Alexandersmap

    Category: Productivity

    • The Truth of the Work

      Work is a funny thing, for it represents so much of our identity, yet, if we live well, it’s only a small part of who we are. For if this life is about the accumulation of experiences, relationships, knowledge and self-understanding, work adds to each of these things but isn’t all of any of them. We want to believe that our work has purpose, and so chafe at the jobs that seem trivial, menial, unfulfilling and generally dead ends in a climb up the career ladder. But this outlook misses so much of what makes work meaningful.

      When I look at the accumulation of contributions I’ve made in my work, it’s easy to see where I made a difference and where my contribution felt insignificant to the overall progress of the companies I worked for at the time. Ultimately, what mattered was showing up and being present for the work at hand. The value derived isn’t always up to us to determine, only that we do our part.

      “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.” ― Thomas Merton

      We derive the most fulfillment from engagement with others, not from the accumulation of more wealth than the next corporate climber. Don’t get me wrong, financial security solves problems that linger in poverty, but at some point the pursuit of wealth and status is nothing but a distraction from the pursuit of meaning. Perhaps this is why those stories of people leaving the corporate ladder to run the country store or work in a non-profit are so fascinating. Deep down most of us just want to contribute and be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

      “Consider what a company is. A company is a culture. A group of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs. It’s not products or services that bind a company together. It’s not size and might that make a company strong, it’s the culture—the strong sense of beliefs and values that everyone, from the CEP to the receptionist, all share.” — Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

      As Walt Whitman reminded us, the powerful play goes on, and we may contribute a verse. All the meetings and the key performance indicators lumped together are nothing but a means to an end. We’re here to contribute to something larger than ourselves in our time, and showing up for work is a demonstrated commitment to that mission. What we realize in the end is that the work we choose to do is an expression of who we want to become.

    • One’s Way

      “The important thing is never to let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries; to continue steadfastly on one’s way without letting oneself be either defeated by failure or diverted by applause.” — Gustav Mahler

      Gustav Mahler was an Austrian composer who’s work is familiar to us whether we know it or not. His Symphony No. 1 in D is the basic tune of “Frère Jacques”, the nursery rhyme embedded in our brains as children. He built his legacy as a conductor and composer in Vienna, a place chock full of legendary conductors and composers, and navigated his career through both anti-semitism and general criticism of his work, which pushed boundaries many weren’t ready for. So in this context, his quote becomes illuminating.

      There’s a moment after we’ve tied a shoe or set a sail just so when we look up and begin going where we determined we’d go in our minds just a beat before. It’s that moment of beginning on one’s way, wherever it may bring us, that is transformative. Everything that comes after is a matter of resolve: Do we finish what we started or to let it fall by the wayside and try something else?

      Most likely, the worst criticism we face comes from within. Self-doubt, imposter syndrome and fear of failure have destroyed more art than all the critics and book-burning zealots combined. In such moments, we must keep going, one way or another. Easier said than done, of course, but pushing through has a way of building confidence and resilience. We simply learn to ignore the voice inside.

      “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” — Steven Pressfield

      That moment of beginning, of breaking through that Resistance, is a big step in reaching our unlived life. But every step thereafter has its own subsequent Resistance. Put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking across the floor, as the song goes. To reach our potential we must overcome all the external and internal noise that is distracting us from that voice in our head that is telling us quietly, persistently, what we ought to do.

      Today we’re beginning something, and continuing other things. Who we once were passed away in that beat. This blog post, like the 1,663 before this one, is another step for me across that proverbial floor, with the character who wrote each long gone. What remains is the sum of each, on the way to becoming something entirely new. Who we become is in so many ways up to us, determined by the choices one makes on one’s way and our steadfast resolve to arrive at what’s next.

    • Spending Time

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

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

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

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

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

    • The Steps Between Hurdles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • Not Everything Dies

      Dear heart, I shall not altogether die.
      Something of my elusive scattered spirit
      shall within the line’s diaphanous urn
      by Poetry be piously preserved.
      — Samuel Beckett, Non Omnis Moriar

      Samuel Beckett’s first stanza is a mic drop precisely because we feel the truth in it. Non Omnis Moriar—not everything dies—because we create ripples that reverberate and live beyond our fragile bodies. Our lifetime contribution in relationships and in our work has the opportunity to outlast us. What will it say?

      It might say something of our spirit, our willingness to share and grow and offer something of consequence in a world fraught with characters with no such inclinations. Perhaps it will be that one line, read at the right time, that turns history towards hope. Too bold? Shouldn’t we be? Our work is our time capsule to a future without us, no doubt, but it might also be a time capsule to a future us, older and wiser (perhaps) and looking for evidence that we lived a life of purpose.

      As this is published, we’re a few days into the New Year, when bold plans for a larger life take hold in our imagination. Creating anything meaningful daily amplifies and extends this feeling to the rest of the year and the rest of our lives. When we look at our lives as a creative work, we move beyond the timidity of everyday living and tap into our unrealized potential. We figuratively raise the bar on what we expect of ourselves, and seek to exceed it on our next attempt. In this way our contribution grows even as we grow.

      The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
      Answer.
      That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
      — Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life!

      If your mind immediately leaps to the Dead Poet’s Society follow-up question, then we share the same cultural influences. And isn’t it an example of not everything of the poet dying? Robin Williams, as John Keating, asks his class, “What will your verse be?” We ought to let the question linger a few beats longer. And then get down to the business of answering it for ourselves. It follows that we should be earnest in this pursuit, for it will take a lifetime. And, just maybe, then some.

    • We Are a Spark

      “The universe has no timeless geography. The universe is a happening. The universe is an explosion. Galaxies continue to fly through the universe away from each other at colossal speeds…
      You and I also began with the Big Bang, because all substance in the universe is an organic unity. Once in a primeval age all matter was gathered in a clump so enormously massive that a pinhead weighed many billions of tons. This ‘primeval atom’ exploded because of the enormous gravitation. It was as if something disintegrated. When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way back to ourselves…
      But what is this earthly substance? What was it that exploded that time billions of years ago? Where did it come from?” “That is the big question.” “And a question that concerns us all very deeply. For we ourselves are of that substance. We are a spark from the great fire that was ignited many billions of years ago.” — Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

      When you look at the stars, do you feel the connection? When you scan the horizon from a mountain summit or along the ocean shore, do you wonder at how big the world is or reflect on how small we are? When we look up to the stars, aren’t we reuniting with our kindred energy? For if the universe is a happening, so too each of us is happening right now. It’s our mission to meet this, our fragile moment.

      Each star, and our own sun, is a spark from the Big Bang burning in their time. So it is that we too are a spark from the great fire. These, friends, are our days. As we collectively begin another trip around the sun, it’s worth asking, what bold vision sparks our imagination? Feel how it stirs our embers. Can we realize it in our time?

      Life is a precious few moments before our stardust returns to the universe. This might horrify us, or light a bonfire. Choose fire.

    • We Begin Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • Making a List, Checking it Twice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • Listen Carefully, Spend Wisely

      Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?
      Colm Doherty: No, I’m not dying.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: But then you’ve loads of time.
      Colm Doherty: For chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Aye.
      Colm Doherty: For aimless chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Not for aimless chatting. For good, normal chatting.
      Colm Doherty: So, we’ll keep aimlessly chatting, and me life’ll keep dwindling. And in twelve years, I’ll die with nothing to show for it, bar the chats I’ve had with a limited man, is that it?
      — Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin

      There’s a darkness in this film that is borne of desperation. The characters react to the bleak reality of their lives in different ways. Colm and Pádraic’s sister, Siobhan Súilleabháin, desperately seek something beyond their relentlessly trivial existence. Pádraic sees nothing at all wrong with living out his days one exactly the same as the one before. And this raises the central question of the film, one we all faced at the height of the pandemic: what are we actually doing with our time? Is this all there is for us, or might we create something meaningful that lives beyond us before we pass? These are questions many of us wrestle with, while others contentedly choose more of the same. We each reconcile our brief dance with the world in our own way.

      These questions are timeless, even if we aren’t. Indeed, this temporary shelf life drives us to find answers. Our old friend Thoreau famously observed in the beginning pages of Walden that “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”. We bear the weight of these questions still, amplified by that realization that time is slipping away. Memento mori, friends. Carpe diem.

      The thing is, we shouldn’t despair at the thought. There ought to be freedom in that realization. We have an opportunity to amplify our living, and make it resonate in our time. We have the opportunity to create something that lives beyond ourselves, something that ripples. Alternatively, we might simply live. Neither choice is wrong, unless we’re quietly telling ourselves it is. The answer for each of us is to listen carefully, and spend wisely.

    • We Are Growing Volcanoes

      “Countless things that humanity acquired in earlier stages, but so feebly and embryonically that nobody could perceive this acquisition, suddenly emerge into the light much later... All of us harbor concealed gardens and plantings; and, to use another metaphor, we are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows—not even God.” — Fredrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

      “I prefer to understand the rare human beings of an age as suddenly emerging late ghosts of past cultures and their powers—as atavisms of a people and its mores: that way one really can understand a little about them. Now they seem strange, rare, extraordinary; and whoever feels these powers in himself must nurse, defend, honor, and cultivate them against another world that resists them, until he becomes either a great human being or a mad and eccentric one—or perishes early.” — Fredrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

      Most of us feel the changes within ourselves, pushing us beyond our previous boundaries. Change is uncomfortable yet necessary, for aren’t we meant to grow? Nurtured or resisted by the host, we learn over time. We are, each of us, growing volcanoes.

      The thing is, the rest of the world doesn’t like volcanoes very much. Who wants volatility and fire? Volcanoes are disruptive. Volcanoes are change agents that turn the landscape upside down. The world wants tranquility and sameness. The world wants us to remain dormant.

      Forget the world. Volcanoes are builders. They create islands where there were once only waves. They create mountains where there was once only thin air. For all the fuss at the time, it isn’t until things cool down a bit that we see just what was created. For the world to grow we volcanoes need to tap into what’s deep inside.

      The very process of becoming is inherently dynamic and disruptive. Nobody feels this more than the volcano. But we must let our creative forces flow or we’re doomed to explode. History is filled with explosive characters who made a real mess of things in their time. We aren’t here to make a mess, we’re here to build something bigger than ourselves. When we let ourselves become what we want to be, that pressure is relieved. Flow is creative expression released. The trick is to flow, not blow.