Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • Spending Time

      Planning is generally done in earnest this time of year, but at some point, action must take over. Too much planning becomes procrastination. We can plan ourselves all the way to the grave if we let ourselves. We must do to become. I believe it was Melissa Heisler who said living is a verb, not a noun. There’s a deep truth in that statement. We must act to live a full life.

      We must begin in earnest, today, to build on those hopes and dreams we spent New Year’s thinking about. For if not now, when? There is no other time. Baby steps turn into long strides that turn into giant leaps forward. There’s momentum in forward motion.

      “Six months from now, what you will you wish you had spent time on today?” — James Clear

      Where we spend time matters a great deal. We forget that sometimes as we go through our days getting from here to there. But where is there anyway? Is it simple here with a few more aches and pains? Time well-spent resonates differently for us than wasted time does. Wasted time feels hollow, while our well-spent time feels far more fulfilling. Who wants to look back on a day or a year or a life feeling empty?

      We intuitively know not to drink stagnant water, but forget we’re mostly water ourselves. Are we flowing towards something or settling into stagnant? Puddles stagnate then evaporate. We must find our ocean before we turn to dust. Too harsh? The point is to find the channel that keeps us flowing creatively, contributing to a greater purpose, so we might ultimately look back on this part of the journey as the point where we broke through the dam and really began making a splash.

    • The Steps Between Hurdles

      “Set it in your mind right now that the process is more important than the result. You don’t control the result; what you control are your actions.” — Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year

      It’s that time of year, when some of us are more hyper-focused on improving our productivity and effectiveness in our chosen work than usual. I have a few friends who roll their eyes when I start rattling off words like productivity and execution, but they’re also highly productive and execute on the things they choose to focus on. Think about what you’re most passionate about in life, be it your family, your writing, your fitness level, or your career—each thing that we’re highly engaged in features higher levels of execution and attention than the things we find less interesting. We naturally try harder to be good at the things that matter more.

      But what are we to do with the things that matter less but still matter a great deal? Nobody wants to stumble through life, we all want to lift ourselves and others through our contribution. And that’s where developing good habits and a process or system for living matter a great deal. If we fancy ourselves writers or athletes or accountants, we ought to refine our system of living to optimize our efficiency and results. I write best in the morning but find the afternoon better for a workout. You might find the morning the only effective time for a run, and late night the best time to focus on your best work. We learn what works over time and apply it to our lives.

      “Accountability is not consequences; it’s ownership.” — Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year

      If change is our constant companion, then refinement of our processes is our tool to overcome the hurdles we encounter. Each day is an opportunity to reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and what we must change in our system to be effective in this new reality. What we can’t do is bury our head in the sand and hope the world changes back again. We might as well finish the job and bury the rest of ourselves at that point. We must rise up, dust ourselves off and get to work on improving our lot in life.

      I’m not a runner, but I’m deeply invested in people who are. Having spent many hours on tracks, I know that effective hurdlers use a 3 step technique to clear hurdles in sprints. Some people use 4 steps between those hurdles because they have shorter legs or their gait between hurdles is off. This is less efficient and slower than 3 steps, but the point is to get over the hurdle and try to improve your steps on the next one. It seems this is a good analogy for our lives between hurdles too. The trick is to quickly adapt on the fly for what comes next.

      We’ve all just been through quite a hurdle, and yet we cleared it. Sure, maybe we banged our shin or stumbled a bit on our landing, but we’re on to the next hurdle now. That’s life in the race, isn’t it? We must focus continually on where we are and what we must face next. Best to have a system that enables, not hinders.

    • We Begin Again

      You always have two options.
      You can push harder.
      You can remove friction.
      — Greg McKeown

      We all know where we should push harder in our lives to reach personal goals. We also ought to think more about elimination. Shedding ourselves of artificial expectations and dreams that don’t resonate. Moving away from habits, tasks, people or careers that create tremendous friction in our path to a better life. Sometimes we can’t see the gaps because our way is jammed with trivial distractions. We must clear the gap to see how far we must leap.

      So it is that we begin again, reconciling accumulation (bad habits, weight, things, acquaintances, etc.) and the gap between where we are and where we wish to be. This shouldn’t be a once-a-year exercise, it should be a daily reflection. We have our stack of days ahead of us, and the gift of each should be measured and contemplated just the same. But how?

      Intentions are nothing, action is everything. Incremental improvement trumps grand plans, and each day, each bite or sip, each step, each page read, each meaningful conversation and each written word bring us closer to whatever compass heading we’ve set for ourselves. Alternatively, we can incrementally drift off course to a point where major changes are forced upon us. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to make the choice for ourselves instead of having it imposed on us?

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      Mary Oliver’s words inspire bold dreams, and there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big. But to be attained we must break those dreams down into bite-sized habits. Today, like many of you, I will assess where things are, make a course adjustment and begin again. I won’t do this with bold, unattainable goals with unrealistic timeframes but with a few incremental changes I can track daily. I’ll take the shiny new calendar and map out the big trips and events that should be highlights for the year and identify time to add micro-adventures and brief flings with bolder living.

      Sailors have their log book, and so too should we. Log each day and reflect on it. My personal favorite is the line per day journal, which boils down each day into whatever notable thing you choose to write down. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and strongly recommend it. In fact I just gave each of my kids a LEUCHTTURM1917 Some Lines A Day 5 Year Memory Notebook to begin this habit themselves, but you don’t have to spend much to seed a habit — a simple notebook will do. The point is to begin doing it and never break the streak. Magic ensues.

      This year I’m doubling down on my line per day by adding a picture per day, using an iPhone and an album dedicated just to this. Combined, these habits should be fascinating for me (if perhaps exceedingly dull for the rest of the world). If nothing else, each forces us to add a spark to the moment at hand and wonder to our lives.

      If we don’t step out on the dance floor we’ll forever be wallflowers. You know what’s more fun than stepping out onto the dance floor? Dancing to the dance floor. Remove friction, work hard on what matters most and track progress. Find your groove thing and let it loose. That, friends, will make the New Year meaningful in the end.

    • Here it Comes

      Another year already? With so much left undone?! So many good and bad days, rolled into twelve months. It’s been a great year. It’s been a horrible year. And now it’s over. And so it all begins again tomorrow.

      If we’ve learned anything from our stack of years, it’s that time flies, and 2023 will go just as quickly as 2022 did, and 2021 before that. We ought to feel that urgency and apply it to our days. I hope we do.

      Ready or not, here it comes. Beginning with today and tomorrow and each precious nugget of living. May we use it wisely.

      Happy New Year!

    • Change Agent

      “It is necessary to uproot oneself. To cut down the tree and make of it a cross, and then to carry it every day.” — Simone Weil

      It begins in earnest now, doesn’t it? We each become change agents in our own lives, advocating for the elimination of bad habits, the acquisition of new routines, and the wholesale disruption of the things central to our identity that we would rather see cancelled outright. Naturally this is a heavy lift in practice, but it sure is easy to write down as our ideal self.

      And so it is that resolutions fall by the wayside so quickly. Big, bold plans aren’t meant to be achieved easily. They’re meant to be broken down into bite-sized bits of habitualized change. So dream the dream, but simplify the steps that get you there. It’s not a mystery, it’s a process.

      Change is itself a habit we ought to embrace. When you look at the pace of change in the world, it’s essential to get comfortable with rapid changes in the way we consume media, filter information, pay for things, communicate with one another and earn a living. We don’t have to be early adopters, but we need to be prepared for whatever is coming next. This is called situational awareness, or simply knowing the environment you’re in or about to step into.

      We might get knocked over by the wave of change or surf it until it peters out. Either way they’ll be another wave arriving soon that we ought to be aware of. The trick in life is to avoid drowning long enough that we find our footing again. But in the confusion of the moment, isn’t it funny that we sometimes forget that we know how to swim? We must condition ourselves to being change agents, aware of our strengths and weaknesses, and forever adapting to find buoyancy in an unpredictable world.

      Life informs, we adapt and grow, then do it all over again. For the art of living is navigating and even embracing that continuous uprooting. We must carry whatever life throws at us, but that load makes us stronger and more resilient. It doesn’t get easier, we simply grow into the people who can manage such things.

      So as we look towards the New Year, we ought to view ourselves as change agents with an eye towards resiliency and growth. Life will keep throwing challenges at us—how do we thrive in such moments? Getting stronger, smarter and more comfortable with rapid change are thus goals worthy of our resolute focus.

    • Making a List, Checking it Twice

      “There are good checklists and bad…. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.” — Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

      The pandemic messed up a lot of us in different ways, and for me it was inconsistency in following through on commitments I’d made to myself. Row 5000 meters one day, then miss several days in a row. Hike in earnest for several months, then take several months off from it entirely. Write on that first draft for a few weeks and then miss a few. Work suffered similarly from such lapses. This level of inconsistency simply wouldn’t do.

      At some point my scattered brain returned to Bullet Journals as the way to organize my days. The simple checklist of things that must be done, and the joy of putting an X through that bullet, became a system I could stick with. Checklists work for me by adding focus and structure. If you put an X through every bullet you’re far more likely to get the result you’re seeking. The secret is in having the right bullets.

      Checklists solve the problem of inconsistency. We’re all familiar with the process of goal-setting. We begin with identifying a big goal, then break it down into measurable steps and then take these steps and break them down into tasks. Tasks live their best lives on a checklist. When you leave them roaming about on their own they cause trouble.

      If your big goal is to visit Paris in 2023, you might have steps that include saving money for the trip, improving your conversational French, and locking in the trip with reservations. The tasks might be setting up automatic deductions from your paycheck to a dedicated savings account, completing an hour of Duolingo lessons each day and scheduling your lunch hour to research and book flights, hotels and activities in Paris. These tasks all become bullets in the Bullet Journal.

      It should be more complicated than that, but really, most of life is showing up and doing the work. The trick is to work on what matters most. The trap that many of us fall into is feeling so self-confident that we begin to wing it. This is where critical steps are missed. We can all think of incidents big and small where some forgotten step led to problems later. Making a list, checking it twice eliminates the forgotten step. Remember that old idiom: the devil is in the details.

      As I write this it’s Christmas Eve in chilly New Hampshire. I’ve reviewed my checklists, and feel comfortable that everyone who was nice will be taken care of tomorrow. The process of using checklists ensures that all the details in my control are covered. That in itself is quite nice.

    • Delicate Things

      “Why shouldn’t we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music […], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?” — Elizabeth Bishop

      For all the big plans we make, most of our life is lived in routine. This blog is most often fueled by an early rise and a freshly ground cup of coffee. But when routine fails me and I really need to focus on writing or some other work, I put on my noise-cancelling headphones and play the same song on repeat until I’ve completed whatever it was that was getting overwhelmed by the gigantic. No surprise for readers that for me, that song is Wild Theme by Mark Knopfler. You can go right ahead and put it on my playlist when I pass.

      I’ve paired that song with a Scotch whiskey nosing glass filled with sand from Camusdarach Beach, sitting just out of reach of a certain curious cat who loves nothing more than knocking delicate things off of solid places. That beach is one of the stars of another work of art, Local Hero, that elicits eye rolls whenever I mention it to family and friends.

      I still have a water bottle filled with a bit of Walden Pond from a few weeks ago. I’m somewhere between boiling it for a cup of tea and pouring it in the pool, that I might have a bit of Walden around me every time I go for a swim. This might seem odd to the masses, and I respect that, but isn’t it just as odd to fixate on the lives of the Royal Family or to get a Mickey Mouse tattoo? Everyone has something that holds on to them through it all.

      A sprinkling of adventure does a soul good, but so too does the collection of delicate things that quietly surround us and makes us whole. These prove to be more important to us in our daily lives than the bucket list moments. That quiet inventory of art, music, prose and poetry lifts us up when we need them most, keeping us from drowning in the angry sea of everyday.

    • December Bay

      Sunsets must be earned in winter. There are no casual seaside deck conversations with a few pictures between sips of rum. No, you must seek out December sunsets by going to where it falls into the bay while bracing against biting cold winds galloping towards you in a stampede of frothy fury. Still, it makes a pretty picture and another memory.

      Micro-adventures and stolen moments of dancing with life count just the same as big trips and scheduled events. Life is our collection of all such experiences. We ought to sprinkle a bit more salt on our days to make them savory. For our best days are savored, aren’t they?

      Not as warm as it looks

    • Paddling Our Own Canoe

      “As one goes through life, one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.” — Katharine Hepburn

      “We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.” — Katharine Hepburn

      This is a powerful combination of punches landed by Hepburn, isn’t it? You can almost hear her voice speak as she points out what we all ought to hear now and then. Life is what we make of it, and the buck stops here. Simple, yet so many stew in the miserable broth of low agency salted in blaming others. Do we want to have a better life? Put down the blame salt. Begin by looking in the mirror.

      I’m looking out the window at freshly fallen snow. Just enough to coat everything, not enough to be particularly consumed with clearing it off the driveway. But I’ll likely clear it anyway. To be effective in our lives, we must face the world squarely as it presents itself to us and decide what to do, given the circumstances. Identity plays a part in this moment. When you identify yourself as someone who gets things done, you get the snow off the driveway. When you identify yourself as someone who delegates, you push the problem to others. Which is correct? It depends on the circumstances, of course, but in general subscribing to the paddling your own canoe philosophy does wonders for our quality of life.

      I know, I know: Time is money, and it’s not worth our precious time to do menial tasks that are better delegated to others. Maybe, if you’ve got the money and inclination, hiring a personal assistant, or a landscaper, a chef, or a maid is your answer so you aren’t squandering time on the trivial tasks. Maybe this helps you focus on the important task. But the underlying question must always be, to what end? What are we living for? Is chopping our own wood intrinsically valuable? Isn’t it? How about pushing a light coating of snow off the driveway? Just what is the stuff of life anyway?

      The answer is that the stuff of life is what we make it out to be. We derive meaning and purpose out of whatever the heck we choose to derive it from. For me, clearing a bit of snow off the driveway is a cheap form of meditation, a moderate form of exercise, and a chance to assess where I am in my life this crisp morning. I take stock of where I’ve done well, and where I’ve strayed off course in my objectives. This is where the shovel hits the road, if you will, and where I decide just what I’m going to be today so that I might get straight away to being it.

      Change begins with introspection in space. We must give ourselves the room to find the answers to our questions. And in the answer lies the action: Goals are broken down into projects, which in turn are broken down into tasks. Celebrate the tasks for the direction they carry you. This, friends, is paddling our own canoe.

    • Cultivating Discernment

      “The task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there.” — Hubert Dreyfus, All Things Shining

      “Just as we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about how all those poets out there are going to monetize their poetry, the same is true for most bloggers.” — Seth Godin

      At some point, several years ago, I was finally convinced to just begin writing a blog. At some point, not very long after that moment, I finally understood that the best reason to write a blog was to cultivate the art of writing better and the art of discernment. The two go hand-in-hand, and combined make us more engaged and active participants in living.

      The habit stuck, the streak continues, the writing may even be improving, but if there’s anything that has improved exponentially in these years of posting it’s honing that art of discernment. We learn to observe nuance and craft something of it. And then? Do it again the next day.

      There are very successful bloggers out there who have developed a large base of followers, subscribers and subsequently, advertisers. This is not one of those blogs. This is an act of discernment, cultivated daily. I suppose that in itself may be successful enough.