Alexandersmap

    Tag: John McPhee

    • Maintaining Streaks

      “Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it.” – Seth Godin, The Practice

      I made a relatively big deal (by my standards) of blog number 900. Well, this is 914 and I just keep quietly going. I have some exciting plans for blog posts in 2021, which rely on good health and the freedom of mobility that comes with a world getting back on its feet again – dare I say – after the pandemic. But I’ll write either way. I like this particular streak I’m on too much to stop just because I’m not out there seeing the world. And so the streak continues for as long as I’m blessed with another day and the acuity to do something with it.

      The concept of streaks is nothing new, but I’ll credit James Clear with writing the right book at the right time (for me) a couple of years ago shining a spotlight on habits and building streaks with them. It hit me in a way that Charles Duhigg’s book on the same topic didn’t. Both informative, but Clear’s book was catalytic. Since reading it I’ve tried to string together consecutive streaks for many things, but the writing is the one that’s lasted the longest. If you search for James Clear in this blog you’ll find plenty of quotes on this topic, but here are three I don’t believe I’ve used before:

      “The point is to master the habit of showing up.”

      “The identity itself becomes the reinforcer. You do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you.”

      “Never miss twice.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      So every morning begins with maintaining the streaks: Writing and reading. Fitness is saved for the middle of the day, and the evening is Duolingo to close out the day. Which may explain why I’ve had to use the streak saver several times with Duolingo (though I’ve never missed twice in a row) and the exercise streak gets broken more than it should. That exercise streak is just as critical for overall health as the writing, reading and language learning are for mental fitness. But it tends to get lost in that middle of the day time slot, so I’m debating moving it to the beginning of the day without breaking what’s working.

      As a morning person, the payoff is more obvious in the morning streaks. I publish every day, usually before I eat breakfast unless there’s an early start for a flight or a hike or whatnot. And I chip away at the reading immediately afterwards. I finished John McPhee’s Draft no. 4 (for five books in a week). That reading streak is paying off as much as the writing streak. They go hand-in-hand, of course, but it’s nice to finish things and “check the box”. For the blog checking the box means clicking Publish. For reading checking the box means reviewing the book after I’ve finished it on Goodreads. This also serves as my de facto tracker for how many books I finish in a year.

      “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

      Reading that McPhee book reminded me of what I don’t know. I spent a fair amount of time looking up the definitions of words he’d drop, or places he’d been to that I wasn’t familiar with. You could look at that in two ways: either you’re hopelessly behind on the learning curve, or you’ve reached another hurdle to clear on your sprint around the track of life. Embrace the humbling process of learning what you didn’t previously know, and look with anticipation towards the next hurdle in line.

      So that’s where you’ll find me each morning: maintaining streaks while sprinting around the track of life. We’re moving around it either way, we might as well keep a few streaks alive as we go. Now, about that fitness goal…

    • Developing Oneself

      “If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.” – John McPhee

      Now and then I re-read that quote to shake myself out of my own head. The implications of that McPhee sentence are profound enough on the merit of “marine limestone”, but wait; there’s more. There’s also the craft of forming a sentence so starkly beautiful, so elegant in its simplicity, that it inspires you to be a bit better at your own writing.

      “No one will ever write in just the way that you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is actually nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is a matter strictly of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing.”
      ― John McPhee, Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process

      I have this McPhee book, partially read, in my virtual stack of books to finish this year. I began reading it, was pulled towards some weighty books that demanded attention, and keep looking back at it wanting to finish what I’d started. Another case for reading one book at a time, as if it were required to build a case at all.

      Ryan Holiday writes about this time during the pandemic through a Stoic lens. He’s a prolific reader, and also a prolific writer. His mentor is another prolific writer in Robert Greene. What he said rings in my ears as this crazy year spirals towards an end:

      “I remembered a piece of advice I had gotten from the author Robert Greene many years earlier. He told me there are two types of time: alive time and dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are in control, when you make every second count, when you are learning and improving and growing.” – Ryan Holiday

      I note the challenge, and accept it. We’ve all wasted too many seconds in 2020, and the years that preceded it. Focused action, high agency, and discipline matter more than ever. You don’t get down the path if you keep detouring off to view every distraction along the way. To ship the work you must complete the work.

      Reading inspires action, but it also distracts. If you’re caught up in the greatness of the work of another you can get cavalier about your own work. Reading is alive time, but so is productive action towards a goal. There’s time enough for both in a day, should you use your day wisely, and with urgency. You develop yourself through the work. Embrace it.

    • Process and Persistence

      “Process saves us from the poverty of intentions.” – Elizabeth King (via Seth Godin & Tim Ferriss)

      “You begin with a subject, gather material, and work your way to structure from there. You pile up volumes of notes and then figure out what you are going to do with them, not the other way around.” – John McPhee, On The Writing Process

      Blogging is a process that saves me from my poverty of intentions. I’ve intended to write for years, but pushed it aside in pursuit of everything both worthy and irrelevant. Sure the site needs work, the writing has typos now and then and Yoast SEO is fixed in a permanent frown, but so what? If you’re along for the journey, welcome, you’ve apparently overcome a ton of SEO blunders on my part to get here.

      If there’s a common theme throughout life, its the fact that we can never do quite enough to reach perfection. I’m nowhere near it myself. But I walk the path one step at a time, writing, editing, publishing and starting again at the beginning every day. And that’s a victory in itself. Screw perfection – give me process and persistence.

      “Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      And that’s where I am, focus narrowed and repeating daily towards a level of mastery I may never achieve. But I’ll be closer for the effort. There’s some measure of the Pareto principle in that James Clear quote. Focus on the 20% that achieves the goal. SEO doesn’t necessarily matter. Likes and follows don’t necessarily matter. The work matters. So do more than focus, do the work.