Alexandersmap

    Category: Productivity

    • Finding the Way

      Nobody ever says of a painter that he has lost his way. It is said of writers. But when one is talking about a painter one says, “He is finding his way.” — Mary Oliver, Sand Dabs, Six

      The curse of restlessness, as described yesterday, is a burning desire to pile on more and more to the to-do list. How much can we fit in? More, more, more! The worker bee in me seeks to do more. The philosopher in me wishes to still the madness and listen to the universe. The writer in me finds his way tactfully between the two, looking for just the right way to sum up the day.

      And so it is that the words come. Today, before the wave crashes, I delight in the colors in the clouds as I listen to the growing roar. And click publish before I’m swept away.

    • The Mind of the Restless Spirit

      “Do not be deceived! The busiest people harbor the greatest weariness, their restlessness is weakness—they no longer have the capacity for waiting and idleness.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

      I think about being idle, but rarely find myself able to contain my restlessness. If busy is a weakness then I confess to being weak. For me, being active in my days is the only way to survive. Like a shark, I suppose, I need forward motion.

      Naturally, I don’t believe that forward motion is weakness; merely the bold act of being alive. Sitting still and thinking may feel like idleness, but to me it feels like a lost opportunity. Doesn’t that time belong to reading or writing, or maybe weeding the garden? Idleness feels like active avoidance to me. There’s so very much to do in this brief lifetime! So yes, call me weak.

      Writing this blog fills idle time. Time I might use for other things like sitting still and meditating. Maybe quietly sipping a cup of tea and contemplating existentialism. To be fair to Nietzsche, busy isn’t the intent, for busy for the sake of busy truly is folly. Productive is really the point. Give me an hour and I’ll do my best to dance with it. Productive makes the world go ’round, I believe.

      Someday we all find idle. But what will we do with now? Such is the mind of the restless spirit.

    • When I Reach It

      “I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say, ‘Okay, you’re not that good. You just reached the level here.’ I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.” — Quentin Tarantino

      As we climb towards our potential, it often feels as if we’re meeting our limitations head-on. The choice in these moments is to either fight through them or retreat towards something less than our best. We’ve all done both, remembering moments of truth where we rose to meet it and moments when we feel we fell short. Each offers a lesson, don’t you think?

      The past being the past, the only thing we can do with it is to learn how to meet the next moment. Will we lean into it or stumble backwards? Developing a bias towards action only occurs through action. Sometimes that action is a baby step, sometimes it’s a leap. The trick is to seek consistent improvement and find our limits.

      I’m no Tarantino, but I’ve seen progress in my own life through confronting my limitations and pushing on anyway. Perhaps someday I’ll reach excellence and mastery, but more likely than not I’ll just be better than I was yesterday. And maybe that will be enough for that day. I’ll let you know when I reach it.

    • Active Influence

      “You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.” — Jim Rohn

      If we operate with a high level of agency, we are active influencers in our days. When we operate with low agency, conversely, we feel we have no control over what happens to us. Extraordinary events aside, we each have more control than we might believe. We each have a say in how our lives go. But it always begins with reflection and a clear idea of who we want to be. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes. This is a high agency attitude, and must be followed with an action chaser. For if not now, then when?

      We must choose to be active participants. We must choose high agency. To relinquish control of our lives to others would be an individual tragedy. The world doesn’t need another person with no direction, no purpose, no zest for life. The world needs active influencers building positive outcomes.

    • Offering Value

      “You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.” — Jim Rohn

      Until we feel and believe the urgency of time, we can’t possibly know the tragedy of wasting it. So it follows that if we trade our time for a paycheck or a pursuit, we ought to be applying the urgency of the hour to the task. Herein lies value. We don’t settle for things we value in ourselves, we rise to meet it. That rise requires grit and growth, persistent effort and the humility to learn and adapt over time.

      Maximizing our potential isn’t a trivial pursuit, it’s a calling. When we think of our best work, of productivity and effectiveness and execution, we ought to think of it in an aspirational sense. The never-ending pursuit of mastery. It’s never been about status or titles (those are things our parents want of us), it’s about making the most of the opportunity in whatever calls to us to meet it. It’s about bringing value to our calling. Those who do it best transcend space and time, but we may all contribute a verse.

      So what is our value? It’s a riddle we spend our lifetime answering. Uniquely ours, yet hard to define. Carried, yet willingly given to others. In fact, the more we share of ourselves, the more we are valued. Offering value is knowing the urgency of time and contributing it anyway, to the best of our ability, to meet the moment.

    • The Futility in Fragility, and Doing It Anyway

      If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
      Drying in the colour of the evening sun
      Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away
      But something in our minds will always stay
      — Sting, Fragile

      Pushing snow off a driveway in an active snowstorm is an act in futility, displayed for all to see in the snowflakes quickly filling the void, relentlessly stalking you and the shovel down the pavement. Best to wait until it ends, clear it all at once with a snowblower, or a plow, or perhaps not at all if the forecast offers hope of melting days to come. But that’s not me. I clear the way, accept the temporary nature of my labor, and retreat inside to let the falling snow erase my work. Until I do it all again. Such is the way with fragile things. We’re all temporary, despite our efforts, but we may leave a mark nonetheless.

      Perhaps nobody knows fragility and futility like a snow shoveler. Perhaps. Tell that to the soldier. Tell that to the climate activist. Tell that to the writer. Everything is futile, at least until we prove it otherwise. Everything is fragile. Tell me otherwise.

      But there’s meaning in the work. And so we do it anyway. Again and again.

    • Give It Wings

      “Days are expensive. When you spend a day you have one less day to spend. So make sure you spend each one wisely.” — Jim Rohn

      “Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.” — Jim Rohn

      When we think of life as brief, we realize the expense of each day. How we use them in turn matters more. In fact, we come to realize that everything matters. Each day, each decision, stacked together makes up our life, however big or small it may be. Over time we might see that we have agency over our days, and in that realization everything changes.

      That word, agency, is usually greeted with a blank stare. Most people don’t think in terms of agency, of believing to the core that we have a say in how we react to our environment and the actors working for and against us. Thankfully, in the modern world slavery largely doesn’t exist as a legal construct. Yet how many settle for subservient lives?

      “A slave is he who cannot speak his thought.” — Euripides

      We each grow into our potential. We each decide what to be and, within reason, have the opportunity to go be it. Living a larger life doesn’t come simply from the decision, for we must build habits and systems that carry us across the gap between desire and achievement, but it begins there. We plant our seed and nurture it until it is fully realized, selectively watering that which will become our future identity.

      We each develop a working philosophy for our lives, shaped over time. If we’re lucky it’s derived from a place of high agency and boldness. We know, deep down, what we wish to become. Each day offers an opportunity to bridge the gap: To rise up to meet our potential, uniquely ours, represented in the hopes and dreams we shelter from the harshness of the world. Like any fragile dream, we must set it free to fly or flounder on its own. The way to realize a fuller life is simply to give it wings.

    • No Other Way

      when it is truly time,
      and if you have been chosen,
      it will do it by
      itself and it will keep on doing it
      until you die or it dies in you.

      there is no other way.

      and there never was.
      — Charles Bukowski, so you want to be a writer?

      Keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. The writing continues for another day. Who it finds is anyone’s guess. But like a spouse bored of life with you it must find a way out. Nothing boring, nothing pretentious, nothing that doesn’t scream to leave you and meet the world.

      A high bar to clear. We’ve all slogged through countless boring books, tedious slogs through the waist-deep piles of words that mean nothing but a thesaurus referred to. And, if we’re honest, we’ve written our share of boring too. All to tempt the muse. All to find the magic and make ourselves a part of it. Join the Great Conversation once and for all, and maybe, if we might be so bold, find a place at the table one day.

      But not today. Not just yet. Today we work through the process. Truly, there’s no other way.

    • Create It

      “By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.” — Franz Kafka

      We’re each authors of our story, written daily. It’s easy to forget that sometimes. The novel we’re writing is realized in our daily action, page-by-page. We either arrive at the finished product or we flounder in the minutia of distraction. Nobody said life was fair, friend, only relentlessly present. And we all know the present is our gift.

      “Man plans, God laughs.” – Yiddish adage

      We may not arrive at what we set out to create, but we’ll be further along than had we never begun. Is that enough? I went to Iceland for the Aurora Borealis, and found relentless cloud cover mocking me each night. But I found glaciers and ancient volcanoes expressed as waterfalls and basalt columns instead. Am I the lesser for having gone? The lesson is to leap anyway.

      Kafka isn’t stating that just because we desire something deeply enough that we create it, only that we can’t possibly create it unless we desire it to exist first. Fate and grit play their part in the end. All we can do is do the work.

    • Be Whole

      To be great, be whole;
      Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
      Be whole in everything. Put all you are
      Into the smallest thing you do.
      So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
      Because it blooms up above.
      — Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa

      An early morning. Out the door long before the dawn brought me deep into the heart of New York City commuter traffic. I still tell myself that this is the price of greatness, something I’ve told my children more than they want to hear, something I don’t always want to hear myself. Yet it still applies, and should for a lifetime. For don’t we owe it to ourselves to put all we are into everything we do?

      The price of greatness is consistently showing up and doing the things we know deep down that we must do. We might never reach greatness even paying the price, but we’ll surely get closer than we might otherwise. Mostly, we honor a commitment to ourselves to at least reach for it. Without this honor, we aren’t quite whole are we? We’re incomplete because we left something of ourselves out of our work. We owe ourselves something more. To be whole.