How we arrive at that feeling of belonging is the “why” that drives the “what” something is and “how” it’s done. Organizations that do this well, think Apple, create a compelling case to identify with the brand. The very best leaders create a compelling why.

      On the Road – Jack Kerouac
      “Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, or actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. All of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness. Pitiful forms of ignorance.”

      On the Road nagged me for years. For a few years in my early 20’s I chased the legend of Kerouac through the streets of Lowell, Massachusetts. I drank in some of the same bars that Kerouac drank in. Walked the same streets he grew up on. But I stubbornly kept his most famous book at arm’s length. I made a point of reading it in 2021 and saw the brilliance in his prose even as it betrayed the lifestyle that would eventually kill him.

      Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life – Richard Rohr
      “By the second half of life, you have been in regular unwelcome contact with your shadow self, which gradually detaches you from your not-so-bright persona (meaning “stage mask” in Greek) that you so diligently constructed in the first half of life. Your stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not “true.” It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die.”

      If we’re lucky, we all live two lives. We eventually transcend the character we are in the first part of our lives and “fall upward” into a higher self. I wouldn’t say I’ve arrived at that higher self, but I’m aware that it’s there should I stay on the path. Reading is a big part of that journey, and this and the other books finished in 2021 are stepping stones across the shallow stream to the other side.