Author: phillip

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Treating Handwriting as a Form of Practice

For most of my life, I have carried an identity of “having bad handwriting.” This is somewhat ironic, as I write by hand on a daily basis and fill multiple notebooks in a month. Having stayed in practice with so much writing, one would think that I would maintain a modicum of legibility. Yet even I struggle to read my own writing.

I was reflecting on why I stick to this identity. Why, exactly, do I need to write so small, so cramped, so quickly? What, exactly, is the value of saving space by cramming in my writing? Why does it have to be done in such a hurry?

Ultimately, I realized that at the root of “I have bad handwriting” is simply yet another form of “rushing.” My handwriting is poor because I “have to” write quickly, to get it all down before it’s too late.

But this is not necessary. It is not founded on any real concern of “losing something” if I slow down. It is simply conditioning.

Writing by hand can be another form of meditation. One can flow, engage fully in the physical act of writing, sit with and marinate in the words being written. My writing could be made beautiful and efficient. Ultimately, all of that would be much better than the cramped rush I have been committed to all these years.

There is no rush. I can just enjoy the act of writing. I can treat it, too, as another way to express art, to be fully present.

I shed this identity of having bad handwriting, and my need to be in such a rush while writing.

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Reentry is Always Challenging

No matter how many times you go through it, how ready you think you are, how much slack you’re prepared to give yourself: reentry is always challenging.

Reentry is painful, rocky, heated. The symptoms might vary –

  • You just can’t get yourself to focus on the work like you used to
  • Your mind is pulled to other projects, games, fun times
  • You feel overwhelmed at being so far behind
  • You lash out at those around you due to the frustration

You can’t avoid it. At best, you can minimize the impact. But really, the goal is simply to bear it compassionately while you build up momentum as quickly as you can.

Once you’ve picked up the flow, you’ll be good to go.

References

  • Walker Percy’s Problems of Reentry by Austin Kleon

    Percy points out that “the most spectacular problems of reentry seem to be experienced by artists and writers.” Percy then lists a bunch of reentry options, such as anesthesia (drugs), travel, sex, suicide, etc.

    One of the reasons I’m such a huge fan of a daily routine and the Groundhog Day approach to working is that it attempts to minimize these exact problems of re-entry that Percy outlines. By scheduling little doses of daily transcendence in which you work on your art, you can pop in and out of your everyday life without becoming a horrible parent or drug addict or total maniac. (Many argue that that’s just the price of Great Art, but I’ve never never bought it.)

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Don’t Check Email on Your Phone

There are a number of problems with having email on your phone. Here are some that I’ve experienced directly:

  • It’s like a slot machine to you brain (intermittent reward), so you will develop the habit of checking it frequently
  • Checking email on your phone when you’re not in a work mindset is disruptive. You risk pulling yourself out of what you’re currently engaged in. You might become distracted, feel compelled to go back to work, become upset in response to what you read, or otherwise disrupt your mood.
  • When you check email before you complete your most important work, you’re extremely likely to have your day hijacked by something in your inbox. It’s better to do your most important work, then deal with the outside world.

Don’t put email on your phone. Keep it on your computer. This way, you can actually isolate yourself from your phone. You can actually be free of work when you’re away from your computer – a proper break.

References

  • Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and DHH

    Having created conditions that necessitate getting off your comfy couch to check work email, your laziness will win most nights, leaving you to recharge your mental batteries until the morning.

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Your Must Create Space for Your Brain to Generate Insights

Whether what you’re after is improving your effectiveness or improving your creativity, it is essential that you create space for your brain to generate new ideas and valuable insights.

In the modern world, this is difficult. Our phones are portals to an endless stream of news, social media feeds, notifications, text messages, emails, and more. We are connected to our coworkers 24/7 through chat-based messaging systems like Slack. Our calendars are over-booked, whether due to the demands of our job, working multiple jobs, or taking care of kids.

There is no more boredom – there is always something to do, or something to consume. The problem is, however, that we cannot be expected to come up with ideas if we are constantly filling our days with an endless, uninterrupted stream of tasks and consumption. You need room for ideas to actually percolate up into your consciousness. You need space to allow your brain to digest the information it’s received.

Stop consuming all the time. Allow yourself to be bored. Leave unfilled space in your day, however brief, to allow your brain to have ideas.

Your reaction might be, “but I don’t have time for that.” Either make time, or change the game you’re playing. You need space for creativity and insight to raise. There is no substitute.

  • Control your attention and information consumption
  • Schedule a regular “artist date” with yourself

References

  • The Art of Fermenting Great Ideas by Nat Eliason

    Our ideas appear primarily in one situation: when little else is occupying our thoughts. It’s as if it is a defense mechanism of our brain responding to the lack of stimulus. If you’re not engaged in hunting, gathering, building, mating, or socializing, then something must be wrong, and you need to fix it. So it starts shooting up ideas from the mailroom to get you back into one of those modes that will save you from dying alone with no progeny.

Good ideas require boredom. If you constantly ingest new information, the existing information can never be digested. It’s as if you’re looking at your fermenting jar on the counter every hour and wondering why nothing has happened, so you open it and stuff in another cucumber.

Think of your time as explicitly allocated to loading in information or towards seeing what your brain shoots out. Input time, output time. Input time is reading books, scrolling social media, watching the news, listening to podcasts, talking to friends and colleagues, or anything else that adds new stuff for your subconscious to process. Output time is creating the space and boredom for those inputs to ferment into something interesting. Staring at a blank page of your journal, opening a document to start writing, going for a (no headphones) walk with a notebook, working out without music, or sitting in the sauna. However you create bored, quiet space for your brain to finally get some processing room to spit ideas out; you must create that space if you want the ideas to form.

The ways we fail at this are obvious. We never give ourselves output time because we’re terrified of silence and boredom. We need a podcast while working out. We need music while working. We keep social media up in another tab. We have notifications on our phones. We let ourselves be interrupted.

So give the great ideas time to pop up. Even if you know you have weeks or months to figure something out, start priming your brain with those questions now so it has time to process them.

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Do Not Let Problems Linger

Prefer addressing problems right away rather than letting them linger. Often, problems can be quickly fixed when first encountered. As they linger, the consequences often become much more severe and more difficult to fix.

  • Fixing a small leak when it is noticed is better than fixing a serious leak, structural damage, or long-term mold exposure.
  • Technical problems left to linger can become “load bearing”, meaning that other parts of the system depend on the erroneous behavior.
  • Not making the phone call to address the fact you need more time to pay a bill can result in fees or repossession.

Letting problems linger has a momentum of its own. If you’ve neglected a problem for a while, you’re more likely to keep neglecting it rather than fix it.

Ignoring problems rarely makes them go away. Significant problems never vanish, but become worse with continued neglect. The cost of inaction may be delayed, but it will inevitably come.

  • Good leaders take meaningful action to solve problems

References

  • Empty Words, Empty Gestures, Empty Actions by Quintus Curtius

    The failure to solve problems inevitably means they will aggregate to dangerous dimensions.  According to the historian Will Durant, we see this in the perilous situation that confronted Greece around the time of the death of Plato in 347 B.C.  Greed and selfishness rose to perilous heights.  A fanatic chasing after money and riches (called by the Greeks pleonexia) became a feature of public life.  The rich upper classes (the neoplutoi) occupied their time with frivolities and extravagance; and some of these oligarchs took oaths never to share their riches with the public.  Durant quotes Isocrates as saying in 366 B.C.:  “The rich have become so unsocial that those who own property had rather throw their possessions into the sea than lend aid to the needy, while those who are in poorer circumstances would less gladly find a treasure than seize the possessions of the rich.” 

    Greece was severely weakened by this economic strife and political paralysis.  Nothing could be accomplished; squabbling and bickering became the key features of public life; and the energies of the public were divided between the struggle for survival and diversionary entertainments.  The end result was that Athens was unable to coordinate a coherent defense when its militaristic neighbor to the north, Macedonia, came knocking at its door.  Philip of Macedon conquered Greece in 338 B.C., and brought an end to Athenian freedom. 

    The cost of inaction may be delayed, but it must always be paid.  Those who wish for pretty words, for dog and pony shows, and for form over substance, will learn their mistake in time. There is no way to escape the consequences of moral corruption.

  • 3-2-1: Paying Attention, Staying Hopeful in Bad Times, and Ten Year Plans by James Clear

    Many problems are minor when you solve them right away, but grow into an enormous conflict when you let them linger.

    As a rule of thumb, fix it now.

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Show Up Every Day

There is no replacement for showing up every day, putting your butt in the seat, and doing the work. Accomplishment takes discipline.

When you show up every single day, you don’t even have to make tremendous progress. Writing one page a day is still 365 pages a year – enough for a full book. Of course, we can usually get more output than that.

Showing up every day significantly the possibility that something meaningful will happen. We show the muse that we are dedicated, at Steven Pressfield says. And the muse rewards that with inspiration and insight. Our daily work, our continued presence, cultivates the field and enables ideas to flow. it takes time to get into that state, and frequent stops/starts only hinder it.

Showing up every day also enables your gains and your work to compound. Initial progress may feel slow, but over time your efforts compound and increasingly yield higher quality and outsized rewards.

Showing up every day keeps momentum going. Even when we finish a project, we can’t stop. After all, switching gears is most effective when we’re already in motion.

  • The way to complete a project is with continual progress every day, no matter how small
  • The power of compounding

References

  • Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

    He was dismissive of inspiration, saying that if he waited for the muse he would compose at most three songs a year. It was better to work every day. “Like the pugilist,” Gershwin said, “the songwriter must always keep in training.”

  • Are you doing what you said you wanted to do? by Seth Godin

    If you want to be a poet, write poetry. Every day. Show us your work.

  • Watercolor 365 by Leslie Redhead

    However, because painting is my livelihood and I’m not going to get any better by just thinking about painting, paint I must. So I show up in my studio every morning and paint until I feel like painting. I tell myself that I will spend one hour in the studio painting, and I will paint until I feel like painting. This usually works, and then I end up painting like mad!

  • The Practice by Seth Godin

    It’s hard to get blocked when you’re moving. Even if you’re not moving in the direction that you had in mind that morning.

    Isaac Asimov published more than four hundred books. How did he possibly pull that off? Asimov woke up every morning, sat in front of his manual typewriter, and he typed. That was his job, to type. The stories he created, the robots and the rest, were the bonus that came along for the ride. He typed when he wasn’t inspired. The typing turned into writing and he became inspired. We don’t write because we feel like it. We feel like it because we write.

  • Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be by Steven Pressfield

    The Muse does not count hours. She counts commitment. It is possible to be one hundred percent committed ten percent of the time. The goddess understands.

  • Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

    But while he helped the prisoners and me to discover that we had a lot of feelings and observations and memories and dreams and (God knows) opinions we wanted to share, we all ended up just the tiniest bit resentful when we found the one fly in the ointment: that at some point we had to actually sit down and write.

  • How many words did you write today? by Steven Pressfield

    When I sit down to write in the morning, I literally have no expectations for myself or for the day’s work. My only goal is to put in three or four hours with my fingers punching the keys. I don’t judge myself on quality. I don’t hold myself accountable for quantity. (At least not at this stage; later, I will.) The only questions I ask are, Did I show up? Did I try my best?

    In other words, my goal (even after more than forty years of doing this) is simply to park my butt in front of the keyboard and work as hard as I can. I know from doing this for all those years that the physical act of sitting down at my desk for the required hours will produce, without fail, a day’s work.

    And I know something more. If I can stack up enough days, enough weeks, enough months, in the end I’ll have a book. I’ll have a movie. I’ll have something.

  • 3-2-1 Productivity, success, and 3 simple questions to improve your day by James Clear

    Standup comedian Cameron Esposito on success:

    There is no formula for success—you just begin and then you continue. I’m often asked how to have a career in stand-up and the answer is confoundingly simple: Do the work. Over and over again, just do the work. After you build the courage to get onstage that first time, it’s all about repetition.

  • The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

    How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.

  • 30 Day Challenge by Austin Kleon

    Someone once asked me to distill all of my books into one piece of advice, and, off the top of my head, I said: “Try sitting down in the same place at the same time for the same amount of time every day and see what happens.”

    In Steal Like an Artist, I wrote about comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s calendar method of daily joke writing:

    You break your work into daily chunks. Each day, when you’re finished with your work, make a big fat X in the day’s box. Every day, instead of just getting work done, your goal is to just fill a box. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

    In Show Your Work! I suggested the day as the primary unit of time for the artist:

    Building a substantial body of work takes a long time—a lifetime, really—but thankfully, you don’t need that time all in one big chunk. So forget about decades, forget about years, and forget about months. Focus on days.

    The day is the only unit of time that I can really get my head around. Seasons change, weeks are completely human-made, but the day has a rhythm. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. I can handle that.

    And in Keep Going, I quoted the classic AA advice to “take one day at a time”:

    “Any man can fight the battles of just one day,” begins a passage collected in Richmond Walker’s book of meditations for recovering alcoholics, Twenty-Four Hours a Day. “It is only when you and I add the burden of those two awful eternities, yesterday and tomorrow, that we break down. It is not the experience of today that drives men mad. It is remorse or bitterness for something which happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time.”

  • James Clear

    People who jump from project to project are always dividing their effort, and producing high quality work becomes difficult without intense effort.
    Meanwhile, your average work day can be leisurely, yet also productive, if you return to the same project each day.
    Do one thing well and watch it compound.

  • Alexander Cortes

    Imagine if for 10 years, you could not quit something
    Every day, you had to practice
    Every day, you had to find a way to train
    Every day, you had to improve
    Every day, you had to study
    Every day, you did one thing that moved you closer and contributed to your momentum
    How good do you think you would be? How successful? How “gifted” might you appear to people? How good would your “genetics” be?
    Hype motivation fast starts explosive growth excitement, they all lose to the Endurance of discipline
    Success comes down to those who did not quit.
    Most quit
    Don’t quit. Be consistent, keep going

  • 28 Lessons From Great Writers, Artists And Creators On Mastering Your Craft | Thought Catalog by Ryan Holiday

    The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.

    —There Is No Secret to Writing Every Day, Three Essays on Freedom, John Dufresne

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Distill Your Work to Its Essence

Creative wisdom often advises us to boil down the work to its essence. You must keep the essence – the core theme – in mind when creating. Otherwise, how can you stay on track?

Different people have different techniques for this:

  • Steven Pressfield advises us to boil down an enterprise into a single page.
  • Austin Kleon chooses a “secret sentence” for each book he writes.
  • Francis Ford Coppola choses a single word for each film.
  • Quintus Curtius points out how Pliny advised speakers to distill matters to their essentials and hammer the points home over and over again – “focus on the main issue and never leave it”.
  • Gary Keller has his concepts of 4-1-1 planning (4 weeks, 1 month, 1 year) and the 1-3-5 planning (one goal, three strategies, five priorities for each strategy) – effectively boiling down your goals into actionable, one-page plans.

What, specifically, you choose to do does not matter much. But you do need to distill down to the essence. Do not stray. Stay to the path.

(This also works as a pre-writing exercise: ask yourself what the core concept is, and make sure it is clear to you.)

References

  • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh\*t by Steven Pressfield

    The problem in fiction, from the thrashing writer’s point of view, is almost always, “What is this damn thing about?”

    In other words, what’s the theme? What’s the theme of our book, our play, our movie script? What’s the theme of our new restaurant, our start-up, our video game?

    When we don’t know the theme, we don’t know the Problem.

    When you as a writer carry over and apply this mode of thinking to other fields, say the writing of novels or movies or nonfiction, the first question you ask yourself at the start of any project is, “What’s the concept?”

  • Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

    Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page.

  • See the Throat, and Latch on to It by Quintus Curtius

    By this he meant, of course, that the speaker must distill matters down to their essentials, and hammer home these points over and over. Since men’s powers of judgment vary widely, and their estimations are prone to gross distortion resulting from their backgrounds and experiences, the speaker must focus on the main issue and never leave it.

  • In One Word by Austin Kleon

    At the very end of this video (excerpted here), the director Francis Ford Coppola explains how he chooses a single word for each of films to keep him on track as he makes decision after decision:

    Learning from the great Elia Kazan, I always try to have a word that is the core of what the movie is really about.

    In one word.

    For Godfather, the key word is “succession.” That’s what the movie is about.

    Apocalypse Now: “morality.”

    The Conversation: “privacy.”

    Megalopolis. You know what it is? “Sincerity.” That’s the word I use when I say, “What should I do?”

    For each book I write, I choose a secret sentence.

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The only person you need to be aggressive and straightforward with is yourself

Jocko Willink made a comment roughly along these lines in a podcast episode (which one, I failed to note).

The only person you are allowed to be aggressive and straightforward with is yourself.

Being aggressive to others is not a good tactic. It does not work; it only makes people enemies.

Be covert and use influence.

This makes me think of my younger self – he was definitely guilty of being aggressive and straightforward with others. I can confirm that, as Jocko says, it does not work. In the best case, such an attitude results in intimidation. In the worst case, fear. Neither leads to an endpoint of being effective. Even in cultures that claim to operate in an aggressive spirit, this type of approach only serves to build enemies.

Play the game, even if it seems painful or offensive to you. Building up relationship capital is the best path to success in your interpersonal endeavors.

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Don’t shoot down other people’s ideas

Humans, in general, are so keen on shutting down other people’s ideas. Especially when what is being suggested sounds wrong or stupid to our ears.

Adopt Jocko’s attitude instead: don’t shoot down ideas, or crush people, or insult. Swallow your pride. Don’t voice pointless disagreements. This applies whether or not we are in a leadership or creative role.

These people are sharing information. You can learn from anything you don’t shut down blindly. Perhaps there is the seed of a good suggestion even in the seemingly stupid comment. Perhaps you are learning something about the person making the suggestion. Perhaps, if you swallowed your own ego, you would see that the suggested idea is even better than what you were thinking of.

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Advice from General Gronski: Know Your Person Core Values

On Jocko Podcast episode 302, Gen. Gronski advises you to know your personal core values. This isn’t just having them written down – you need to be able to list them off if asked. Without knowing them, they can’t factor into your decisions. Take the time to identify them. When you go to make a decision check – does this decision align with your core values?

The same thing applies for your business’s core values: does your company view decisions through these values, making sure they are aligned? how do you check that?

This is the critical part, and cannot be emphasized enough: know your values and then use them.

Gen. Gronski also suggests that you go on to identifying behaviors that map to those values (e.g., organizational behaviors that you want your employees to adopt). This means identifying pre-scripted behaviors that are aligned with your values. Create your own situational playbook: “When X we do Y. We handle Z by C.”

References