Pursuing Awareness

Introduction

I have recently started listening to Arnold Schwarznegger’s Be Useful as an audiobook (thank you Spotify for recently making audiobook access free!).

Arnold Schwarznegger. He’s someone that’s just hovering around in ‘culture’, but I’ve never really actively engaged with anything to do with him – until now. It’s interesting. As mentioned in my previous post, it seems like the central points are nothing new. ‘Have a vision’, ‘Don’t think small‘ and ‘work your ass off’ are the first three chapters, so you get the gist of his angle. To hear his challenges, how he overcame to achieve his visions, and how I could do that as well potentially is quite motivating.

However, at the same time I started to feel a little…under pressure. I feel bad because I’m just relaxing on the couch on Sunday at 7pm. What a waste of time. I need to do something productive right now. But doing what? Is my life a waste because I don’t have a clear cut future vision of my life? I haven’t put explicit thought into what I want as a vision. Errr, I probably should have done that by yesterday. Relax when you retire. Errrr. Pressure. Stress. Pressure to change things.

This is the second trap I want to discuss (and fall into myself) when reading self-help material – chastising myself because I need to do what the content is calling for me to do, else I won’t achieve what I want to achieve, which ultimately is to live a life well lived. 

What is it I’m actually consuming with self-help?

So why do I get this kind of feeling of pressure from consuming self-help content but not while watching an episode of Friends? The intention of the material here is very different from just telling a story, like in an episode of Friends. It would be helpful to break down what I view as a  typical structure of self-help:

Call to action: A call to either:

• An action to do physically. 
• A way to think/use the mind/behave.
• Arnold’s Be Useful: Do the work of thinking of a vision, visualising it and then making it happen. He explains a few different ways to think about this.

Result: The hook – what happens if the call to action is done. 

• Generally one can say that the output would improve life in some way to some degree.
• Arnold’s Be Useful: Achieve your vision. Happy days.

Justification: Evidence is provided that supports: i) why do the call to action and ii) why the output matters. This typically take the form of:

• Anecdotes of other peoples’ experience (I’ll also mention here positive comments on the content as well).
• Anecdotes of the writer’s experience.
• Scientific studies.
• Arnold’s Be Useful: Anecdote of Arnold’s childhood experiences helping him develop the vision of going to America, and then the vision that bodybuilding would be his route there and then the vision of wanting to become the best in the world at that.

The justification is the key. It is the insight, the part of the job that enlightens one to the causes and effects of a situation. It’s there to add weight to persuading one to do the call to action and to believe the result is worth pursuing, and often, the justification is delivered with conviction.

This is the part where I trip up. This is the part that convinces me to go down the rabbit hole where I’m convinced of the result, which is not currently in my life, so I must change, so I need to do this call to action that is being suggested. Each moment in which I have not done what I need to, the result is slipping away. Pressure.

Semantics matter: the curious case of need

I think we all are sometimes carefree with our semantics on ‘need/have to/must’ vs. ‘want/would like to’. There’s a large grey area in their usage. I need to relax on the couch. Do I really need to? Or do I simply want to? If I replace need with require, want with desire, then the connotation is really quite different. I require of myself to relax by sitting on the couch. I desire to relax by sitting on the couch.

In my mind, need/have to/must/require feel binary. Either I fulfill what is required and achieve the goal, or I don’t do what is required and don’t achieve it. We have to be really careful about observing its usage both from the content we consume but also what we tell ourselves. I think, at least for myself, even if the content might dress things up in a way like ‘might be useful if you do this’, which very much gives permission to suggest you do not need to do it, I still translate that in my mind as ‘need to do this’. 

I read a book on meditating and my overarching takeaway is that I need to meditate. I read 4000 weeks and tell myself I need to re-visit and think about the perspectives Burkeman’s suggested in 4000 weeks. I listen to Schwarznegger in Be Useful and so I need to set a big vision. 

The thing is, at this surface level, all of these thoughts implicitly say that because I need to do something, if I don’t do what is needed I will fail myself in some respect. Guilt and bullying myself will surely entail.

Why am I making these things binary for myself? Why am I now in the position where if I fail to do what is being suggested then I will fail, become a lesser person, won’t become the person I want to become?

No. Enough. I need want to get clear with myself on these thoughts. 

Clarity of thought – my potential solve

The aim here is to: 

1. Clarify the thought so I understand what I need it for. This is crucial.
2. Amend the thought so that I can avoid chastising myself about the material I’m supposed to be enjoying, not bullying myself over.

I’m going to try the following steps: 

1. Adding on otherwise, ____  – to include the full binary nature of the thought. I don’t have to varnish it or include any ‘how’, just whatever comes to mind)
2. Re-framing the need it for – I need ____ because I _____ – to make it more of an assertion
3. Changing need to would like or desire
4. Challenge what I now have

Let’s try a few examples:

1. I need to meditate, otherwise I will not ‘wake up’.
2. I need to meditate because I want to ‘wake up’. 
3. I would like to meditate because I would like to ‘wake up’. 
4. Challenge: I read this in Pema Chodron last night about ‘waking up’. But actually ‘wake up’ is a pretty vague description, maybe not for Pema, but for me, in terms of, how do I know when I’ve ‘woken up’? Am I ‘asleep’ right now? I will have to scrutinise this further.

1. I need to remember Burkeman’s perspectives, otherwise I will lose myself.
2. I need to remember Burkeman’s perspectives because I desire to not lose myself.
3. I would like to remember Burkeman’s perspectives because I would like to not lose myself. 
4. Challenge: Hmmm. Okay, do I actually think that? If I rationally think about it, I don’t think Burkeman’s perspectives are going to be the binary make-or-break on whether I lose myself or not, given where I’m at. Maybe let’s change it into a positive: I would like to remember Burkeman’s perspectives because I would like to have them on hand to think about in quiet moments and reflect on them, as they’re quite wholesome and I don’t think I fully grasped some of them during the reading.

1. I need to set a big vision, otherwise I won’t ‘make it’.
2. I need to set a big vision because I want to ‘make it’.
3. I would like to set a big vision because I would like to ‘make it’. 
4. Challenge: Okay, what does ‘make it’ mean? I don’t really know. The way Arnold portrays it, I get the sense he means top of your field in your career, although he would probably say that’s just an example. However, because he has picked that, I’m more likely to think that. However, if I view this through the lens of everything I’ve read previously which made sense to me, yes, having a vision is certainly a motivating driver, but I don’t actually need to become the best in my field, sacrificing all the other parts of my life I enjoy. I don’t desire that.

Phew. 

You may or may not agree with my different thoughts processes, everyone will have their own views, but overall, to me that feels quite relieving. Also, another interesting point is that I can see my ‘need’ statements are all in service of desires. While some desires are more long-lasting, a lot are ephemeral, sprouting up from my subconscious or because I chanced to come across it externally.

At first principles, I don’t need to do anything. That is, if I don’t care about living, then I don’t need to breathe, eat, and drink. If I desire to live, then yes, I need to breathe, eat and drink. Anything beyond that very basic level of desiring to keep alive, so things like self-help, is all just particular desires about shaping your life, nothing is strictly needed!

Buffet of ideas

It felt more like choosing food at a buffet rather than a disciplinarian teacher chiding me. I’m the person going up to the buffet of ideas, and I get to choose what I put on my plate, really scrutinising what each item is that I’m consuming. I can load up my plate with anything that I would like (desire), but I don’t need to have any particular dish, and I do exist separate to the buffet. I am me and the buffet is the buffet. I have a different palate to everyone else, so my plate will look different to everyone else’s. It takes the urgency out of it, the pressure. Am I at a buffet?

Are you at a buffet?

Let me know your thoughts!

I love what can broadly be defined as self-help. I really do. In that definition I’m including productivity, spiritualism, mental frameworks, health, life approaches, and people giving their advice on, ultimately, how to answer the question of ‘how can I live a life well lived?’. Wow – what a broad and important genre!

Let me be unbearably earnest for a minute to show my bias. I really do want to live a life well lived, whatever that means. I imagine other people do as well.

It’s useful that people share their insights in pursuit of this. It’s great in fact. A lot of it is valid – I haven’t read/heard all that much where I’ve thought, ‘hmm, this is flat out wrong’, and where I have thought ‘this is bull’, then that just solidifies my current thought. They show a path forward. They show a ladder of progression. They show that it is possible. However, there are numerous traps in which I fall down, and I imagine that others may fall down as well when consuming this stuff.

So, in true irony, I thought it might be useful to add to the advice pile by having a guide to check back to, advice for myself at least, and a template for you to then make your own, to navigating through this content. I will build this out over the next couple of posts.

First principles: why do I bother?

Questions to myself: Why did I pick this book/podcast/blog post/youtube video instead of watching netflix/reading fiction/listening to a comedy show? Why did I choose this relative to other things? What itch am I looking to scratch right now?

Currently I’m reading 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman after spending a lot of time umming and ahhing about whether I should read it or not. I ended up taking the dive because it has popped up a few times in the last few years, and then I thought I’d give a podcast interview with him a listen a month ago, and then I’ve decided to take the plunge on the book. What a sucker. 

I was hesitant because I didn’t want to buy something that I already knew. I already know what he’s going to say, not just from its percolating, but from across my entire life before, because the key points are really timeless. We are finite, embrace that. We are imperfect, embrace that. We are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, embrace that. It’s not worthwhile approaching everything as a means to an end, because our ends are often mirages. Embrace that. There are more points than this, but my point is that these are not new. 

It may be worth adding that I appreciate his writing style, the central themes that are approached from multiple angles and relatability of modern times. I do feel like there are solidly fresh perspectives here. I would recommend!

But why did I start (and continue)? Honestly, if I really think about it, and it’s taken me about two to three hours to conclude this part alone, but it’s not that complicated. It simply makes me feel better. I know I’m going to feel better reading it. I enjoy it. I enjoy the act of it; the process of reading/listening. I am genuinely intrigued about how other people approach the ‘how do I live a life well lived’ question. In many ways it’s a conversation I rarely engage with in my day to day life, and if it was, maybe that would scratch the itch as well.

Trap #1 – Thinking it’s not my entertainment

I should then recognise that this enjoyment is because it is a form of entertainment for me. My partner doesn’t seem the least bit interested in this kind of stuff, preferring to watch football or a true crime documentary. Internally, I get a bit snobby: ‘how can you really be watching football again?’; I argue (internally) about quality: reading a paperback of Thich Nhat Hanh is much more wholesome than watching a mid-week Premier League game! but that’s entirely subjective. Also, I have nothing against football – I watch it. In reality it is all just content to be consumed. I’m no better, my snobiness is unjustified, and she could very much say ‘how can you really be reading about finiteness again – boring!’. I am a passive spectator looking to be entertained and reading finiteness is how I get my kicks. 

Sometimes I even finish a book and immediately start another, and then chastise myself for not giving myself time to reflect on the first book. Same with podcasts. I tell myself that I should re-watch, take notes, but that only rarely happens. That’s okay though, if I recognise it for what it is i.e. entertainment, in the same way that a Netflix series rolls from one series into another. 

But that’s where I also need to be careful and where trap #1 is. Why do I chastise myself? Is it because I’m expecting more from a self-help book or podcast, and also from myself? Do I expect the content to entertain and also for it all to sink into my brain so that it changes my way of being for the better? The honest answer here is I do expect that, and that is me falling into the trap. I need to recognise that I confuse my intent with two separate modes of activity here: entertainment and study. 

Entertainment vs. study 

Entertainment I would say is done leisurely. Combining the definitions of entertainment and leisure from Google, it is the action of providing or being provided with amusement or enjoyment when one is not working or occupied; free time. For example, I read for 30 minutes before falling asleep. I listen to a podcast on my commute. There’s nothing else calling for me at that point. I am unoccupied, and e.g. reading is what I’m choosing to do in that time. Stuff comes in one ear, sounds good, and passes out the other. And that’s fine – the content entertains.

Study, I would say, is a focussed and intentional pursuit to really learn the material; to know it inside and out, top to bottom. A Google of the definition: ‘the devotion of time and attention to gaining knowledge of an academic subject, especially by means of books’. It requires really spending a lot of time with the material and deploying learning strategies. That’s just for learning the material, let alone what I would say is the next step (or at least a reinforcing step) of really learning the material through practice, in the same way you could study tennis in a book, but to be a good at tennis requires one to practice hitting the ball thousands of times, or learning maths really requires you to practice doing maths problems. Studying is when I would really want the content to sink into my brain.

The grey area and a potential solve

When putting entertainment and study side by side so starkly, the modes of activity seem very different, but I will be the first to admit that for self-help it has the ability to feel like there is grey area. My chastising is reinforced because some (disappointingly few) things from my ‘entertainment’ have stuck with me. Further, what does it mean if I read a book three times, does that count as study, or is that just entertainment three times over? 

I don’t think the anecdotes matter so much, and it’s just a way of thinking about approaching the material – entertainment and studying are just words. All the better if I read a book three times for entertainment and some of it sinks in and some of it doesn’t. I think the only way to really be clear on it though, and to avoid the trap, and reduce my chastising, is to be fully honest and transparent with myself upfront. Therefore, my potential solve is to announce my intention: I am reading for entertainment here, and that’s okay. Or vice versa. That way, I can avoid the trap of having expectations from something that I am simply doing for the pleasure of it.

And just to be clear, riffing off 4000 weeks, it’s okay to be entertained. It’s okay to have free time not spent on self-development/improvement. Leisurely entertainment isn’t a lesser activity (my take: if done in balance). At one point I was going to write that studying was the way to use self-help to improve my life, but on reflection that’s obviously wrong. Reading something I enjoy for entertainment, which makes my life better, which also functions as a reminder of big truths in that moment of reading also improves my life a lot in the moment, and life is just a series of moments – right?

So enjoy yourself, and keep it real!

This balancing act.

This balancing act of having grand plans, grand designs, the drive to do;

but also of sitting back and simply watching the world move at its own pace.

One is a waste of time, and then it’s the other.
One makes me feel lousy when I’m not doing the other.

Is it really possible to have it all?

The last few days I’ve had to have some relatively difficult conversations. Of course, there are way more difficult pieces of news to deliver, but not in my universe. One was telling a recruiter that we no longer wanted to work with them. The other was performing an end of year review for an employee who reports into me, giving feedback which although overall was positive, had a few really constructive elements that I felt needed to be discussed. In my mind:

• The recruiter would be shocked at hearing the news, get annoyed, and start saying ‘how could you do this to me – you have to pay us a fee’, to which I wouldn’t know how to respond because I hadn’t really had oversight of any potential fee.
• The employee would be prickly, get annoyed, and start saying ‘I don’t agree, you’re wrong’. It could escalate considerably into an angry situation, with long-term ramifications. There is history of the employee not seeming to mind having antagonistic conversations. I was warned by my boss to be very careful with my wording beforehand on the constructive parts. They might want to quit afterwards if it went badly.

Both of the conversations played on my mind beforehand. I foresaw that they both had the potential of escalating into a challenging back and forth with raised emotions, with the overall theme of them perceiving that I was persecuting them. They were popping up in my meditation practice, and given I spent a lot of last weekend listening to Huberman and Conti discuss the unconscious mind (highly recommended), I realise that in some sense it’s beyond my control that they do keep popping up while they are unresolved.

Reflections

Look, both of them didn’t turn out badly. I would stretch to even say they turned out well given the content. Or to re-phrase, they went well enough that all the anxiety beforehand seems faintly ridiculous. The recruiter said ‘yeah I completely understand, no bad blood from this at all.’ and the employee, despite what must have been quite difficult hearing, said ‘thanks, I’ve never heard this feedback before so it’s good to hear.’ Also, the employee formed a view over the theme of the constructive elements of the feedback that I wanted them to take away from the meeting.

We’re a few days after, and yet I still I think about it, more so the employee meeting. Did I word it right? Do they now harbour bad feelings inside that have the potential to geyser up, hiding those feelings with fake smiles? Are there long-term impacts?

I can rationalise, of course, to try to make it easier for myself. I’m simply doing my part. I’m being direct and staying the course to truth as much as possible, which in the end is good for them. I’m being upfront and transparent, which is better for everyone. 

I do think I lived that, but no matter how much I rationalise, it’s still not easy. Simply put, telling someone something that they don’t want to hear, something that could be seen as an attack, is not easy. Knowing there’s a potential, however small, that one word said in a certain way could mean offense and escalation, is not easy. Some people don’t seem to mind as much, but I do. It maybe gets easier with experience, but surely the anticipation can never feel good?

Future situations

Tips for future self in these situations:

1. Certainty – The more certain you are of what you have to say, the easier it is. I should have made it clearer to myself, had conversations earlier with my boss to clarify things like the status with the recruiter. I would have reduced a lot of guesswork and overthinking.
2. Specificity – You related some feedback that wasn’t specific, which left it potentially hanging over the person. You should have gone back to the feedback providers where it wasn’t clear. This also goes to explaining ‘why’ this is the feedback, uses ‘because’.
3. Timeliness – Get it over with as soon as possible. You could have spoken to the recruiter earlier than you did, but you were putting it off. Funnily enough, the delay in getting peoples’ feedback for the employee meant that you had 3 days of actually knowing the feedback. Getting the feedback any earlier would have meant more time anyway playing with it in mind. 
4. Plan – Rehearse how you’re going to say it. You only semi-thought through how you would word the review, and could have spent more constructive time bullet pointing some notes. Winging it may work but you leave yourself open to risk. 

Further conversations

I have two further potentially difficult conversations to have in the immediate future. One is particularly difficult to stomach because I have to confess to a mistake I made. I have been toying with whether to own up to it or to hide it, because it’s an immaterial mistake in one sense, but I don’t know the full ramifications, so it may be very material in another sense. It is going to piss off my boss and will make me seem error-prone, which I suppose in a sense is the truth given I made the error! I can rationalise that there is this and that mitigating factor as to why I made the error, but at the end of the day I made the error and that’s what happened. Argh!

EDIT: I did own up, and it was literally fine. My boss didn’t care.

Does anyone else feel like they go through these rollercoasters? Let me know.

In my last post, I spoke about ‘firsts’. I spoke about a potential standalone exercise of recognising where one is now with respect to how many ‘firsts’ they have in their life, recognising why that might be and then incorporating those reflections in one’s planning going forward.

I think there’s also another angle in which to approach this idea of ‘firsts’, which is more of a real-time approach. I’ve started doing this at random points in the day (given I was writing about ‘firsts’ anyway). There may be something to it, there may not, but I will explain it in case it is of interest.

The idea

It’s essentially a prompt. I imagine it in the vein of training for a ‘beginner’s mind’ from Zen, which from my understanding is recognising that only the present moment exists. We should approach it with the mind of curiosity and openness to learn, because we’ve never experienced this present moment before. I read about this concept and loved it (or at least my interpretation of it from memory), but I found it very difficult to practice in my life and therefore cultivate this life approach. Maybe this prompt would be a good step in that cultivation.

My idea is simply thinking to myself, about whatever I’m doing, ‘this is the first time I’m doing x in y time‘, where x is the thing I’m doing and y is just placing it in time.

Experimentation

I’m still experimenting with the formulation for this, but, for example, I was walking down the street near my home and I had the thought ‘this is the first time that I’ve walked down this street with the sun bright like this in a few weeks.’

Other times:

‘This is the first time I’m meeting up with K in over 6 months.’

‘This is the first time I’ve noticed a plane flying overhead today.’

I’m not finalised on the ‘y time’ bit, just that I would feel like I was lying to myself if I said ‘this is the first time I’m walking down the street’.

A development of this could be ‘this is the first time that I’ve done x now’ or ‘in this moment’.

This is the first time that I’m writing this sentence in this moment.

I think it could also take the form of a question: ‘what am I doing for the first time in this moment?’ I like questions because they are quite active; requiring inquiry and coming up with an answer. 

LATE EDITION DEVELOPMENT: ‘this is the first time I’m doing x in y place in z time’. To really locate myself in space and time, anchoring myself to the present. I am in the kitchen at this moment writing ‘in y place’ for the first time in this post!

Testing this idea

A real test of this is commuting to work on the Tube (London metro). Three or four days a week, I spend half an hour each way on a pretty busy Tube line going to work. Is it my favourite place in the world? Not really. I can think of other places I would rather be. But in the current iteration of my life I can only be in one place at a particular moment, and often that’s the Tube.

It could be easy for me to trivialise this exercise, because there are a thousand people on the tube, so naturally one starts to get a little less curious about the thousand and first person you see when you’ve ridden the Tube for 8 years. It’s hard to be earnest. It’s hard to find ‘firsts’.

Anyway, the other day I was on it and asked myself ‘what am I doing for the first time in this moment’? You know, I stand up a little straighter. My eyes widen a little bit. I can sense my breath. I started to pay attention to my surroundings a little more. I started to look at the other people in the carriage with curiosity. This is the first time that I’ve seen this woman, this man, this book that someone is reading. I started to wonder about these people, why they are the way they are.

I’m finding it an interesting prompt, because it’s making me aware in a slightly different perspective. I don’t know what it is, maybe recognition of the impermanence of the moment. It’s the first time I’m doing this, and then it’s the first moment I’m doing that, but none of these first moments lasts forever, I can’t keep any of it just as it is as a darn first. 

It’s also making me observe the moment with more curiosity and ask ‘what is fresh here, what am I doing for the first time?’, or even passively ‘what is happening for the first time’? 

I think granularity is an important aspect of this. I have to really go in to notice what is unique, seeing what I previously considered to be the mundane in a new light.

What am I after? Why bother with a little titbit prompt? 

I think:

1. It seems to help with me becoming more aware. 
2. It seems to help me recognise the impermanence of the situation I am in. I want to feel humbled by impermanence, and grateful that the moment exists. I get to do what I’m doing and I’m the only person with this unique view in this place and this time. What a blessing.
3. If I want to really find those granular items, I need to focus on the senses. I could open my eyes a little wider than usual, breathe a little bit of a deeper than usual, prick my ears a bit to listen more intently, Become aware of my proprioception i.e. notice my body.
4. It helps to recognise that I exist and am always doing something, so I can choose what I am indeed doing, whether that’s me doing something for the first time or choosing to do an activity I’ve done before. Either way, it’s the first time I’m doing it right now.

The issue with prompts, at least for me, although I imagine it would be a common human experience, is that they lose their freshness and therefore their salience. Let’s see how this one pans out. Maybe I should set it as a reminder every 2 weeks on my phone, so just enough time passes if it slips out of fashion for me!

Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions!

I realised this week that it has been a week of quite a few significant ‘firsts’. I will list them out, not to brag, but to contextualise.

• Did my first 36 hour fast, scheduled a few months ago to do on a monthly basis. 
• Took psychedelics for the first time, finally actualising a want of mine that had hovered in the back of my mind for a few years. I have been nervous about this previously but I was guided by a friend in a really safe setting. I found this deeply meaningful.
• Started sketching spontaneously in my journal. I consider myself as the lowest of the low when it comes to art, so it’s nothing special, but the act of doing it, for probably the first time since I was in art classes when I was 11, felt pleasurable.

This really isn’t the case for every week of my life, and I’m not sure why this week was an exceptional week, but I did get struck by the thought that these were things I hadn’t done before, and I really enjoyed it, especially as they were somewhat challenging activities. For example, this week coming I don’t foresee myself undertaking quite as many firsts. However, it would be good to have an understanding of when I’m building new experiences into my life. Anyway, I thought up a three step process to try and frame the concept of firsts in my mind. Maybe I do this exercise once a quarter or something.

Step 1: Recognising where I am now

Not every activity can be a ‘first’. For example, I can no longer take psychedelics for the first time, because naturally being a ‘first’ is a one-time thing. 

However, here are two variants of a question for myself when planning / looking at my quarter or week ahead.

What activities have I not done / What activities am I doing for the first time:

• Before / ever
• In 10 years
• In 5 years
• In 1 year
• In 6 months
• In 3 months
• In 1 month
• In 2 weeks
• In 1 week
• In a few days
• In 1 day 

It will be useful assessing all tasks that I do by this categorisation.

For example, ideally I always want to be writing, meditating and exercising for the first time in a few days or in 1 day. I always want to see my family for the first time in 3 months. If I go beyond that, then I need to really think about my scheduling. 

However, how often am I doing things that I haven’t done in a really long time i.e. over a year?, or even ever before? If I’m looking at my quarter ahead, is there much in there really that is new?

Note 1: When trying to build a project through time, e.g. this blog, it might be a little hard to discern what it is I’m including. For example, on the blog, I want to be doing it always for the first time in a few days. But it will continue to evolve. Maybe a useful thing would be including milestones e.g. ‘the first time I reach the 25th post ever’, or ‘the first time I post 10 posts in a month’. 

Note 2: A line needs to be drawn around the level of detail I want to put. For example, if my activity is ‘go to a restaurant’, then I normally do that at least once every two weeks. If my activity is ‘go to restaurant X’, and that is a 6 monthly thing, but then I have restaurant Y,Z,A,B,C as well that I go to on a rotation, then I need to decide whether I put ‘go to a restaurant’ or further detail. I guess a good gauge on what to include would be how much the finer detail means to me. The more I care, the more I should go into finer detail.

Note 3: I was tempted to say that if I don’t have firsts, then recognise that ossification, but I don’t think calling it ossification would be strictly correct at all, because it may be the case that I get a lot of substance and grounding in my life from the repeated activities which within themselves may look diverse e.g. reading, as I may read for an hour a day, but the book may change, my thoughts in relationship to the book may change.  

This would be the first step – recognising where I am now. I recognise when I haven’t done something I want to do in a while. I recognise when I haven’t done any activities that I haven’t done in a long time (i.e. firsts). 

Step 2: Why is this the case?

The second step would be to ask honestly and openly why I haven’t done the activity in a long time. Is it right that the activity should only be done every year e.g. messaging an old friend? Maybe certain activities shouldn’t be done again and should exhibit the ‘right to be forgotten’. I’m a different person now to who I was 5 years ago. My priorities are different. Recognise that. Also, set the expectation. What do I get out of the activities that I’m doing and the activities I’m not doing? Why would I want to be trying something new?

Step 3: How do I incorporate these reflections into my planning?

The third step would be to say okay, if given the first two steps, then how should I incorporate that reflection into my planning moving forward? If I’m planning for the quarter ahead or the week ahead, what does that now look like?

There’s a risk of feeling bad. Man, I haven’t spoken to my grandma (who I love dearly) in over 3 months. You suck. But that’s a call to action if anything. Recognise this. Maybe it’s okay to recognise some things you just need to let go.

For fasting, I plan on doing a 36h fast on a monthly basis. I may incorporate some lower intensity fasting (24h) on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, but don’t want to overcomplicate it. For psychedelics, given the intensity of the experience, I would only want to do it on a much longer cadence, say every 6 months. For this week ahead, I need to plan some activity to do for the first time, otherwise it’s looking very same-old.

Right now, I need to shower and get on with my morning for the first time in a day. 

Let me know your thoughts!

After yesterday’s post acknowledging that I’ve hit a bad patch for writing, I have come up with three actionable thoughts about how to try to buoy myself. The three thoughts are: 

• Make blogging the first thing I do in the morning
• Make a blogging document that gets me in the right frame of mind
• Recognise journalling is beneficial for the blogging process

Let’s go into a bit more detail about them below.

1. First thought: The first thing I do

I rescheduled this morning’s morning routine so that I write before anything else gets done. It’s a shame because I really wanted to get my kettlebell exercise done, but I can only do one thing at a time, and I need that today to be blogging. How do I know it’s the thing I need to do? Because it’s the most difficult. Maybe on another day that difficult thing will be the exercise, but today it’s not.

I initially wanted to go straight into writing the blog, but I decided to sneak in 10 minutes of journalling beforehand. Why be sneaky? Well, to be honest, those 10 minutes have given me a little bit of a buffer from waking up, and let me write some random shit for myself. Hopefully it also means that random shit doesn’t just end up right here in the blog. 

I guess you could call it a warm up, but also an end in itself, because I really enjoy just writing for myself.

2. Second thought: The document

I feel like this would make Cal Newport proud, given it’s an idea built on his core documents concept. Yesterday I realised that I should set up a ‘blog’ document, where I’d write some notes to myself about blogging that I can self-reference when going through the motions. 

It’s highly personalised and really draft form, but I thought I’d share what I’ve got so far:

• Recognise you don’t like to write at your work desk.
• Recognise you like writing with pen and paper. See how it integrates with digital ideas captured. (Note: I’ve written this one because I like to not spend loads of time on a computer screen given that’s also my day job. However, I’m capturing ideas digitally, so need to work out how it balances with that, and also how to then transcribe the writing onto a laptop. From the first two days it seems like the pen and paper is a good place for a first draft).

• 5 minutes is a blessing. 30 minutes is good.
• A short post of 2 sentences is a blessing. Anything longer is good.
• Boring, rubbish, unoriginal writing is a blessing. Wow, amazing, high/deep thinking, original writing is good.

• Core mission: share my personal experience. Share observation and insight. If one person finds value in anything I say or relates to it, then it’s worth it.

• It’s okay to fuck up, no one else cares anyway about what you’re doing
• Get chatgpt to review if it’s clear to the reader.

• I don’t have to do this. There is no consequence from not doing it. It’s okay to walk away. You want to do this.

• Humour. 

That’s it. I need to re-order and structure. I need to work out if I open it before starting to blog or as I start out. I need to iterate, but it’s a start.

3. Third thought: Journaling

This point was more of a general point that I recognised as I was writing out the draft of this post in my notebook. Thank you to whatever brought me to clicking on the random Tim Ferris youtube video about journaling a week ago. It helped give some structure to the journaling I’ve been doing the past couple of weeks, allowing me to recognise that I want to do a mix of morning pages style journaling and 5 minute journal style journaling.

The morning pages journaling has been especially useful (even though it hasn’t necessarily felt like it at the time of writing), as it has given me a place to explicitly write down anxieties free range. That explicitness has let me recognise that not blogging was becoming an issue for me, and therefore has given me the opportunity to address that. Otherwise, I don’t know if I necessarily would have picked up that it was hovering around in my mind.

Therefore, continue with journaling in this style. Prioritise focussing on it. Journaling = beneficial.

Day one results

I feel a sense of satisfaction from aligning i.e. matching something I value doing with actually doing it.

Now I just need to keep the wheel spinning. Easy, right?

I’m sure that recognising these thoughts will go some way to making that a reality. I wonder where else these thoughts would end up being applicable.

Any other tips and insights would be gratefully received!

So just like that, blogging became extremely difficult. 

I just can’t bring myself to sit down and write the damn thing.

It happened the week after passing my driving test (a late learner!). I had the revelatory thought ‘don’t push yourself, keep it simple’. I let everything ease up. I’ve moved to a reduced morning schedule, akin to my life pre-blog, pre-other project, pre-driving. I picked up journalling again. 

I won’t lie to you; it’s been much more pleasureable not trying to squeeze in some outward productivity. It’s been much more enjoyable not watching the clock like a hawk with each thing that I’m doing. There is some slack.

On the other hand, without making some time for blogging in the morning, I am simply not doing it. This is an issue because a) I want to blog and get better at it, and b) I have this growing burden that I’m not doing it that, because I know it’s getting longer and longer since the last time I posted. I can literally feel the burden – it’s around my solar plexus. 

I understand that this is standard, other people go through it, and on reflection it’s probably a good thing to feel the burden, because it means I care about it. I can tell myself all of this, do all the re-framing I want in my mind, but at the end that’s lip service. I know myself and the only thing that will ease the burden is doing it, which is why I’m writing this. 

I also need to review the rules I’ve set for myself. Maybe I don’t have to write a medium to long length post. Maybe it is okay to do bitesize, a sentence or two. Maybe I don’t have to spend exactly 30 minutes on it. Maybe it can be just 15. If it’s nicer to write out by hand (like journalling), then why don’t I do that and then see how actually painful it is to transcribe onto the computer?

There’s a few points I probably need to change my narrative on when talking to myself about it, and to remember why I am doing the blog. It’s to share my experience, and if a single person ends up finding value in anything that I’ve written, then that is worthwhile.

Introduction

At the moment, when I’m putting pen to paper, or rather, fingers to key, it feels quite easy. 

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t points of friction. These are the ones I’ve jotted down (not exhaustive):

• Not putting pen to paper in the first place i.e. not thinking there’s enough time or can’t be bothered
• Not having structure to the post, making the post confusing to read 
• No direction, meaning it’s harder to understand myself what I want to write
• Not thinking about how to conclude

During the hard times when the inspiration dries up, I need to have a back up process in place 

so I don’t go from 100% to 0%. I want to keep the blog moving forward, even if it’s at a snail’s pace.

My ingenious, never-thought-of-before idea to assist in minimising these barriers of friction is…drum roll please…to make a template for writing a blog post! Where are the fireworks? 

In search of a template 

The first thing was to look on Google. Google obviously spat millions of results back at me, so I had a look at the first few. A taster of the links I looked at: link 1, link 2. 

I have nothing against these posts. They most definitely add value and someone will be happy with what was written, but for me these do not provide a shape I want to work within; it felt a bit over-developed. Also, at no point do I intend to give you 9 pros of a premium garden waste bin having compared that to two hundred other articles doing exactly the same thing. That’s not what I’m trying to do here.

Therefore I had the thought ‘why not come up with my own template that makes sense to me?’

Wow. Just wow. Taking back control!

I went about nicking good bits from around the place as well as my own mind, and this blog post is a product of that. Be warned, it might stink. It might not. It might add value to you. It might not. I’m going to be giving it a whirl and then iterate. Feel free to judge on the quality.

The shaping of a template

Firstly, I had to sketch out a typical outline that might work for me, structured enough to provide…structure, vague enough to not limit. The core of this is Observation and Response / Insight. This tallies for me because often the idea for a post comes from a ‘huh, what’s happening there’ moment (Observation), or maybe after reflecting, I have an ‘ah, that was a consequential thought!’ moment (Insight).

I did toy with rephrasing it as problem and solution, but no. I don’t want to necessarily view everything as a problem waiting to be solved. Problem/solution can stay in its rightful place as a subset of observation/response.

After those absolute fundamentals, all blog posts must start and all must end. Therefore an Intro and a Conclusion are required. Therefore, my structure looks like:

• Intro
• Observation
• Response / Insight
• Conclusion

That’s it. Four sections. 

Embedding the template

I have then gone and created a Google Doc called ‘template’ and put that in my bookmark bar.

Each section has a ‘Writing’ box. Observation and Insight have an additional ‘Notes’ box above the writing box, where I can jot bullet points. There is also a box at the very top for me to make more general bullet points on direction/main outline. 

I’ve given myself a few check questions:

• Is it my personal experience?
• Is it relatable? Does it come across as relational?
• Is it about increasing awareness?
• Are you trying to claim a general life rule that might not actually apply?
• Are you overcommiting e.g. ‘this is…’ when it should be ‘I think this is…’
• Do you need to refer to previous blog post for this to make sense?
• Are you being concise? 

When I want to write a new post or have a new idea, I click on the template in the bookmark bar, create a copy (dating the post) and include that draft in the bookmark bar as well for ease of access. 

Concerns

Two concerns I have:

• Posts become formulaic – I think this is me being squeamish about something that I don’t actually recognise as an issue for other bloggers. All the successful bloggers have their own structure in which they work. Why would it be an issue for me?
• The tension between free-flowing and structure: There is something about freestyle writing that is just fun. You can go anywhere with it. You don’t have to think. Therefore I think I need to work out how I navigate this tension. Maybe the template comes in once I’ve sussed out the writing elsewhere. Maybe not. I will see how it develops. 

Conclusion

If you’re looking for inspiration for whatever your pursuit is and wondering about next steps, I hope you saw that I am going through exactly the same issues. I will see how this evolves going forward. Of course, stay tuned in order to see how it develops as well, as you wouldn’t want to miss out on this, would you?

A friend came over the other day and we were chatting about nothing in particular. Now, I haven’t told anyone except my partner about my self-organisation drive, so this was purely coincidental, but the friend asked if I have used Google Keep before. 

No is the answer. I haven’t even heard of it. 

The friend then gets super excited, showing me how she has her separate to do lists for home, work, how they are different colours, how you can share notes and lists with friends. 

Perfect, an organisational tool to try out! Let’s go.

Google Keep try out

I downloaded the app on my phone, and found out that there is a Chrome extension for the laptop (although it did take 5 minutes to get through the obstacle of it formerly being a Chrome app – not very good signposting). Love that syncing.

To caveat (as with everything), I haven’t fully explored the app and it’s still a work in progress. Initially I had the intention to set up a new note box for each of the sub-streams. However, on reflection I already have the central to-do list spreadsheet. I don’t need to duplicate work and I think that could get pretty messy. 

The recurring tasks angle I was hoping to use it for, I do need to explore that still, as I can see that there is some reminder functionality. 

In the meantime though, I felt like I wanted to take advantage of the app’s dynamism. It just feels quite intuitive. The system I’m trying out currently is: 

1. A list called ‘Today’, with Today’s tasks on. I’m trying to bullshit myself as little as possible by not putting 30 tasks down that I will clearly not complete. I also don’t intent to include hugely obvious items, like ‘Work’ on a work day.
2. A list called ‘Tomorrow’. If something pops into my mind today and I know I want/need to do it tomorrow, including recurring tasks, then that’s where it is going. 
3. When Tomorrow becomes Today, I relabel Tomorrow as Today and delete the old Today. I then create a new ‘Tomorrow’ list.
4. If a task comes to mind which is neither going to get done Today or Tomorrow, but I want to do it, it is going to end up on the central sheet.
5. In the initial excitement I set up a list for a December holiday that I shared with my partner so we could sort out booking accommodation for each night. That list is a success. I’m thinking of maybe building out a specific list for each ‘live project’ in my life e.g. learning to drive, December holiday.

Final thoughts

It’s going to take time to work out how to build a system that works, but I like the functionality so far of Google Keep, and I like the immediacy of having a Today list and a Tomorrow list. Let’s see if it’s a system that works for me.

Also, I think I need to keep in mind the tension that while it is good to track, the end here is not to track everything, but to have an enhanced life. An enhanced life is independent of the need to track everything i.e. I don’t need to worry/feel anxiety if I haven’t written down every last thing I do. It’s about balance.