Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • On Purpose

      “Find out who you are and do it on purpose” – Dolly Parton

      “Do it on purpose and you’ll find out who you are.” – Seth Godin

      Ten days seems a short time to accomplish much of anything, and the last ten days have whirled by in a flurry of moments great and small. But isn’t that all our days? This sampling, more than a week and less than a fortnight, offered a chance to focus on a few key activities to see what might happen.

      And so I exercised a bit more, rowing and hiking and snowshoeing my way across time. And wrote a bit more, offering another 5000 odd words of tribute to the Cloud. And read a bit more, finishing two books that were impatiently tapping me on the shoulder to immerse myself in.

      I’d wanted to lose a few pounds and watched five of them fall away, half of what I’d wanted but a handful less than I’d started with. I’d wanted to summit two 4000 footers but instead summited a single mountain shorter in stature than I’d envisioned but more than up to the task of changing my perspective. While there I crawled behind a waterfall and saw the otherworld there. And found myself wanting to linger behind the ice longer than I did. The whispers in that ice haven’t yet diminished in the din of work days.

      Incremental improvements such as they were, it doesn’t seem appropriate to boast about such things as losing a couple of pounds and reading a couple of books. It isn’t a boast if it’s less than you wanted, is it? But if you end in a better place than you started isn’t it a success anyway? The point, I think, is to keep raising expectations of yourself. Keep doing things on purpose and you might just find out what that purpose is.

      Purpose. What a heavy word. There are bookstores filled with thoughts on finding your purpose in life. We all contemplate what it’s all about, hopefully stumbling upon a few insights on our walk through life. Why do we do anything? Why shift in this direction over that one? Why is just purpose by another name. We generally have so much noise in our lives that we can’t hear the whispers of why anyway. I think mine might be locked away in that icy waterfall, or it could be in the next conversation I have. Or in the silence in between.

      Pulling a random ten days out of a lifetime and seeing what you can make of it with intention, you might just find that ten wasn’t quite enough to get all the way across the finish line. But you’re closer than you were without the focus and intent. If you play them well, you might just shuffle a few interesting cards into your deck of days. And find that purpose is just the direction you’ve set yourself on. For now, or for a lifetime.

    • Coming to Light

      “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work...

      ‘All the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours …’ A word grows to a thought — a thought to an idea — an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveller loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.”
      – Beryl Markham, West With The Night

      This coming to light through the sluggish Present, changing over years of work, is the tricky part. It’s the part you don’t always see in yourself and in the work you do. It’s the grind, the paying of dues, the 10,000 hours, the sweat equity of life. We gain experience in our work, and with a bit of luck, grow in prominence. But really we grow either way.

      Experience is a devilish word. We gain experience through doing the work, and we chase experiences outside of our work. Really, shouldn’t they be one and the same? Not to live for your job but to have your work be an integral part of your life. Writing a blog reminded me that the living part is every bit as important as the writing part. You don’t offer much in prose without experiencing the world a bit.

      The mistake most people make is in making the work their life, instead of an integral part of their life. “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living Barely gettin’ by, it’s all taking and no giving” as Dolly Parton put it. That’s not meaningful work, that’s checking your soul at the door and inserting your self as a cog in a machine. Trading life for dollars.

      What Markham writes about is different from what Parton was writing about. Markham saw that spark of light, imagined something bigger and built it for herself. That’s the coming to light over a lifetime. Of course, Dolly Parton did the same thing, her life hasn’t been the character she played in a movie. And neither is ours.

      And here’s the thing, the dream isn’t about work at all, it’s about the vision you have for yourself and the world around you. The work is what you do to realize the dream – not a trade-off of hours away from living your dream at all, but the building of it one small step at a time. It all starts with a spark of light, your “why”, and then filling in the work necessary to reach for the vision.

      “Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.” – Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

      Duckworth jabs us in the ribs with that statement: what you could have done but didn’t. Don’t let your vision die on the vine. Whatever your vision – sailing around the world, hiking a summit or a list of summits, breaking a time in a marathon, building a company from scratch, writing a novel… it requires change and wading through the sluggish Present to get to that Tomorrow you want. Do the meaningful work that gets you there.

    • The Angel’s Share

      Take a tour of a Scottish distillery and you’ll see the black stains on the sides of buildings and wonder. This is the residual build-up from centuries of evaporation of the angel’s share, the percentage of scotch that evaporates through the casks to go where it will. I’ve often thought of this evaporation process and will offer up a bit more to the angels in my own particular life when having a dram outdoors.

      Yesterday I scanned my to-do list, drew an X in every bullet I’d finished and put an > to every bullet that I simply didn’t get to and had to push to another day. This process of organizing tasks is from the appropriately-named bullet journal method, which transformed my way of managing my to-do lists a few years ago. There’s something satisfying about drawing an X through a nagging bullet, getting it done and knocking that bullet to smithereens. Crossing off the bullet is a supremely satisfying way of patting yourself on the back without making the words disappear as they would if you’d simply crossed out what you’d completed. Why diminish what you’ve accomplished?

      X Wash the dishes (Done!)
      X Write and post the blog (Done!)
      X Row 5K (Done!)

      Simple, yet effective.

      But then there are the arrows (>). Tasks moved to another time, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a week. But they’re moved on anyway, to be written on another page.

      The punted tasks, like:
      > Call Rick to schedule meeting (punt)
      > Go to store for printer ink and paper (punt)

      Make no mistake, these punts tortured me for years. I simply couldn’t turn the page and let the day’s tasks be. No, I’d beat myself up for not getting everything on my list done. That voice inside your head that reprimands you for not being more focused, or not working hard enough on what was important… or whatever. Head noise.

      In reality, I tend to put too many things on the list in the first place. By learning to live with them, to kick them forward to another specific day, I’ve stopped beating myself up about what didn’t get done. More frequently now, I think of these punted tasks as the angel’s share. Sorry, internal critic, that one wasn’t meant for me today, that was the angel’s share. Or maybe a future version of me. But since tomorrow isn’t guaranteed we’ll call it the angel’s share.

      Either way I’ve learned to smile a bit and close the book on another day of tasks and events. I’ve done my part for today. And that, friends, is enough. Slàinte Mhath!

    • And Yet it Moves

      The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When at night I look at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to hurry. Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

      This phrase, Pero si muove, mentioned in passing by Emerson, is famously Galileo Galilei’s. Forced by the Catholic Church to recant the truth of the matter that the earth revolves around the sun, Galileo dropped this little truth bomb after recanting. “Pero si muove” or, “And yet it moves”.

      I think about Galileo’s mic-dropping truth in a particularly dark time for truth in history as reality-based people of the Earth coexist with the buzz of maddening conspiracy theories, flat-Earthers and rigged election believers. The simplicity of truth seems lost in the escalating rhetoric of these online screamers. Imagine for a moment Galileo and Emerson returning to the world of today and listening to this din of despairing dolts. They’d lose all hope in humanity and throw up their hands in despair. There are days when I want to myself. Aren’t we past all this nonsense?

      It’s ironic that all this craziness is happening at a time of brilliant scientific advancement. We see images and hear sounds broadcast from the surface of Mars. We embrace the heroic efforts of the scientific community to develop viable vaccines to fight off COVID, and to stand up a delivery system to get it into the arms of the billions of people on the planet that desperately need it and a return to “normal”. We see the smartest among us looking at the problems humanity has created on this fragile blue ball rotating around the sun and tackling climate change and plastics and clean water and the related list of short-sighted gains that created long-term problems for future generations.

      There’s hope in the world, but there’s also a healthy dose of self-inflicted despair and rage. And we won’t get past it without facing the truth. Pero si muove. Or consider again Emerson’s words: “Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects.” I think all of this social isolation has stirred the pot of madness a bit too much. Sanity of mind seems to be a real issue for way too many people looking for something to cling to in the swirling uncertainty of the age.

      I find hope in Galileo’s phrase. For all the forced dogma of his time, the truth prevailed. And it lives on in the majority of people in the world today. There have always been laggards on the bell curve of reality, they just happen to have a louder voice at the moment. Pero si muove. Truth finds a way to shine through in the end. So long as people have the courage to stand for it as Galileo did.

    • The Business of Choosing

      I’m not a surfer, but I imagine them bobbing about in the swells, deciding which wave feels like the best for an epic ride to the beach. On some mornings writing feels a bit like that, with a series of false starts and bits of poetry and verse toyed with then put aside for another day. Each is wonderful and you eagerly want to share them, but they just don’t feel right for this proverbial ride to the beach.

      Writing is a way to sort it all out, of course. Deciding which swell of bubbling thought energy to surf. Once committed, you either ride it to glory or watching it sputter out into nothing much to speak of. But there’s glory in being in the swell too.

      “Your job is to collect good ideas. The more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from to be influenced by.” – Austin Kleon

      This business of choosing applies to everything we do. Picking the right mate, the right career, the right friends and business associates, the right place to live, the right strategy, the right fitness and nutrition plan for your lifestyle, or the comparatively simple right ideas to explore in a blog. Sometimes the well runs dry, and sometimes the ideas stack up so high you can’t see the forest for the trees. When you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel or conversely when you can’t see the horizon anymore because you’re buried in ideas, a quick change of perspective does wonders for the mind.

      I’ve managed to get out on the snowshoes three times this work week for a quick lap around one of the trails. Twice at lunch and once at the end of the day with the sun setting and a headlamp at the ready should I need it. The cold air and crunchy snow quickly do a number on whatever was scrambling my brain. A rising heart rate always seems to clear a mind that’s turning on itself. In each case I returned home renewed and ready for the next wrestling match with work or words.

      Choosing is the tricky part, but I agree with Kleon, the more good ideas you collect, the more you can choose from. Get out and experience life. Read more material that stretches you in new directions. Get your heart rate up to push it all to the side so you can see where you need to go. And then do it. Even if the wave sputters out on you, you’ll still gain something from the ride.

    • On New Paths

      What good is livin’ a life you’ve been given
      If all you do is stand in one place – Lord Huron, Ends of the Earth

      If snow transforms the landscape, then a walk in that snowy terrain transforms the winter walker. Add a new path and suddenly you’re seeing the world entirely differently than you had before. Add snowshoes and you’re suddenly set free to break off trail to see new places, explore animal tracks that run off into the woods, and to see what’s on top of a rise you might have walked by at another time of year.

      There’s a popular pursuit in hiking called red-lining, in which hikers hike every bit of every trail on a map or guide. A popular red-lining pursuit in New England is hiking the AMC White Mountain Guide. The whole point of red-lining is to explore new paths – to get off the crowded hiking trails and try something new. To do it, and to belong to a small group of hardcore hikers who have also done it. And add a measure of accomplishment and camaraderie in the world of hiking. I don’t see myself hiking every trail in the AMC White Mountain Guide, but I’m fully onboard with hiking new trails and seeing the previously (for me) unseen.

      On Valentine’s Day I explored trails previously unseen in a forest I’ve spent a lot of time in. Snowshoeing with friends, we walked a trail largely by ourselves to new places. When you’re on a new trail like that, every step is a discovery, every bend in the trail is a curiosity, and every trail junction is confirmation and validation of what the map was trying to tell you all along. There’s magic in taking that image on a map for a walk and making it real.

      The day after a long walk on new trails you start thinking about the trails at those junctions that you didn’t take. You wonder at what you might have missed down that way and begin to realize the allure of red-lining. For how do you want to spend your time in this world? Sticking with the familiar or exploring new places and challenging yourself in new ways? There are other paths that warrant exploration. I’ve seen them out there, if only on a map.

    • What Do We Perpetuate?

      “It is no harder to build something great than to build something good. It might be statistically more rare to reach greatness, but it does not require more suffering than perpetuating mediocrity.” – Jim Collins, Good to Great

      Good to Great came out twenty years ago this year. It’s interesting to see how the companies Collins writes about transformed over twenty years, but lately I’m thinking more about how I’ve transformed over those twenty years since reading it. Reading through it with fresh eyes, I linger on the personal challenges now, less the diagnostics of what makes a company or its leader “great”. The real question in this book is, do we perpetuate greatness in our own lives, or do we perpetuate mediocrity?

      In answering that question, the next question might naturally be, how do we perpetuate greatness in our own lives? What is our standard for ourselves? And how do we take meaningful steps towards greatness and shake the mediocrity out of our routines and mindset? The answer, of course, lies in action.

      “Yes, turning good into great takes energy, but the building of momentum adds more energy back into the pool than it takes out.”

      There’s the tricky part: turning good into great. Doing the work. Aligning yourself with the key “why” of what you do, the why that inspires you to slog through the tedious, to shake loose the mediocre and reach for something more. It’s easy to read a book on moving a company or ourselves from good to great. What comes after is hard. How many thousands of people read Collin’s book over the last twenty years? How many reached greatness? After twenty years it warrants self-examination and maybe reassessment.

      Everyone has their own definition of success, or greatness for that matter. For some it means a great relationship or family life or washboard abs. For others it’s a C-level title and a house in an exclusive neighborhood. We all have our why. And it defines what we do to reach for greatness. What is your goal? Family, grades, professional or athletic career, relationship… what are you really reaching for, what’s your why?

      We must push our personal flywheels for seemingly forever to build some measure of momentum. And when you stop pushing you lose it. It’s a tricky thing, that momentum: It works for you when you keep going, and even for a short time after you stop. But when you get too comfortable and stop pushing for too long the momentum is gone. Without it, what have you got? If you wallow too long, you have mediocrity. Personally, I haven’t had washboard abs in years. But they’re hiding in there waiting for me to push harder.

      Collins has a phrase that lingers for these twenty years: “Good is the enemy of great.” The battle between good enough and reaching a profound place of mastery and excellence comes down to that question: what do we perpetuate in our own lives? How hard are we pushing for more? For our most compelling whys (the right flywheel for us), pushing harder seems the only answer.

    • The Restlessness of the Unexplored

      “That’s what makes death so hard – unsatisfied curiosity.” – Beryl Markham, West with the Night

      Where does restlessness come from? I believe it comes from that unsatisfied curiosity that Markham references above. What will you regret on your deathbed? The restlessness of the unexplored: unsatisfied curiosity. This phrase from such an accomplished woman, such an adventurous spirit, knocked me back two steps. Because I understand myself more in that pile of words. Don’t you?

      Unsatisfied curiosity. I see is in friends buying a bigger sailboat to go farther, to go longer, on their next adventure. In friends collecting mountain summits and filling social media with their seasons of wonder. In family and friends building meaningful businesses and careers out of schemes and dreams. And I see it in myself, writing and searching for more, exploring our history and the world around us. Stretching in new directions and pushing at my own limits.

      Unsatisfied curiosity drives progress and growth. Restlessness is a form of being uncomfortable with the limitations we find ourselves living with. The world is out there, should we be bold. Should we leap. And why shouldn’t we? Why be timid and afraid of life? There’s work to be done. Places to go and visions to be realized. Enter Henry:

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      It seems impossible, really, when you think about the leap from the Wright Brother’s first flight in 1903 (itself extraordinary) to Markham becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 33 years later, to humans landing on the moon 33 years after that. In our brief time together on this planet, aren’t you curious about what you can accomplish? Bold action satisfies curiosity. What you can see? What can be realized?

    • Sana: A Goal of Health and Strength

      “Mens sana in corpore sano” – The Latin phrase for “a strong mind in a strong body”, has been in my thoughts lately. Let’s face it, we aren’t getting any younger, and we’ve only got this one body, and this one mind, for this one life. If we don’t take care of them eventually each breaks down. My favorite Navy pilot used to say that he saw the future, and he didn’t like it. Well, I’ve seen it too, and I don’t like what it might be without focused, consistent effort. We can’t stop the inevitable, but dammit we can delay it a bit.

      The care of Mens, or “the mind”, is demonstrated in a lifetime of learning. Stretching your mind in new directions with unique experiences, travel and challenging reading that informs, proper nutrition, hydration, and above all, sleep. A fatigued, dehydrated mind is a sad spectacle indeed. Keeping our minds sharp should be a primary goal, acted upon daily. It offers the side benefit of richer conversations with a broader circle, a richer and fuller life, and doing well watching Jeopardy!

      Corpore sano, “a healthy body”, shouldn’t be neglected in pursuit of a career, a vibrant mind, or because we’re busy with other things. The clear answer is that a healthy body is the foundation for all that we do in our lives. And as the Latin phrase infers, there’s an obvious connection between the health of the body and the health of the mind. Fitness and consistent exercise should be a primary focus in our daily lives, and should be scheduled and selfishly guarded against all who might infringe on our pursuit of a healthy body.

      Think about the last time you had the flu, your body shut down to fight it. You had chills and aches. All you wanted to do was find some measure of comfort in your bed and try to sleep it off. Or think about the morning after some particularly hearty celebration, with a strong hangover and head pounding. Walking in a fog and feeling like death. We’ve all experienced the former, and most of us have experienced the latter. That’s no way to live, friends. But these moments inform, should we take notice.

      So how about flipping that around to feeling our best most of our lives? Extending our vibrant lives to fill our days, and to extend our functional lifetimes? What is functional anyway? I’m looking for a bounce in my step and sharpness in my wit well into my senior years, and that starts with a strong foundation now. Why can’t we be hiking up mountains in our 90’s? Taking long, unassisted walks along cobblestone streets in faraway, ancient cities? Why can’t we be tackling new languages and reading Yuval Noah Harari and Nassim Nicholas Taleb books as we round 100? And shouldn’t we be doing that now as stepping stones for deeper thinking then?

      Speaking of Taleb, the goal is resiliency. To become as antifragile as we possibly can so we can give our bodies and minds a fighting chance in this crazy world. To bend but not break when the going gets rough, as it surely is now for so many people.

      “If something is fragile, its risk of breaking makes anything you do to improve it or make it ‘efficient’ inconsequential unless you first reduce that risk of breaking.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile

      The moments that test us, the toughest workouts and the most challenging concepts we wrestle with in our minds, these make us stronger, more resilient, and more vibrant. So waking up to this gift of another day, think Mens sana in corpore sano. What will we do to strengthen our minds and bodies today? Act now, without hesitation. A vibrant and fulfilling life begins with this. Our health and vigor define everything that we do in this, our one wild and precious life.

    • Encounters with the Unfamiliar

      Coming up on a year of taking French lessons using Duolingo, and I recognize I’ve got a long, long way to go. Nothing impresses that on a person like listening to someone sing softly and rapidly in French, as Lous and the Yakuza did in a remarkable Tiny Desk Concert on NPR. It really wasn’t until Marie-Pierra Kakoma started speaking in French that I picked up on some of what she was saying. The rest of the time I was hopelessly grasping for familiar words while enjoying the cool vibe of the music. Sometimes you just need to concede defeat and make the most of the situation.

      To be fair, a second or third language is much easier to understand in a conversation than it is in rapid-fire lyrics in a pop song. Walking around in Montreal most people are just happy that you’re trying to meet them halfway with their own language and help bridge the conversation. Body language and intonation not only help bridge the language barrier, they often serve as the primary way of communicating. People are people anywhere you go. Most want to help others.

      For all my talk of learning French, I know it would take immersion to really make it sink in. At the moment I’m at the dog paddle level of swimming in the French Olympic pool. And that’s okay for now (after all I’m locked away in a pandemic), but at some point I’ll face another test and it ought to push me to get better.

      Take that hopelessly lost feeling of listening to Marie-Pierra Kakoma singing and flip it around. At one point she spoke English, struggled with it, and returned to her native French. That was the moment when two people speaking different languages would have bridged those gaps for each other. But it was just her and a microphone with her band silent behind her. That struggle is one we all feel with a foreign (to us) language. The encounter with the unfamiliar. The unknown.

      Think of the great explorers of history, Giovanni da Verrazzano, Jacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, Samuel de Champlain. The best of them encountered the unfamiliar all the time. Unknown lands, hidden shoals, native people encountering strangers for perhaps the first time, and always, language barriers. Being able to get that encounter with the unfamiliar right the first time was often the difference between life and death for them. Who are we to struggle with a few words and throw our hands up in frustration?

      Encountering the unknown informs. We learn what we don’t know and, if we let it, teaches us to be better. Do you throw your hands up and walk away or press on and figure it out? That teaching moment is casually informative for me, but might be urgent for an immigrant lost in a new city with a sick child. Encounters with the unknown offer a lesson in empathy for those paying attention. Figuring out where the restroom is might just be the most urgent thing we ever struggle with. For some it means a whole lot more to figure things out. Read the bio for Marie-Pierra Kakoma and you see that she was a refugee herself. She gets a pass with her struggles speaking English to an unseen audience.

      I may never master French, but I’m very slowly picking it up. Should the pandemic end and travel restrictions lift, perhaps a trip to Montreal or Paris is in order to celebrate. We’ll all be ready to encounter something unfamiliar by then. In the meantime, should I encounter someone struggling to be understood in my own language, maybe a bit of empathy and generosity would help in the moment.