Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • A Workhorse or Show Pony?

      There’s an old expression, more a question of character, that floats around in the workplace. Simply put, when we talk of employees, are they workhorses or show ponies? Some people shun the spotlight, grind away at the work that must be done and move on to the next project when it’s complete. Some people avoid the tough work but appear busy, and look for the spotlight and the opportunity to shine. The inference, naturally, is to be the workhorse.

      I’ve been the workhorse in my professional life and in my pursuits outside of work. Some days I’d rather be with the ponies prancing around in the green grass, doing nothing much at all. Wouldn’t that be nice? Why must we always be the workhorse? Because who really wants to hang around with show ponies all day? What kind of life is that, friend? A life of posturing and surface-level conversations, lackluster commitment to anything substantive, quick abandonment when fashion changes. Show ponies live a life of bullshit and betrayal. In that world, if you aren’t in the spotlight you’re in the shadow.

      We see examples all around us. I watch a couple of YouTube channels for entertainment. I’ve noticed that some shows start off as one or two workhorses doing what they can to keep afloat. Tough projects are shown, not to celebrate the workhorse nature of the horses, but to show how they did it (with the underlying message being; maybe you can too). The best of these channels retain this spirit, but most spiral into the YouTube formula of chasing subscribers and patreons to fund their adventures. Simply put: most turn into show ponies.

      Did you watch the United States’ State of the Union last week? A room full of show ponies posing as workhorses. Want to make progress in a world full of complicated problems? Elect more workhorses. The problem is that most workhorses don’t want the spotlight, and some turn into show ponies when they find they like the spotlight a little too much. The upcoming election will have a workhorse against a show pony. Deep down we know which is which, and our future is literally at stake based on which horse wins the race.

      The question is, what are we? We can be both at different times in our lives. I was a workhorse for part of the weekend doing projects around the yard. When I’m presenting in front of a room full of people I turn into a show pony, making the most of the spotlight while I’m in it. In between we settle into a routine that reveals who we really are. Anyone can be a workhorse or a show pony, it’s all conditioning and reward. So as we begin another day, isn’t it fair to ask ourselves, “just who do we want to be in this world today?” The world answers, “what do you think we need more of right now?”

    • Becoming That Which One Essentially Is

      “Nobody can enjoy the experience he desires until he is ready for it. People seldom mean what they say. Anyone who says he is burning to do something other than he is doing or to be somewhere else than he is is lying to himself. To desire is not merely to wish. To desire is to become that which one essentially is.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      I was talking to my bride about an upcoming trip friends are taking to a place I’ve wanted to go. We’re going to a few remarkable places ourselves this year and we can’t do everything, right?Sure: we can’t do everything… I can’t argue that I often say I want to go to many places, but there are precious few that haunt me in my dreams.

      To desire to see the world is common, but precious few actually seek out all of the places they want to go to. Those trips of a lifetime are called that because most people only take them once. It’s up to us to determine if that’s enough. My own time bucket for such travel is shockingly short, and so I feel I must go when the siren calls. We all know what those sirens were up to, don’t we? Calling us to the rocks. The only safe way out was to keep going.

      The person we are now is the person we’re ready to be. Who we aspire to be means nothing more than the direction in which it sends us. We are here because we were once called here, and we willingly made the journey. Sometimes we arrive at a place we love, sometimes we find that it’s not what we wanted at all. Who we become next is up to us—but we must keep moving.

      As James Clear said (and I’ve quoted countless times now): “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” Knowing this, we simply begin moving deliberately in the direction we wish to go in. Our habits are the incremental steps towards becoming. It begins with desire and is realized through consistent action. Simple, yet so hard to grasp sometimes. Routine hides in plain sight, after all.

      The thing is, we seek so much more than to visit various places. It’s not the visit, it’s the transformation of the visitor. We are completing a puzzle who’s picture is our future self. But in this puzzle, we get to choose some of the pieces. And just when we look at ourselves in the mirror, the puzzle pieces get scrambled all over again. We can’t spend our lives wishing for tomorrow, but we can choose some of the pieces now that will make up who we’ll be then.

    • Front Loading Productivity and Purpose

      “Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.” — Stephen Covey

      Early risers are normally starting the day a step ahead, while late risers begin a step behind. That doesn’t translate into what each accomplishes in a day, but it does play a part in how we feel. I hate feeling like I’m late for anything. Some people in my life don’t stress about such things unless it’s a flight or other time-dependent circumstance. Who says one is better than the other? But we know which is better for us.

      Productivity isn’t dependent on starting early, but when we prioritize the right things first it helps ensure that those things get done. For years now that’s been writing, reading and my most essential work tasks. Everything else can fall into place, get piled on or slip to tomorrow, but the day will be deemed a success once I’ve checked those right boxes.

      We know what is essential in our day because it nags at us until we’ve done it. Likewise, we know what isn’t all that important too. To borrow a concept from James Clear, we vote for our identity one checked or ignored habit at a time. He would also suggest making good habits easy to complete, and bad habits more difficult. The best way to do that is to front load the most important things and defer the trivial and bad.

      I know a brisk walk or row would greatly compliment my habit stack in the morning, but I often defer this until late in the day where excuses swirl like leaves in autumn. As a result, the fitness routine is inconsistent. Fortunately I know the fix: do it first. Earn breakfast with sweat equity. Those established habits have enough momentum to sustain a minor deferment.

      The question that greets is each morning is, what drives us? Covey was right that our principles push us forward. When we live a principled life we won’t tolerate excuses from ourselves on why we didn’t at least try harder to follow through on our promises. We become less complacent with where and who we currently are and more proactive in getting after our “it”. For there’s no time to waste.

    • Favorable Conditions

      “We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

      For years I didn’t write because the time wasn’t right to write. Now I write every day, no matter what, and the words flow. It’s not ever about finding the perfect opportunity to do it, it’s about simply doing it. Always ship the work, as Seth Godin would put it.

      So what of other things? When will the workouts be more consistent? When will the pergola be fixed? What of the broken window that’s been nagging? Life is full of things we say we’ll get to someday, when. Every one of these deferred promises pile up one atop the other on our mind, rising to the top, sliding downward for another promise until they are wrestled to the top again. A lifetime of deferred promises is no way to live a life. Do what must be done and throw the rest away.

      “You can do anything, but not everything.” ― David Allen

      Looking back, it’s clear that momentum plays a big part in where we are now. We are what we repeatedly do and all that. Does that make it excellent or merely routine? Repetition for its own sake can be our salvation or our ruin. If I only write when conditions are perfect for writing this blog would be published every month or two, maybe with a longer break while I took care of some other things. Perhaps that would result in better content, but I should think it would mostly result in lost momentum and another promise broken. Do the work, whatever the situation, and ship it.

      The thing to defer is the excuse. I’ve promised myself many times that I’ll stop writing this damned blog over and over again when things get hectic or I’m on a vacation or I’m amongst friends and family and the time used for writing feels better served elsewhere. What’s one day off from the routine? Ultimately I push something out anyway, just to check the box, written in a hurry on my Jetpack phone app and most definitely not perfect. Tomorrow I can quit this routine, just not today.

      Which leads back to that pile of promises weighing me down, nestled just so on the back of my mind. There’s a distinct loss of stability when we become top heavy. The answer is to shed ourselves of the things that don’t matter all that much in favor of the things that matter a great deal. Break down the latter into manageable bits and chip away at them no matter what.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.” — James Clear

      At some point we look back and realize that we’ve been doing that thing we promised ourselves we’d do for a good long time. It dawns on us that it’s become part of our identity, not just empty promises but clear examples of who we’ve become. Something as simple as reading and writing and taking a walk every single day make a huge difference over time. We simply must begin and persist in perpetuating the myth on our hero’s journey to whom we will become.

    • Processing Time

      “Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. Follow your breath to prevent your mind from straying. Do not try to hurry to get the job over with. Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life. Washing the dishes is meditation. If you cannot wash the dishes in mindfulness, neither can you meditate while sitting in silence.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation

      The writing of the blog post started late this morning, with fresh snow to clear from the driveway a priority, and a relatively subdued morning to follow. The words will come, as they always do, and they’re often better for having changed up the routine. I know I was the better for having done a small bit of exercise in the cold air with a pink and orange kaleidoscope of dancing clouds greeting me through the bare trees.

      The driveway and I have an understanding. If the snow is heavy and wet and more than two inches, I use the snowblower. If light and fluffy and less than four inches, I alway shovel. All other conditions fall somewhere in between, but I default to the shovel when it’s a reasonable ask of myself. I do this because so little in our lives is analog or manual anymore. We’ve got engines and batteries and computers for everything nowadays. These things do the work for us, but rob us of time to process anything in our minds. How many drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill, watching the screen in front of them take them to another place? How does that stir the imagination? I have a friend who walks through the woods to work every day and consider him the luckiest commuter I know.

      We must design a lifestyle that allows us to contemplate things, and to dream and discover things about the world and ourselves. There must be time in our daily lives for us to reflect on the world and our place in it, or we will remain nothing but distracted souls like all the rest. That’s not us, friend. Carve out and protect that processing time. As a bonus, we’ll be greeted with a job well done and a wee bit more clarity.

    • Countdown Days

      I dabble in spreadsheets. It began (and continues) as a necessary skill in my career, but really I love the story that numbers tell you. Not too long ago I mapped out the next five years on a spreadsheet, just to see what I was working with. Using a specific date of relevance as a target date for zero, I created a countdown to that date. It turned out to be a nice round number: 1900. That became my five year plan number, and so a countdown began.

      A countdown to what? Why, the person I want to be at that number. What I want to be doing and where I want to be doing it. All sorts of things come into play then: fitness level, financial goals, career accomplishments, places to be visited, books to be read or written, and yes: daily blog posts (who’s up for 1900 more?!).

      You can fit a lot into 1900 lines on a spreadsheet if you try hard enough. I have many goals in my life, and I started plugging in events and trips and milestones onto that spreadsheet. It turns out there’s a lot to do in 1900 days, and one can’t very well waste them. But 1900 is a big number, best broken down into bite-sized bits. 90 days is something many of us can relate to. It’s a quarter of a year, three months, one trimester. 90 days is a number we can grasp and work with. Divide 1900 by 90 and you get 21 and change. It turns out 1900 wasn’t optimal after all, but it’s the number and loose change be damned. That loose change is full of days of ripe experience, or at least they ought to be, and who’s going to complain about a few extra days as a buffer against the curveballs of life?

      90 days offer countdowns within countdowns. We can break it down to 30 days and weeks and single days, and do what we can with them in their time. Life is a countdown, and we all know the score. The end game isn’t the zero we reach on our expiration but the blank spaces we fill up along the way. Putting things in black and white offers a clear imperative. Do something with today lest it slip away. Tempus fugit.

      Upcoming events become countdowns within a countdown too. Some trips I’m looking forward to are counting down as I write this, and I calculate the things that must happen between now and then, adding to-do items to a growing list and get to it. There’s growing excitement in a countdown, and I feel the stir of faraway places and future goals and tasks accomplished in each entry on the spreadsheet.

      The key to a blank spreadsheet is filling in what we’re measuring. We aren’t just counting down to nothing after all: we’re creating a lifetime of memories, filled with all the things that make up our days. A countdown merely brings focus to an otherwise ambiguous stack. Like any great salesperson, we must sell the vision. In this case, we’re selling ourselves on the vision, that we might take the necessary steps to get from here to there. When we finish, we can see all the things we did to get there, and celebrate the journey all the more.

      But why five years and change? Haven’t we got so much more left in the tank than that? We must set a fixed date in our future that we might strive for more in that timeframe. Sure, we all anticipate many more days. If we’re lucky enough we can add a few more countdowns after this one is done. But that’s a much longer spreadsheet, isn’t it? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

    • Earning Deserving

      “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.” ― Charles Munger

      “Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.” — Jim Rohn

      We are all trying to reach someplace better than we began. Some of us began in a pretty decent position, some are well behind the 8 ball. It would be irresponsible to not acknowledge that starting position isn’t important in our lives. Head-starts do matter, but we ought to remember that where we start doesn’t guarantee where we finish. Most people in a free society have agency over their lives. Many simply choose to relinquish it.

      We all know examples of people who waste their potential. The mirror is particularly handy when we think of those what-might-have-beens. There’s an old saying about mirrors being much smaller than windshields for a reason: we must look forward not back to get where we want to go. Put another way, if we aren’t moving forward we’re in danger of being dragged backwards by the past.

      But forward is daunting. It’s changing the very things that make us who we are, and becoming someone else. The same is comfortable, while change seems like a lot of work. Crossing that chasm seems impossible at times. This is where that small mirror can help offer perspective. Think of the things that we once thought were impossibilities in our lives that are now core parts of our identity. The future doesn’t look so daunting when viewed from the lens of possibility.

      Sure, excellence is a habit. Who doesn’t want to reach their level of personal excellence? It turns out plenty of people would rather be comfortable than try to leap across chasms. More often than not, I’d rather be comfortable than working out or hiking up a mountain or doing the work that leads to uncommon results in my career. The struggle is real, and the only way forward is to take those incremental steps necessary to move onward and upward. When we keep checking boxes we close gaps between who we were and who we want to become. Deep down, we know that deserving is earned one step at a time. It turns out that all that really matters is what we do next.

    • Words That Will Last

      Now I’m a reader of the night sky
      And a singer of inordinate tunes
      That’s how I float across time, living way past my prime
      Like a long lost baby’s balloon
      So I hang on to the string, work that whole gravity thing
      But when my space ship goes pop, back to the earth I will drop
      Into the sea, or the limbs of a tree
      Or the wings of my love
      And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
      Maybe invent me a story or two
      I’ve got coastal confessions to make
      How ’bout you, how ’bout you?
      They say that time is like a river
      And stories are the key to the past
      But now I’m stuck in-between here at my typing machine
      Trying to come up with some words that will last
      It’s so easy to see that we live history
      And if I just find the beat, I know I’ll land on my feet
      I always do, hadn’t got a clue
      Does it come from above?
      — Jimmy Buffett, Coastal Confessions

      On those occasions where I debate the merit of Jimmy Buffett to the catalog of great lyricists, I generally point to Coastal Confessions or A Pirate Looks at 40 as examples of a writer tapping into magic. As a person trying to tap into magic now and then myself, I appreciate a great poem disguised as song. We’re all trying to find words that will last a beat longer than the average sound bite, aren’t we?

      Lately I’m caught up in refining my habits and routines, that I might be more efficient and such. This betrays a desire to do work that matters with the urgency of a quarterback who’s seen that this game is all about clock management. We can be the most brilliant player on the field and it won’t matter a lick if we run out of time before we complete the drive. The thing is, even when we do everything perfectly, sometimes the kick goes wide right. The universe has its own say in how things play out. Memento mori, Carpe diem. Amor fati.

      This blog remains a line of breadcrumbs between where I started and where I am today. The path ahead is only hinted at. Breadcrumbs have a way of being swallowed up in time. I’m not naive enough to believe any of these words will last as they are published. In the end, it’s the ripple, not the splash that lingers. A splash is immediate, the ripple may touch people who were never aware there was a splash at all. The thing is, the world is full of people trying to make a bigger splash than everyone else. That leads to a confused sea state, with ripples coming from all directions. Best to set our own course and invite others along for the ride. I’ve set my own course for the coast of somewhere beautiful.

      Speaking of confused sea states, I’ve just lumped a few analogies into one short blog post. What else is new? Some of these themes have repeated over and over again. That’s inevitable with a couple of thousand blog posts, but it’s mostly just me reminding myself to keep going with it. The story is still being written, after all. We can’t control the result but we can manage the clock a bit, and discover that we love the game.

    • A Lifetime Routine

      “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” — Abraham Lincoln

      We are forever building our foundation for the future in the action we take today. Surely it arrives, one day closer than yesterday. We arrived at today just the same way, with the skills and habits and temperament built on a lifetime of routine. Routine can have a negative connotation, but it can also be positive. Routine can make us fit and fluent and financially sound, or deliver us to a less desirable state. Routine is everything and nothing at all. A routine is the chosen path we take from here to there.

      Knowing this, we have today to make something better tomorrow. Habits change on a dime, for the better or the worse. What is routine will thus be who we are and who we will be. Sure, every now and then something unexpected changes the game, but for most of us, we are what we repeatedly do and always will be, just older.

      Yet the game can change. And we can always change our own game. We must remember this, and have the agency to take that first step, and the tenacity to keep going from here to tomorrow. It’s fair to ask what our routine is adding up to and change the equation to favor our future outcome. For we are indeed the sum of our days.

    • Truth and Stories

      “Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” ― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

      Truth is not found in the media or popular opinion or in the best of intentions. It’s seen in the boxes checked (or unchecked) day-after-day, cold indicators of what we have done or not done with the promises we make to ourselves. Truth is the scale and the waistline and the recycling bin. We know the truth when we encounter it staring right back at us. Maybe that’s why so many prefer to focus on other people’s stories instead of their own truth.

      Stories are what we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it. Stories scare us into submission or make us feel better about unchecked boxes. Stories are watercolors of hopefulness or fear, the promise of better somedays, and reasons for why we didn’t act then. Stories are lovely things or scary things, and sometimes confused with truth, until truth knocks a story down to size. Some people live their whole lives in a story, never finding the truth. What a sad story indeed.

      Change may be built on the truth or a compelling story. We ought to know what is driving us, that we may arrive at a place better than the one we departed from. What are we tracking in our lives? Properly tracked, metrics tell the story of who we might become, while telling the truth about what we’ve done thus far. We are what we repeatedly do—that’s truth, but we may decide what to be and go be it—that’s a story. Both are necessary for us to reach another place in our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves where we stand, and what we stand for. What do we find acceptable in our lives? What do we settle for? Just where are our stories taking us? When we encounter the truth in these questions, we may change the chapters to come in our lives. For tomorrow is a story to be written, the only truth is today. Which begs another question: what will we do with it?