Alexandersmap

    Category: Productivity

    • To Be Productive and Daring

      Give winter nothing; hold; and let the flake
      Poise or dissolve along your upheld arms.
      All flawless hexagons may melt and break;
      While you must feel the summer’s rage of fire,
      Beyond this frigid season’s empty storms.
      Banished to bloom, and bear the birds’ desire.
      — James Wright, To a Troubled Friend

      Winter is thriving. The darkest day of the year is almost upon us, and then Christmas, and New Year’s, and before we know it we’ll be looking ahead to spring. At least that’s the hope of winter days. We look ahead, placing ourselves in some future place, brighter and perhaps warmer than where we are now. But now is the gift we forever ignore at our peril.

      I want to make something of this day—to be productive and daring. To do the things I promise myself I’ll do in the earliest hours, before the sun rises, before the first coffee bolsters my courage, before this blog post is captured and released for your consideration. Before is now for the productive mind. Now is the time to write and create something, now is the time to do that workout that mocks us. Now is before we get to those things. After is like another season altogether for the busiest mind.

      It’s all a blur of restless productivity towards something beyond here and now. Simply do what must be done next, and beyond will be there waiting. How we like to believe it so! Do with today what we only dream about for tomorrow. For all flawless hexagons may melt and break.

    • The Crooked Path

      “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”― Immanuel Kant

      We are all imperfect beings. Perfectly so, we might add. And it follows that to look for perfection in others or ourselves is a foolish pursuit of what will never be. It’s a false peak that excites us for a brief moment before we recognize that we haven’t arrived yet. For every step forward in one part of our lives, we seem to take two back in some other part. Such is life.

      We may embrace our imperfections while still pursuing better. I write every day whether anyone else reads it or not, but I’ve read it over and over again before I publish it because the first draft is crap, the second is still clunky but flows a little better and by the third I’ve swapped out redundant sentences and moved entire paragraphs around. Inevitably, I’ll click publish, scan it yet again and find all the mistakes that were staring at me the whole time. Frustrating, but not entirely unexpected when we are our own proof-reader. Those who read this in email get to share in my late discoveries.

      Yesterday I received an email from a customer who was responding to a large group of recipients. He was driving at the time and using some AI-driven tool to compose and send his email. And naturally what was sent to the entire group was a hot mess of run-on sentences, incorrect, “best-guess” words and such. The composer of that email corrected it when he arrived where he was going, and even then it was a rough go. Emails and texts already tend to be the first draft thoughts of the masses, add an AI tool that doesn’t understand nuance or company product names and what is churned out is far more confusing than simply abstaining from a reply to all.

      The thing is, artificial intelligence will get better, but it will always be a tool in the box. We imperfect humans are the ones who make connections, discern intent and build consensus. To worry about AI is a distraction. We ought to be more concerned about what the real peak is on our own climb. Where are we going? What skills and knowledge and trusted relationships must we accumulate to get there? The climb to perfection will never be a straight line carrying us to the top. It’s always a crooked path. We’ll run out of time before we reach our version of perfect anyway. So all we can do is our best today before we click publish for one more day, and celebrate the effort towards the goal.

    • Task Tackling

      “Where your fear is, there is your task.” — Carl Jung

      There are a millions ways to avoid doing things. I’ve managed to skip my hardest workouts for two weeks now, not because I didn’t have the time, but because I got very creative in finding ways to use that time for other things. It’s not the easy workouts that I’m talking about (the walks with the dog continue uninterrupted), it’s those zone 4-5 workouts that I practice active-avoidance with.

      The answer is to do the hard work first, before the day gets away from us. Whether it’s a hard workout or a conversation we know we have to have with someone or sitting down to a blank screen and attempting to fill it with something timeless, the task is apparent. Feel the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers once recommended. The only way to is through (funny how these old affirmations just roll right off the tongue like classic song lyrics).

      The thing is, the mind favors comfort. We know this to be true because it’s been our worst enemy for years. We may anticipate the excuses and reinforce the habits we aspire to do through disciplined action. Or we can let our reluctance to do uncomfortable things dictate what we actually do in our lives.

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

      To be very fit and healthy isn’t a mystery, it’s a discipline with a clear outcome. The same can be said for writing a novel or acing an exam or keeping a marriage thriving after a few decades. Discipline equals freedom (there’s another one—thanks Jocko) and the choice is ours to make. Just who do we want to become anyway? Tackle that task already. Tomorrow will be easier for having done the work today.

    • All the Little Things

      “Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”
      ― David Allen, Getting Things Done

      When we get really busy (not just a little busy), all the little things start to creep into our thoughts relentlessly, persistently, voraciously to grab our attention again in the quiet moments when we wish they’d not. The devil is in the details, they say, and when the details aren’t polished off just so, the devil comes a callin’. Restful moments turn restless.

      The nature of work nowadays seems to be about doing more with less. Technology enables, but it also steals from us. There is no downtime, no escape from one more question, one little detail that needs clarification, one urgent matter that must be addressed right now, even if it’s a Sunday. The curse of profitability and EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) is that it demands more and more from fewer and fewer. When is enough enough?

      “Do you dream about being remembered for your professional successes?” ― Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      There is a time for hustle and incremental gain, and there is a time to take our insight and wisdom (hopefully accumulated) and turn it into something. That may be expressed in our careers, or expressed in writing, music or some other creative way. But the only way to figure that out is to kick that noisy devil out of back of our minds where it’s been nagging us and find some clarity in the ensuing stillness. We may embrace productivity and efficiency in our lives while rejecting those who say it’s never enough.

      So what is the value of work? Money? Health insurance? Status? These things are fleeting, and won’t be carved on our gravestones. We will be remembered for who we were and what we contributed. Not to EBITA, not really, but to the people who mattered most. Success is a tricky word that means something different for each of us, but our worth as humans goes far beyond a quarterly target.

      As we begin yet another Monday, it’s fair to consider all those little things and structure our days in efficient, productive ways that we may accomplish something tangible here and now. But it’s also fair to ask ourselves, are these little things the things we ought to be using this precious time on? We must remember that there’s no time to waste on little things. Perhaps a better thing to ask ourselves is, how might we best profit from this time before it disappears forever?

    • What We See or Seem

      Take this kiss upon the brow!
      And, in parting from you now,
      Thus much let me avow —
      You are not wrong, who deem
      That my days have been a dream;
      Yet if hope has flown away
      In a night, or in a day,
      In a vision, or in none,
      Is it therefore the less gone?
      All that we see or seem
      Is but a dream within a dream.

      I stand amid the roar
      Of a surf-tormented shore,
      And I hold within my hand
      Grains of the golden sand —
      How few! yet how they creep
      Through my fingers to the deep,
      While I weep — while I weep!
      O God! Can I not grasp
      Them with a tighter clasp?
      O God! can I not save
      One from the pitiless wave?
      Is all that we see or seem
      But a dream within a dream?
      ― Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream

      Maybe I don’t revisit Edgar Allan Poe’s work as much as I should. For me it’s like watching horror movies—there’s enough horror in the world already, thank you, so why seek it out? But really, the reason I don’t revisit Poe is for the same reason I don’t revisit Melville or Dickens: there’s just so much to read, and so little time. And of course, that’s a lousy excuse. We use our time the way we use it. Great authors ought to be revisited with regularity, for the work changes as we ourselves change.

      I believe in ghosts. Not the kind that float around in your house spooking the dog, but the ghosts that we knew. People who were once in our lives who live on in conversations we replay in our heads in quiet moments. For me that time is 04:45. Which is why I write in the morning, I suppose, when it’s quiet but for the muse and the ghosts in my head competing for attention. I favor the muse, for she looks ahead to what may be done. Ghosts are nothing but the past calling for attention. And like those classic books, we must learn to focus on what will bring us the most value in exchange for our precious time.

      Each day past is done and gone, and the whispers are nothing but versions of who we were, viewed through the lens of who we have become. We were and always will be imperfect students. It all slips away, eventually. What we take with us are memories. But look at all that we’ve built with them! The ghosts can tag along if they want to, but we must be moving on. Now is calling, and the future is just ahead.

    • Leaf Day

      Spades take up leaves
      No better than spoons,
      And bags full of leaves
      Are light as balloons.

      I make a great noise
      Of rustling all day
      Like rabbit and deer
      Running away.

      But the mountains I raise
      Elude my embrace,
      Flowing over my arms
      And into my face.

      I may load and unload
      Again and again
      Till I fill the whole shed,
      And what have I then?

      Next to nothing for weight,
      And since they grew duller
      From contact with earth,
      Next to nothing for color.

      Next to nothing for use,
      But a crop is a crop,
      And who’s to say where
      The harvest shall stop?
      — Robert Frost, Gathering Leaves

      Every year around this time in mid-November, the oak leaves finally, grudgingly release their grip on mother oak and bed down in the yard. I’m that one person in the neighborhood who waits to clean up the yard until we reach peak optimization—meaning most leaves are down. All of the neighbors are out there with their heavy machinery mowing and blowing at the first sign of a leaf dropping. And with their eagerness, the neighborhood roars like a domesticated NASCAR track. No, thank you. I don’t subscribe to the theory that a lawn should be pristine green. It’s not a golf course, it’s a suburban yard! There’s beauty in fallen leaves too.

      Any homeowner in New England knows that once is never enough when it comes to cleaning up the leaves. If you wait long enough, some leaves will blow away onto those neighboring pristine lawns (you’re welcome), but most will pile up into an increasingly-heavy mass awaiting your attention. Yesterday was that day for my bride and me. The plan was to start early and go until the task was completed. Blow, rake onto tarps, drag said tarp into the welcoming embrace of the woods and repeat. Want a great workout? Join us next year.

      The thing is, I could have paid someone to do this work. They’d have arrived with a roar that would have delighted the neighbors, zipped around the yard for two hours and left nary a single leaf survivor. And I would have sipped my coffee, casually watched them and gone off to do a workout on the rowing ergometer or some such thing. To have done the work myself may not be a noble act, or even the best use of my time, but the ritual of yard cleanup has its own reward. I was reminded of this when I limped out of bed this morning. There’s poetry in labor, when the work is tangible and purposeful. Having completed it for another year, the season is almost complete. Yet even now, looking out on the lawn in the growing light of dawn, I see that it’s covered in the holdouts that watched amused at my industrious labor. No, the work is never truly done.

    • To Do Bold Things

      “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

      Risking all that we’ve built for some uncertain future is a fool’s game—at least that’s what we’ve been taught by our mothers and other well-meaning influencers in our lives. But tell me, without risk when exactly will we leap? We must develop our leaping ability through a series of calculated risks. This, friend, is our hero’s journey personified.

      “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

      Culturally, we celebrate the risk-takers because we know deep down that the leap they’ve taken is available to all of us in some form or fashion, but the leaper is unique for having done it. We may be inspired to take risks having witnessed theirs, or we may recoil back into habits of safety and assurance. We learn something about ourselves in either case.

      We all take calculated risks at some point in our lives—even our mothers risked it all to deliver our sorry ass into this world. It’s okay to be careful, and it’s good to play it safe in certain circumstances, but there are many times when we ought to let it ride. To go for it when the leap is worthy of a bold measure of risk honors those who risked it all to make our lives possible, and ultimately it honors our future potential and eventual legacy. We become the type of person who does things like this.

      Boldness is developed. But so is suffering. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Measured in Inches

      “Question yourself every day. Ask yourself: Who am I? What have I learned? What have I created? What forward progress have I made? Who have I helped? What am I doing to improve myself—today? To get better, faster, stronger, healthier, smarter?”
      ― Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual

      Nothing like a bit of Jocko to smack us back into focus now and then. But really, we ought to be accountable to ourselves every day without the assist. We are our own creation, like it or not, and who we are is based on how we react to the world when we wake up each day. Get up and get to work or stay under those comfy covers—the choice is ours.

      We’re two days from Halloween, and the sheer ubiquity of chocolate is testing my willpower. I’m a little too casual with the carbs lately too. As the weather gets cooler and the nights get longer, it’s easy to eat a bit more, sleep more, ride the couch with a snack and something to wash it down with. We are what we repeatedly do.

      Excellence, then, is a habit. It’s discipline and doing what we promised we’d do, again and again until we’ve done that thing. Sneaking Socrates quotes in is an old trick, and I know you’ve seen that one before. The point is, we can’t let up now when there’s so much more to be done. Shake it off and get to work already.

      “Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon.” — Dr. Seuss

      So do something. Now. Today anyway. Something that moves the chains towards the goal. Something that takes this inclination for comfort and ease and turns it into sweat equity. Discipline equals freedom from those pesky inclinations. Personal excellence, our old friend Arete, is not for the undisciplined excuse-makers. We inch towards our potential through self-accountability, rigid routines and hard work. Does that sound fun? No? That’s why it’s hard.

      The world already has plenty of people who don’t want to do much of anything. To have the audacity to dream of excellence requires more than big talk, we have to navigate the excuses that will inevitably get in the way with every step. But we know that, don’t we? So get to it already! Today is well underway, and tomorrow is too late. Progress is measured in inches, and so is comfort. The choice is ours.

    • Go Be Yourself

      “The amateur dreads becoming who she really is because she fears that this new person will be judged by others as “different.” The tribe will declare us “weird” or “queer” or “crazy.” The tribe will reject us. Here’s the truth: the tribe doesn’t give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified. Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn’t have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it. When we truly understand that the tribe doesn’t give a damn, we’re free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.” — Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro

      The moment we realize that everyone is trying to figure out their own shit and not spending their one precious life wrapped up in our shit is when we finally break free and begin to live. So many go to their graves never reaching that glorious dawn. It was never about us to anyone but us. The same goes for them. It’s not selfish to focus on ourselves first, it’s survival. Put your own oxygen mask on first, then worry about the kids.

      This awareness doesn’t turn us into jaded, lost and supremely selfish souls—it’s a superpower. When we learn to help enough people get what they want and need, we earn what we want and need too. Learn to scale this and we’re on our way to exponential growth.

      So stop waiting for permission already! Go do that thing that burns within but is slowly suffocating for lack of space to breathe and grow. That’s why I write every single day, usually before my first cup of coffee is finished. It’s not because I believe that you, dear reader, are desperate to hear what I have to say, but simply to stoke the fire. When it warms a soul or two beyond my own, then I’ve added something positive to a cold and indifferent world. Want to draw attention? Go be yourself.

    • Applied Focus

      “Is it interesting or important?” — Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots Head Coach

      After a couple of days away from home, the cat is especially expressive, meowing relentlessly for attention. Attention given, she is quiet for a few seconds, then begins again. There’s no creative space for writing with a cat meowing for your full attention. But that doesn’t matter, does it? This is the time to write, and so the writing happens anyway.

      The world doesn’t care if we want to focus.

      Is it interesting that the Louvre was just robbed in 7 minutes? Yes, because the robbers changed the game by shortening the time between detection and response, which will impact security globally. When you think about things like security for a living, that fact is more than interesting, but important. It’s too soon for all the answers, but finding more effective ways to detect, delay and respond to future threats is what security professionals will focus on next, even as others search for the robbers from this event. It’s a tragic development for art lovers either way, both for the loss and for the potential restrictions to access it may create in an attempt to mitigate the impact of future threats.

      Interesting will distract us all day if we let it.

      Applying focus is how we take charge of our days. After giving attention, and food to the cat, she’s still inclined to meow into my creative space. Noise-cancelling headphones playing Mark Knopfler’s Wild Theme on repeat will allow me to finish this blog post, and then pay attention to the cat again. What’s important to her is not necessarily important to me in this moment. The dog, bless her, gives me precious presence but also space to think.

      We become what we focus on the most.

      How do we win the day? One small win at a time. The pets deserve some attention first thing in the morning, but after that, our priorities deserve a little attention too. What are the important tasks that must be focused on to make today successful? What can we do to enhance our ability to accomplish these tasks? Interesting steals from important every day. It’s up to us to focus on the right thing, right now.

      So focus on the important at the expense of interesting.