Author: phillip

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Quotes on Discipline

Training for New Alpinism, by House, Johnston, and Twight:

There is also beauty in the wisdom of discipline, a wisdom that offers the sweet taste of knowing you did everything right. Then, instead of lying broken at the base, you might get lucky enough to stand on an obscure summit with just enough left to safely descend, breathing rarified air and feeling like some mystical powers of the universe conspired with everything you have, everything you trained for, and everything you sacrificed to get there.

General Slim, quoted in Gen. Slim Gets it Together by Steven Pressfield:

This was not the first, nor was it to be the last, time that I had taken over a situation that was not going too well. I knew the feeling of unease that comes first at such times, a sinking of the heart as the gloomy facts crowd in; then the glow of exhilaration as the brain grapples with problem after problem; lastly the tingling of the nerves and the lightening of the spirit, as the urge to get out and tackle the job takes hold. Experience had taught me, however, that before rushing into action it is advisable to get quite clearly fixed in mind what the object of it all is. I sat down to think out what our object should be.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene:

For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.” Nothing should catch you by surprise because you are constantly imagining problems before they arise.

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Revise, Revise, Revise

When I write, I typically write a first draft, edit it once, have Rozi review (if she’s able to), and then publish. This means I experience two drafts, or three at most.

This is not enough. I am stopping too soon. I can always let some time lapse, come back to the work, and find egregious errors or significant refactorings. This means that I need more drafts. After all, McPhee’s excellent book on writing is called Draft No. 4) for a good reason.

Another aspect of revision is treating each draft in a slightly different way. For example, John McPhee’s revision process involves using each draft for a distinct effort:

  1. Write the first draft
  2. Read the second draft aloud
  3. Go through the piece for the third time (removing the problems observed while reading), enclose words and phrases in pencilled boxes
  4. Search for replacements for the words in the boxes

Of course, four might not be enough – Steven Pressfield points out that he does between ten and fifteen drafts of every book he writes.

References

  • On the Move by Oliver Sacks

    It seems to me that I discover my thoughts through the act of writing, in the act of writing. Occasionally, a piece comes out perfectly, but more often my writings need extensive pruning and editing, because I may express the same thought in many different ways.

  • Essentialism by Greg McKeown

    An editor is ruthless in the pursuit of making every word count. Instead of saying it in two sentences, can you say it in one? Is it possible to use one word where two are currently being used?

  • Daily Creative by Todd Henry

    The way in which I conveyed the most resonant ideas in each of my books appeared through revision, not in the first draft.

  • Draft No. 4, by John McPhee

    After reading the second draft aloud, and going through the piece for the third time (removing the tin horns and radio static that I heard while reading), I enclose words and phrases in pencilled boxes for Draft No. 4. If I enjoy anything in this process it is Draft No. 4. I go searching for replacements for the words in the boxes. The final adjustments may be small-scale, but they are large to me, and I love addressing them. You could call this the copy-editing phase if real copy editors were not out there in the future prepared to examine the piece. The basic thing I do with college students is pretend that I’m their editor and their copy editor. In preparation for conferences with them, I draw boxes around words or phrases in the pieces they write. I suggest to them that they might do this for themselves.

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

    I‘ll do between ten and fifteen drafts of every book I write. Most writers do.

  • 3-2-1: Handling Challenges, Living Authentically, and Giving Value by James Clear

    Revising a book before it is published is incredibly useful. The extra polish improves the first impression.

    Publishing a second edition a few years after publishing, even if it involves the same revisions, is less useful. The brand has already been established.

    Refine at the right time.

  • Writing Matters (pdf)
    • This is exactly why we edit – improve understandability, make it easier to find the key message, and make more concise. The exact same benefits apply to editing writing and source code.

      We estimate the effect of language editing on perceived writing quality and perceived academic paper quality by comparing the average judgement of original and edited papers. Our results show that writing matters. Writing experts judged the edited papers as 0.6 standard deviations (SD) better written overall (1.22 points on an 11–point scale). They further judged the language–edited papers as allowing the reader to find the key message more easily (0.58 SD), having fewer mistakes (0.67 SD), being easier to read (0.53 SD), and being more concise (0.50 SD). These large improvements in writing quality translated into still substantial effects on economists’ evaluations. Economists evaluated the edited versions as being 0.2 SD better overall (0.4 points on an 11–point scale). They were also 8.4 percentage points more likely to accept the paper for a conference, and were 4.1 percentage points more likely to believe that the paper would get published in a good economics journal. Our heterogeneity analysis shows that the effects of language editing on writing quality and perceived academic quality are particularly large if the original versions were poorly written.

  • The Jerry Seinfeld Guide to Writing by David Perell

    Clarity: Ultimately, I want to make my writing so clear that my reader forgets they’re reading. So in this stage, I remove anything that would cause friction for the reader. If an idea is confusing, I reorganize it. If a sentence is confusing, I rewrite it. And if a word is unnecessary, I remove it.

  • Earthquake in the Early Morning, by Mary Pope Osbourne

    Fun – that’s the magic word for me. Writing a story should always be fun. At the same time, it requires lots of work, such as rewriting and rewriting. I rewrite one Magic Tree House book many times, but I always try to have fun while I’m doing it.

  • Gary Provost wrote: “Baby puppies” is redundant. A “little midget” would be redundant, as would a “big giant,” a “long-necked giraffe,” or “six a.m. in the morning.” “Red in color” is redundant because a thing can’t be red in size, shape, or age.
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Quotes on Learning and Teaching

Ethan Hawke, Rules for a Knight

“Be humble or get humbled,” Grandfather would say. “A knight is never so arrogant as to think he has nothing left to learn.”

Seneca:

There are indeed mistakes made, through the fault of our advisers, who teach us how to debate and not how to live; there are also mistakes made by the pupils, who come to their teachers to develop, not their souls, but their wits. Thus the study of wisdom has become the study of words.

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts

By this method of opposites mutually related there arises an understanding of the Middle Way. For every question that you are asked, respond in terms of its opposite.

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The Effort of Countless Generations Brought us Here

How easy it is for modern humans to forget that we are part of a Great Wave moving through time. We are the heirs to countless generations’ worth of effort, reaching all the way back to the emergence of life on Earth. We do well to be grateful for the efforts and sacrifices that brought us to the world we live in.

It is easy to criticize when we lose sight of this context. We bemoan global warming and fossil fuel emissions and the earlier generations who did not try to prevent these problems. But we forget that we would not necessarily want the world without fossil fuels, either. They enable so many good things: consistent warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer, fertilizer for improving food security, refrigeration, and countless goods and services (including the electronics that people use to bemoan the state of the world).

It is our duty to shape the world into something we want to live in – and to shape it to support future generations. But we must also realize that same effort has been going on for an unfathomable amount of time. Even if the result is imperfect (and some results are horrifying), there is still much to be grateful for.

Quotes

  • John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us

    We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us.

  • Quintus Curtius in Acknowledging the Debts to Our Predecessors:

    There is something petty, something small-minded and mean, in refusing to recognize those who taught us. It offends one’s sense of right. No accomplished man should ever believe that he arrived where he did solely because of his own efforts; he stood on the shoulders, and was carried along, by the aggregate labors of those who preceded him.

  • Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa:

    “Shut up! Don’t you see you’re barely grown? There’s nothing more frightening than a half-baked do-gooder who knows nothing of the world but takes it upon himself to tell the world what’s good for it.””

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Two Quotes on Cultivating Awareness

Diana Montalion on Metacognition and Self Awareness:

If I were forced to recommend only one practice for improving thinking, I’d pick this one. But 5:00am journaling doesn’t work for everyone. At different stages of my life, different self awareness practices have worked — meditation, yoga, therapy and long hikes in the wilderness for example. Gandhi spun thread. When cultivating self awareness, what matters is practice , not the framework you use to implement it.

Epictetus on a Stoic meditation from the Enchiridion:

In everything which pleases the soul, or supplies a want, or is loved, remember to add this to the (description, notion); what is the nature of each thing, beginning from the smallest? If you love an earthen vessel, say it is an earthen vessel which you love; for when it has been broken, you will not be disturbed. If you are kissing your child or wife, say that it is a human being whom you are kissing, for when the wife or child dies, you will not be disturbed.

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Allow Your Mental State to Drive Your Work

It is common practice to outline a schedule of work to do in advance. Whatever is next on the list is what you try to tackle, regardless of the mood or state of mind you are in. Some days, this works wonderfully, and you enter into a flow state. Other days, it feels like you are trying to lead a team of pack mules uphill through deep mud.

As a creative, it is a mistake to fight against your current mental state by trying to force particular work. Instead, adapt your work to fit your current state of mind.

Your mental state influences how much energy it takes you to finish a given piece of work. When you are in alignment with your current mood, tasks can feel effortless to complete. Misalignment can cause them to take longer, be more painful to execute, and result in a lower quality output.

Of course, you don’t have to rely purely on your mental state. You can also generate momentum intentionally, making it easier to enter into a flow state.

States of Mind

In his Just-in-Time Project Management series, Tiago Forte provides some examples of states of mind and work that benefits from it:

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Note that each of these states favors a certain kind of activity, which produces a unique kind of value:

  • Mischievous cleverness would be good for hacking a piece of software to do what you want
  • Geeking out is good for late night projects tinkering in the garage
  • Appalled incredulity can inspire wonderful reserves of anger and motivation toward a goal
  • Righteous indignation is very useful for writing passionate thought pieces arguing for a change you care about
  • Melancholy has long been used by artists to tap into deep reserves of creativity
  • Motivated curiosity is great for exploring a rabbit trail through Wikipedia to try and understand an idea

The problem is that creating these states of mind is often expensive and difficult. You might require long periods of waiting, investment in rituals, or working in a particular environment. They are also unpredictable, and can come and go at moment’s notice. Even worse, attempting to force a particular mental state often pushes you further and further away from it. Because we cannot produce states of mind at will, it is better to adapt your current work to your state of mind.

References

  • Extend Your Mind by Tiago Forte:

    Our moods are extrapolation engines, putting us in the appropriate state of mind to take advantage of fleeting opportunities, without having to wait for full information. You can think of a given state of mind as a temporary bias, increasing our sensitivity and responsiveness toward a certain kind of reward that seems to be in unexpected abundance.

  • Just-in-Time Project Management (Series) by Tiago Forte

    I believe that our states of mind have become our most important assets as knowledge workers. In an economy based on creativity, it is the state of mind that we enter through our creative process that is even more rare and valuable than any product or deliverable we produce while in it. Our ultimate competitive advantage is a way of thinking.

    Because of this, it is worth designing a way of working that puts us in certain states of mind as often and for as long as possible, and leverages what we produce during that time into tangible results.

    Let’s start with a definition for “state of mind.” A SOM is:

    • difficult or expensive to reproduce (in contrast to simple emotions)
    • illegible and more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts (in contrast to cause-and-effect habits)
    • primarily somatic and affective, not intellectual (in contrast to belief systems or worldviews)
    • temporary and ephemeral (in contrast to mindsets or attitudes)

    There are a few important things to understand about states of mind. They are:

    • Expensive
    • Unpredictable
    • Valuable
    • High leverage

    States of mind give us tremendous leverage, because they dramatically influence how much energy it takes to complete a given task. When you’re in Errand Mode, running an additional errand doesn’t take much extra energy. But if you’re in the middle of a deep focus session, even the simplest errand can feel like a harsh imposition.

    Motivation has a direction. Performing a task in line with your motivation is easy and satisfying (reading a book when I’m feeling quiet and introspective), whereas trying to go against my motivation is difficult and frustrating (reading a book when I’m feeling social or scatterbrained).

    In other words, moods drive us to act opportunistically – to do more of what’s already working. Our brain extrapolates that what has just happened will keep happening, forms expectations of the rewards it will encounter, generating anticipation, which is the key motivator of action.

    Instead of trying to force our state of mind to fit the task at hand, we can change the task at hand to fit our state of mind.

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Two Quotes on Slowing Down

Carol Anthony’s Guide to the I Ching:

We are not meant, as we are advised in the I Ching, to always be on the go, but to regularly have a time for being quiet. Achieving inner quiet requires that we allow the inner static of restlessness to subside.

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts:

The reason is not just that we are too much in a hurry and have no sense of the present; not just that we cannot afford the type of labor that such things would now involve, nor just that we prefer money to materials. The reason is that we have scrubbed the world clean of magic. We have lost even the vision of paradise, so that our artists and craftsmen can no longer discern its forms. This is the price that must be paid for attempting to control the world from the standpoint of an “I” for whom everything that can be experienced is a foreign object and a nothing-but.

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh:

How can we stop being victims of overscheduling? Our society is so caught in our daily concerns and anxiety we don’t have time to live our life or to love. We don’t have time to live deeply and touch the true nature of what is there, to understand what life is. We are too busy to have the time to breathe, to sit, to rest.

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Quotes for a Creative to Live By

Musashi’s Dokkōdō::

Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.

The Burnout Society:

Capitalism is not a political question, but a force of nature that must be tamed, so that we may all share in its fruits.

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Quotes on Exploring the Depths

Yet another from Alan Watts in Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown:

A great mind is also considered “profound” because it plumbs the depths of things.

From the introduction to Watts’ The Wisdom of Insecurity:

The strategy Watts follows is not specifically Buddhist but goes back to the most ancient insights of the Vedic seers of India: eliminate what is unreal, and all that remains will be real. It’s a simple but ruthless approach, since there are so many things we accept as real which are in fact merely symbolic: “… thoughts, ideas, and words are ‘coins’ for real things. They are not those things.”

The Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg:

There’s just no escaping Rudy’s Rutabaga Rule: Once you eliminate your number one problem, number two gets a promotion.

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Three Quotes on Intervention

Chesterton’s Fence: A Lesson in Second Order Thinking:

As simple as Chesterton’s Fence is as a principle, it teaches us an important lesson. Many of the problems we face in life occur when we intervene with systems without an awareness of what the consequences could be.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

She noticed that occasionally he did a particularly good piece of work. She made a point to praise him for it in front of the other people. Each day the job he did all around got better, and pretty soon he started doing all his work efficiently. Now he does an excellent job and other people give him appreciation and recognition. Honest appreciation got results where criticism and ridicule failed.

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

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.