the benefits of staying in place/focus

as i’m reading this book of letters from seneca, i’ve realized some things. 

1. there is so much good and simple stuff here that i could write a post per letter (sometimes more). 
2. there are recurring themes and that it might serve me to wrap thematic insights together. 
3. while the stuff in here is good, i really want to get back to reading more strategy stuff (even though i’m increasingly understanding how important internal personal work is for strategy) and also more work by people in oppressed groups (black, indigenous, queer & trans, women, colonized, etc.).
   

all that aside, this post is about two letters that all discuss the importance of staying in place and focusing.

the first, letter ii, is about focusing. on developing strong friendships and how “people who spend their whole life travelling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships” and how reading a single author to learn deeply is more important than reading one book by everyone and learning broadly.

the second, letter xxviii, is also about how traveling doesn’t necessarily solve one’s woes. it basically says that sometimes people who want to travel think it will be a cure for their discontent, but what they’re actually running from is internal. once one figures out how to deal with one’s internal problems, traveling is nice but everything needed can be found wherever you are.

all of those points are basically made without saying much more, but it definitely is adding fuel to my “stay in boston” fire.

ps - so great that i found all seneca’s letters online!

writing: 11:50
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 5:42

i’ve changed my mind about reading fiction

earlier in 2016 i wrote about why i don’t read fiction. i’ve since changed my mind. that’s allowed, right?

i’ve been influenced by several things:

1. working on #the4thbox (with danielle, felicia, and angus) as it relates to the political imagining we need to do collectively.
2. my friend erin’s response to my piece about why i don’t read fiction (is this what public discourse looks like? lol)
3. octavia butler predicting the rise of trump in parable of the sower (h/t miriam mack!).
4. conversations with cyndi suarez about her interest and work in bringing gamification and play into social change spaces.
5. conversations with kate balug and her interest in utopia(s).
   
6. grant williams’ fiction master’s (masters? why can i never figure that out…) thesis.

there are probably some other influences, too, but those seem like the most poignant ones. over thanksgiving break i read giovanni’s room by james baldwin and i’m still reeling from it. i’ve started several others (mostly octavia butler) and now i’m working towards holding an event on imagination in february within colab.

bringing fiction back into my life seems like just another manifestation of how important play and imagination are. where will all this end up? i don’t know, but i’m going there anyways!

writing: 11:05
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 7:24

on shaping your life according to nature and not people’s opinions

after a recent big talk[link coming someday], i started reading letters from a stoic by seneca because someone quoted him extensively. there’s a lot of good stuff in there so i’ll probably write a good bit about what sticks with me. this is the first.

for a little context, it seems like seneca is an upper-class older guy who has taken to mentoring this younger guy, lucilius. they write letters back and forth where seneca shares some insight and advice about things lucilius has said in his previous letter. seneca ends each letter with some quote from some other philosopher.

the types of quote he ends with are usually short, seemingly obvious, but dense and important. anyway, the first quote that’s a goody is:

“if you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor. if you shape your life to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.”
— seneca quoting epicurus, letter xvi

i don’t know why i have never thought about nature as an alternative frame to society for evaluating the quality of my life. i think about eating seasonally and even sketched out an idea for a digital seasonal eating calendar tool (sketch 1, sketch 2. i try (mostly fail, but try!) to plan my year so that it follows the energy of seasons: lots of activity in the spring and summer, calmer in the fall and winter. using a natural frame for evaluating my state of being seems so obvious and yet i’ve never have.

in addition to thinking about my life in the context of planetary well-being (lesson learned from infinite growth), when i do my annual retreat in jan 2017 i think i’m also going to adjust my weekly calendar schedule based on seasonality (i.e. larger number of things per week during the spring and summer, and fewer in the fall and winter) instead of trying to minimize the amount of social resistance i face.

this framing has come up in some other areas of my life:

• having conversations with my friend caroline about “enoughness”
• living at 40 cottage and talking with my housemates there (especially annemarie) about what it meant to be truly wealthy – it usually involved good company and good food

+1 seneca.

writing: 13:48
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 7:07

why i’ll start a personal email newsletter

i listened to the samuel vasquez episode of obsessed with design recently and i was really inspired by his reasoning for starting a personal email newsletter. 

tbh, i was pretty critical of the practice up until i heard him explain why he started his. i thought it was pretty self-centered, self-aggrandizing, and mostly a form of personal boosterism.

but his logic and reasoning has totally changed my mind. in fact, he’s changed my mind so much that i’m planning to start one for myself in 2017. some of these reasons are his that i liked and some i came up with but here they are either way:

• let’s people know what i’m up to: more people ask me what i’m up to than i can reasonably respond to (not tryna be an asshole here, that’s just literally true. i wouldn’t have time to do any actual work if i kept up with everyone i know). i think a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter email can keep people in the loop about what i’m up to if they really want to know. the archive could also be a helpful tool as another form of personal public memory/reflection.
  
• allows people to send things resources my way. being up to date about what i’m doing i think could help people know what’s relevant to send along if they want: articles, rpfs, proposals, and things like job postings.
  
• allows people to make connections based on things they’re doing or seeing. whenever i update my job status on facebook, i get at least 2-3 people wanting to talk about work stuff. the newsletter could help people connect with me who are doing relevant work and want to either partner or think together or whatever.
  
• platform for sharing my writing. as i write more and hear how people appreciate it in different ways, i’m learning that a distribution platform could be a helpful thing. maybe the email could have a list of all the posts i wrote that week or something.

anyways, that’s what i’ve got right now as reasons for starting a personal email newsletter for 2017. they may evolve or change, but let’s see how it goes!

writing: 13:56
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 11:39

why getting the easy stuff "out of the way" doesn't work

since i’ve started my productivity coaching practice, i’ve noticed a common pattern. often when people are overwhelmed with the amount of work or tasks they have to do, they prioritize work poorly (that is, if they take the time to explicitly prioritize at all). 

anyways, doing the easy stuff first tends to start out intentional and end up with unintentional (but predictable) outcomes. it typically goes down like this:

1. make a list of all the things to do (intentional)
2. start by doing the “easy” or “quick” things first to “get them out of the way” (intentional)
3. spend too much time doing those things (unintentional)
4. have too little time to do the important things (unintentional)
5. submit shoddy work (unintentional)
6. be unhappy/unsatisfied (unintentional)

these unintended outcomes are the reason that starting with the easy stuff first is almost always a bad idea. there are exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, that approach doesn’t work.

for some people, that pattern (i think) actually becomes a work avoidance mechanism. because they never leave themselves enough time to do the important work, whenever they produce something that isn’t up to even their own standards they have a somewhat legitimate fallback. “i just didn’t have enough time.”

sometimes it really isn’t a person’s fault that they ran out of time… but if it’s a common occurrence…

writing: 12:35
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 1:10