Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • What Can You Do In 100 Days?

      I was scanning the shelves at a bookstore a couple of weeks ago and saw a book called The 100 Day Goal Journal, subtitled “Accomplish What Matters To You”. And I thought, well, what would I try to accomplish in 100 days anyway? I’m currently powering along habit stacking and generally pleased with the incremental results. But I appreciate the concept of focusing intensely on a specific goal to achieve it over time. It falls in line with the Warren Buffett’s 5/25 Rule in only focusing on the top five and forgetting the rest until you’ve accomplished each of the five.

      I’ve listened to John Lee Dumas’ podcast… It’s not my thing; too cheerleader or drive time radio DJ for me. I’m sure there’s a powerful message in that presentation, I’m just not reaching across the chasm of peppy delivery to embrace it. So buying the book seemed outside my zone. I’m chipping away at plenty of goals already, and really, how do you prioritize one over the others? Which is exactly why I bought it: to focus intensely on the one. And what is the one anyway? Write the novel? Lose weight? Master the French language? All personal goals for sure, but I’m already chipping away at those. I needed something that was currently outside my habit loop but important to me. My career. In this case a work goal of bringing the region to quota by the end of Q2. If you subtracted the weekends 100 work days gets you to June, so it falls in line with an audacious goal. If I fall short the region will be better for the intense focus on it, but why hedge bets?

      I postponed the start of audacious while I beat back influenza. Shift the start line and you shift the finish line, but it’s still well before the end of June. And so it began yesterday as soon as I realized I could stand up for more than two hours without curling into the fetal position coughing and shivering. I’ve been sequestered in the home office while I climb back to normalcy, but a quick check tells me I’m ready. Excuses put aside like warm blankets early in the morning. You’re ready? Lovely. So get going already! Go!

    • Scenario Planning and Backcasting

      “Consider a broad range of possibilities for how the future might unfold to help guide long-term planning and preparation…. The reason why we do reconnaissance is because we are uncertain. We don’t (and likely can’t) know how often things will turn out a certain way with exact precision…. By at least trying to assign probabilities, we will naturally move away from the default of 0% or 100%, away from being sure it will turn out one way and not another.” – Annie Duke, Thinking In Bets

      I was giving this book a few days to digest before coming back to this concept of scenario planning Duke writes about. To me this is the heart of her book (the title does give it away). I’m not a poker player, but I do think in future probabilities in my career, and found this concept helpful in how I’m looking at 2020 and beyond. This goes beyond the usual weighing the probability percentage on an opportunity you’re forecasting to close, and looking at the bigger picture. Will this tactic work on this project? Maybe. Will it hold up as sustainable for the next five years? Harder to determine. How will changes in the economy impact the probability of this outlook? Does living in the same house for the next ten years increase or decrease the likelihood of retiring with a big enough nest egg?

      These are the predictive exercises that clarify a vision for your future. When you combine it with another tool in your belt you can begin to identify actionable steps to get you there. Duke doubles down in covering the concept of backcasting, or working backwards from a positive future:

      “Identify the reasons they got there, what events occurred, what decisions were made, what went their way to get the enterprise to capture that market share. This enables the company to better identify strategies, tactics, and actions that need to be implemented to get to the goal.” – Annie Duke, Thinking In Bets

      The timing of this book was good for me as I map out the year ahead. I’m familiar with both techniques, but I’m not proficient at either. That’s something to work on as I refine my business plan for the year, and equally important for the other objectives in my life. A call to action, if you will, to clarify the vision and the steps needed to reach that outcome.

    • Doing Things That Matter

      A little more than a year into my focus on daily habits, the overall the results are encouraging.  James Clear’s Atomic Habits poured gasoline on my focus on doing things that matter every day,  beginning with small things like reading more, writing every day and exercise.  It started with changing the routine when I got up in the morning, where once I’d consume sports media, check email, scroll through social media or play Words With Friends first thing in the morning, I started focusing on the very small habits that might move me forward.  Exercise to get the blood flowing, reading to get the brain matter firing on all cylinders, and writing, to finally do what I’ve been putting off for most of my life.  These aren’t everything that matter in my life, but they were the things I was pushing aside to focus on the other things.

      Priorities remain: family and work obligations come first, but following close behind are the daily habits. In fact, each habit improves the quality of my life, which improves the whole. Pretty simple, really, if you just incorporate the right habits and build them into your routine.  I’ve seen tangible momentum in all three, with the writing on this blog a measure of proof to consistency.  You’ll have to take my word for it on the exercise, and just like the writing daily habits add up over time.  I’ve seen the scale slowly – painfully slowly – showing consistent improvement.  I’ll take that.  I write a lot about writing, and walking.  And then there’s the reading….

      Once again the books are piling up, with four in the cue already I just purchased a Kindle version of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and revisited Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath 1938-1941.  It would be far better to finish one of the original pile before adding more, but so be it.  Books tap you on the shoulder and tell you “It’s my turn” when they feel you’re ready.  This morning Hesse and Steinbeck were both bullying their way into my reading time, and I welcomed them with open arms.  My reading is accelerating, not by speed-reading (which I’ve tried but don’t enjoy), but through focus and occasional multi-tasking (reading on the Kindle app on the iPhone while in line at the store, and more frequently, reading with maximum font on the treadmill while churning out steps).  Consistent, daily reading has been one of the best things I could’ve done for myself.

      So what else matters?  Plenty.  The world is getting exponentially better in many ways, and sliding into the abyss in a few ways.  If you want to improve the world around you it starts with contribution.  The more you do, the more capacity you have to contribute more; more effort, more money, more intellectual horsepower, more empathy, more credibility, and more time.  Ironic, isn’t it?  The more you do the more time you’ll find for the things that matter.  And there’s plenty that matters, if you take the time to think about it.  And that’s where I find myself today, thinking about it and taking a small measure of action, one step at a time.

    • Walking in Circles

      Last night I glanced at my watch and recognized that the walk streak was in peril.  I did the math, adding the drive times ahead of me, my son’s college basketball game I planned to watch, and the number of steps I had to do to get there.  I pulled into the parking lot of a small college in Massachusetts, glanced around and thought this was it; streak over.  I had to walk 2 miles to get over the hump, or 4000 steps.  It was a bitingly cold evening and the sun was setting.  What to do?  Walk around the campus as it got dark?  Possible, but this wasn’t a campus to wander around in the dark.  Safe, but completely foreign to me.  I told myself to stop thinking about it and just get out there, left the warmth of the car and walked down the hill looking for a path.  And there was the outdoor track, sprinkled in snow but mostly clear.  One gate was left unlocked, inviting runners and walkers to take a spin but getting no takers until I came along.  Floodlights remained cold and dark, as if to say “Why bother?  What kind of fool would be on this frozen track tonight?”  Hey there dark floodlights, I’m your fool!

      Did I mention the biting cold?  Yes?  Did I mention I was wearing business casual clothing with a light coat on and dress shoes?  No?  Well, that was the athletic attire for the two mile spin around the track in the darkening sky, shoehorned between work and a basketball game.  Take a lap, complain to myself about not bringing running shoes.  Take another lap, feel the cold seep inside the thin coat I wore.  Repeat.  But then something funny happened; I stopped caring about the cold and started checking the progress of my steps.  On a track there’s no mystery: 400 meters any way you look at it, repeat eight times and you get to 2 miles, which is what I needed to get over the top.  So I stopped whining to myself and got it done, and felt better for having done so.  The darkening sky was beautiful with the full “wolf” moon rising to mock my discomfort, and I smiled and mocked myself too.

      The thing about 10,000 steps is that it isn’t all that much in the big scheme of things.  I recognize it’s the bare minimum and more must be done to be truly fit.  But it’s a promise I made to myself to keep the streak alive for as long as possible, and I’m tired of breaking promises to myself.  So the track workout checked the box for another day – 33 and counting – and I got into the warmth of the gym and watched real athletes compete at a high level.  I used to be on of them, rowing instead of basketball, but an extremely fit, disciplined college athlete.  Then a few decades slip by, work, kids, commitments…  and habits slide with promises unkept, but you forgive yourself and move on.  If my hour on the track in dress shoes told me anything, it’s that I’m less tolerant of excuses I make to myself.  10,000 steps is one small habit on a stack of small habits I’ve been tracking.  Instead of thinking about resolutions and big  transformation, I’m thinking small daily habits and keeping the streak alive another day.  It seems to be getting me where I’d like to go, even if it seems like I’m walking in circles.

    • Better Decisions

      “In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.” – Annie Duke, Thinking In Bets

      As we enter the first full work week of the New Year, I’m focused on this concept of Second Order Thinking and working to apply it better in my life.  In short, asking what will be the consequences of doing this versus that in the first order, the second order and the third order?  If I eat this donut because it looks delicious (first order), then I’ll add more empty calories and gain weight (second order), which will make me more stressed out in the future when my pants are getting too snug (third order).  Second and third order thinking is a way of fast-forwarding into the future as you decide on whether or not to do something in the present.  It gets you out of the self-centered immediate gratification of now and looking at the ultimate satisfaction of then.  Ray Dalio describes it as the lower-level you winning out over the higher-level you.  I haven’t been consistent with this in my lifetime, particularly when it comes to snacking.  I’d say it’s time to look up from the proverbial candy dish and think beyond the moment.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.” – The Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

      I didn’t believe I’d like the book Thinking In Bets.  I’m not a poker player and have no desire to immerse myself in the world of poker. They wear sunglasses indoors and pull their hats down low to cover expressions on their faces.  I mean, who wants to hang out with people doing that?  But this isn’t a book about poker, it’s a book about decision-making.  And making better decisions is something I’ve been working on in myself for some time.  It started with this idea of Second Order Thinking, where you weigh the consequences of your decision now and into the future.  I’ve made plenty of decisions in my lifetime that made sense in the immediacy of the moment that turned out to be bad decisions down the road.  And a few that I thought weren’t great early on that turned out to be brilliant (and lucky) decisions with hindsight.

      We’re the average of the five people we hang around with the most, as Jim Rohn would put it.  Applied to what I’m reading, I’m currently hanging around with stoics, poets and experts in creating and sustaining better habits.  And now I’ve invited decision-making experts to the party.  I’m okay with that mix, and will enhance it over time.  But reading about something isn’t doing something.  That’s a trap that you realize as you read book after book without applying the knowledge you pick up from all that reading.  No, the rubber meets the road when you take action.  Applied knowledge, repeated daily, leads to exponential improvement over time.  I’ve seen that working in all things over the course of my life.  The focus now is to improve the decision-making process so I spend that time on better, more productive activity.  Dance a bit more in the higher-level self.  Now is as good a time as any to get to it.

    • Rising to the Occasion

      “It might be possible to do something that’s not ordinary.” – Tom Petty

      I’ve heard this Tom Petty quote in my head since I heard him say it in an interview, released well after his death.  Do something that’s not ordinary.  Don’t just read about the accomplishments of others, take some action yourself.  And this blog is a step towards that.  You’re witnessing a bit of the doing something part, and eventually maybe it will be well beyond ordinary.  But not ordinary takes time.  10,000 hours kind of time, and likely much more than that.  Action repeated over and over until it becomes… something.  I keep reminding myself of that during these moments of grinding it out.  A blog is by nature a public-facing announcement to the world (hello, by the way – thanks for stopping by) that you’re doing something.  It’s a daily cadence of record, sometimes better than other times, but documented publicly that you’re putting in the time so that maybe you’ll get a little better over time.

      “Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.” – James Clear

      More writing behind the blog offers an opportunity to accelerate, to pour gas on the fire and go beyond the ordinary.  I ask myself often, blogging is great and you’re showing progress, now what more have you got in you?  How will you rise to the occasion and do something…. more?

      “Writers should realize that the novels that are remembered, that become monuments, would in fact be those which err on the side of audacious prose.” – Chigozie Obioma

      Now that’s a challenge, isn’t it?  I’ll concede there isn’t much audacious prose in this blog, but then again the intent of alexandersmap was never audaciousness, only consistency of effort and a challenge to myself to make it consistently more interesting with fewer typos.  To use writing to master the habit of showing up, to borrow James Clear’s phrase.  In 2018, when I started this blog, I was inconsistent and unsure of the direction I wanted to take my writing.  In 2019 I became very consistent (writing every day, posting sometimes twice a day).  In 2020 the goal is to keep that consistency and take the writing to another level, something not ordinary, if you will.  I’m well aware that I’ve strayed from the original focus of the blog (local history and regional travel), but it’s a journey and the thing about journeys is you change course now and then.  I still love the original focus of this blog and will return to it often, hopefully in new and compelling ways.  But I know I’m on the journey too and the writing takes me wherever the muse wants to go.  Where will it take us next?  Time will tell.  The trick is to rise to meet it.

    • Attention to Detail

      The funny thing about the first few days of a New Year is that I catch myself looking forward quite often.  There’s nothing wrong with looking forward, just as there’s nothing wrong with looking back towards where you’ve been, as long as you’re grounded in the present.  One of the things I love about Mary Oliver poems is her focus on the things in daily life that you might miss if you’re not paying attention.  Shell fragments on the beach become a story in a poem that makes me think of a walk on the beach in a different way.  The poet, teaching us how to see:

      “I go down to the edge of the sea.
      How everything shines in the morning light!
      The cusp of the whelk,
      the broken cupboard of the clam,
      the opened, blue mussels,
      moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
      and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
      dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
       moisture gone.
      It’s like a schoolhouse
      of little words,
      thousands of words.
      First you figure out what each one means by itself,
      the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
      full of moonlight.

      Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.”
      – Mary Oliver, Breakage

      The other day while leaving Cape Cod I was so caught up in getting things packed up to get to work that I missed an opportunity to go to the dump.  Now don’t get me wrong, going to the dump in and of itself is not my favorite activity.  But going to the dump with my favorite Navy pilot, well, that’s a different story.  But I was so focused on checking boxes and getting tasks done that I let him go off to bring the trash to the transfer station on his own, missing the chance to spend 30 minutes talking about nothing and everything.  Moments like that are available if you pay attention, and slip away when you don’t.  I’ll regret the lost opportunity, and have already forgotten what was so important for me to get done that I passed it up.

      We’re all a work in progress, sometimes things just fall into place and we’re focused on the things that matter most, and sometimes we’re looking the wrong way when the magic moment happens.  All we can do is keep chipping away at it, one small bit at a time.  I know I’m a much better human than I was ten years ago, and better still than I was twenty years ago.  Incremental progress isn’t as stunning as immediate transformation, but the Ebenezer Scrooge kind of overnight transformation isn’t the way most change happens.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear

      So I keep taking action, one step forward and sometimes two steps back.  But in general I see incremental improvement.  Learn from the mistakes, change our action next time if lucky enough to be offered a similar opportunity in the future.  Do those things now that matter most.  That starts with getting out of your own head and paying attention.  Begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

    • Playing Parts

      “All the world’s a stage,
      And all the men and women merely players;
      They have their exits and their entrances;
      And one man in his time plays many parts”
      – William Shakespeare, from As You Like It

      If New Year’s Day is the day of hope and dreams and resolutions for the future, then January 2nd is the day when the rubber hits the road.  It’s the day after that first day at the gym, that first day of not eating carbs or that first day of writing in earnest.  On the journey of becoming more, it’s when you feel the pull of gravity from the pile of distractions.  And sure enough here I am on the day after the New Day, working through my morning routine, slightly modified for location, with a look at the clock and the tasks ahead.  The sky is dark and the glow from the laptop shines a spotlight on the actor, still unsure of his lines but chipping away at it nonetheless.

      This morning I am still on Cape Cod, with the sky brightening and the jetty calling.  The writing incomplete, the day job tapping me on the shoulder saying “get going” but that jetty calling, so I bundled up and went out anyway, task list be damned.  It was one of those mornings where the cold breeze cuts deep through your layers, mocking your attempts to control Mother Nature.  I walked all the way out and watched the clouds turn from gray to blue to pink.  The pink is viral, starting in the east and spreading across the sky, deepening to a rose as it moves, and then almost as quickly it begins to fade as the light grows.  Such are the sunrises.  You have to embrace the moment at hand before it all fades away to the waking world.

      There’s always something to distract you here.  But I’m grateful that this visit has shaken me loose from the cobwebs of routine.  Really, that’s why I come here.  Today is a back-to-work day, and I confess I’ve already checked the numbers, scanned the email and taken note of people to call.  The day job waits impatiently for the actor to return to the stage to read his lines.  As with all of us, I’m one man in his time playing many parts, and it’s time to turn into that other character for the next act.  Now what was that first line again?

    • Get To It

      Standing out on the jetty thirty feet out in Buzzards Bay earlier this morning looking for that familiar glimmer of sunrise, I realized that the show was going to be too far into the trees over land. It seems Earth’s obliquity, or axial tilt, is so far along that the sunrise is 30 degrees past where I’m used to seeing it. According to timeanddate.com, we’re at 23.43668° or 23°26’12.0″ today. Numbers really, until you see how far over the sunrise is or how short the days are. And let’s face it, the days are short in the Northern Hemisphere on January 1.

      All of this axial tilt stuff aside, it’s a new day, a new year, and a new decade. What will we make of it? Improvement seems to be the objective. Better choices in how we spend our time. What we eat, how much we move, where we go and what we produce. In short, who we become. That makes this morning like every other morning in the question that comes to mind, the question Mary Oliver asked so eloquently:

      “Tell me, what is it you plan to do

      With your one wild and precious life?”

      We think of New Year’s Day as a beginning, but it’s really a continuation of our journey. A bit like that crest on the trail where you pause for a rest and some water, to take a look around and a glance at the map to see where you are and where you’re going next. So where are you? Where are you going next? There’s no telling the future, really, but we can get back up and start climbing again. And that’s my plan. To get back at it working on the person I want to become, one step at a time on this journey; this one wild and precious life. So let’s get to it.

    • Favorites From a Year of Reading

      This might go down as my favorite year of reading.  I made it a goal to read more the last two years, and the momentum from 2018 definitely carried over into 2019.  Reading inspired my travel to new places and offered side trips of meaning in places I’ve been many times before.  It kicked me in the backside with work, writing, exercise and diet, and it inspired me to be a better version of myself than I previously had been.  I’m still a work in progress, but aren’t we all?  In all I read 23 books cover-to-cover in 2019, and dabbled in chapters of a few more.  Here are my ten favorite books this year:

      Atomic Habits by James Clear was by far the most impactful book on self-improvement that I’ve read in many years.  Strongly recommend this if you’re looking to make meaningful changes in your life.  I’m going to re-read it again in January to get a jump-start on 2020.  Habits that are now part of my identity include reading, writing, walking and drinking water.  Habits that went by the wayside include daily burpees and drinking less.  2020 (every day really) offers a chance to reset on habits, with new possibilities with learning language(s) and a few notable work goals.

      The Gift by Hafiz is a stunningly beautiful collection of poems.  Why it took me until 2019 to find Hafiz I don’t know…  but I’m glad I got here.

      Dream Work by Mary Oliver is another collection of brilliant poetry that it took me way too long in life to discover.  Maybe Oliver’s passing this year put a spotlight on her work, or maybe the student was finally ready.  Either way I’m glad I’ve immersed myself in the world of Mary Oliver.

      To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia by Jedidiah Jenkins is a travel book on the one hand, and a journey of self-discovery one the other as Jenkins wrestles with his religious upbringing and his sexual identity during an epic biking trip across North and South America.  The book reinforces my belief that most people are good while acknowledging some good fortune along the way.  As a bonus, Jenkins pointed me towards one Hafiz poem, Tim Ferriss pointed me towards another, and soon I was reading The Gift (above).

      Awareness by Anthony De Mello is not the kind of book I ever would have picked up, as it feels self-helpy and overly religious at first glance.  And it does have a healthy dose of both things, but this books is an incredible call to action for the self, and backed up with tremendous insight into human nature.  Another book I wish I’d read years ago that I’m glad I got to in 2019.

      How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman is a book I’ve had on the shelf for years that I finally got to in 2019.  Perhaps inspired by my then upcoming trip to Scotland, I burned through the book quickly, learning a lot about the Scottish people who made a massive impact on the world we live in today.  It also prompted me to add a few places to my trip that I might not otherwise have gone to.

      The Map Thief by Michael Blanding poured gasoline on my burning fascination with old maps, and fired me up in another way; as someone who is passionate about historical artifacts like maps and old books, and also in a career based on securing people and assets from criminals like Forbes Smiley, this book was highly relevant for me.

      The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America by Walter R. Borneman offered me more insight into the place I live than any history book in a long time.  The Northeast corner of North America is where most of this fighting took place, and I took the opportunity to visit many historically important sites in my travels that were inspired by this book.

      Benedict Arnold’s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet That Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain But Won the American Revolution by James L. Nelson is a look at the complex individual that is Benedict Arnold.  And it goes well beyond the Battle of Lake Champlain, with a detailed account of Arnold’s epic raid of Quebec through the wilderness of Maine.  The retreat from Quebec opened up the St Lawrence River to the British, which put Lake Champlain and Lake George in their sites as the critical water route to the Hudson River. Arnold’s fleet delayed the British just long enough to set up the victory at Saratoga (where Arnold played a critical role as well).  I followed this book by reading Valiant Ambition by Nathanial Philbrick, another excellent book with even more detail on complicated life of Benedict Arnold.  Benedict Arnold’s Navy inspired that read, so it gets the nod here in the top ten.

      The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday is, as the title indicates, meant to be read daily, one quick dose of stoic medicine at a time.  After immersing myself in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in 2018, I felt that The Daily Stoic would be a great way to add a little daily stoicism to my life.  And it became part of my morning routine, where I’d read this before other books.  I’ll continue this habit by re-reading The Daily Stoic one day at a time in 2020 and on into the future.

      So there you go, my top ten favorite reads in 2019.  I’m a better person for having read them all, and look forward to revisiting several of them again and again in the years to come.  I’m a better writer for having read them all (still a work in progress).  And there’s a big stack of exciting books to tackle waiting patiently beside them.  So here’s to some great reading in the year ahead!