Some notes…

Life will be imperfect, and that’s ok.

On being finite

It’s worse than you think: on the liberation of defete:

• “The most liberating and empowering and productive step you can take, if you want to spend more of your time on the planet doing what matters to you, is to grasp the sense in which life as a fintite human being – with limited time, and limited control over that time – is really much worse than you think. Completely beyond hope, in fact.”
• “Very well, then: here you are. Here we all are. Now… what might be some good things to do with your time?”

Kayaks and superyachts: on actually doing things:

• “The main point – though it took me years to realize it – is to develop the willingness to just do something, here and now, as a one-off, regardless of whether it’s part of any system or habit or routine.”
• “So, just do the thing, once, with absolutely no guarantee you’ll ever manage to do it again.”

You need only face the consequences: on paying the price

Against productivity debt: on the power of a ‘done list’d

Too much information: on the art of reading and not reading

• “People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be.” – Idries Shah
• “Spending half an hour reading something interesting , moving, awe-inspiring or merely amusing might be worth doing, not just to improve who you become in the future – though it might do that too – but for the sake of that very half hour of being alive.”

You can’t care about everything: on staying sane when the world is a mess:

• “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”- William James
• “In an age of attention scarcity, the greatest act of good citizenship may be learning to withdraw your attention from everything except the battles you’ve chosen to fight.”

Let the future be the future: on crossing bridges when you come to them

Taking Action

Decision-hunting: on choosing a path through the woods

Finish things: on the magic of completion

Look for the life task: on what reality wants

• Life task is different than “passion” or “calling”
• It’s something you can only do with effort and “good difficulty”, something that “enlarges you” rather than making you feel intermediately happy.
• Though it’s difficult, it’s something you’re currently equipped to do

Just go to the shed: on befriending what you fear

• Pay the bill, deal with the thing you’re putting off

Rules that serve life: on doing things dailyish

• The chain of Xs “Seinfeld Strategy”
• “Obviously, the goal was never a chain of red Xs. It was making people laugh”
• Do things “dailyish”

Three hours: on finding focus in the chaos

• What do you do when the bell rings and your work isn’t done? You get over it.

Develop a taste for problems: on never reaching the trouble-free phase

• “Beyond the mountain, there are always more mountains, at least until you reach the final mountain before your time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.”

Letting Go

What if this were easy: on the false allure of effort

• Don’t try to “get motivated”, try to figure out how the thing can be easy
• It’s hard to screw up a 5-year-old’s birthday part

The reverse golden rule: on not being your own worst enemy ⭐

• Chuck Close: “Inspiration is for amateurs – the rest of us just show up and get to work.”
• “I’ve spent a lot of time in my life trying to force myself to do things,’ [Susan] Piver wrote [in Getting stuff done by not being mean to yourself]. ‘Really good things. Things that are important to me. Things like meditating, journaling, going to the gym, and so on. I set schedules over and over. (I will rise at 5. Meditate, 5.30-6.30. Journal 6.30-7.30. Breakfast 8-9, and so on.) I fail way more than I succeed, which makes me really, really upset. I get angrier and angrier at myself, curse my lack of discipline, shame myself for watching Battlestar Galactica (again) instead of writing, delve into my psychology hoping to unearth the seeds of self-sabotage. It spirals out of control until I either give in to lying on the couch or somehow manage to squeeze out a day of discipline according to schedule, whereupon I exhale a half-sigh of relief and immediately begin bullying myself to repeat this tomorrow. IT SUCKS.’”
• “Self-indulgent? If anything, it’s constantly berating yourself that’s the self-indulgent path, reflecting the inner taskmaster’s hubristic belief that he or she could bully you into doing anything, merely by shouting loudly enough. Facing up to reality – as finite humans must – means facing up to the reality of your moods, desires, and interests, too. This is why it takes courage to ask yourself the question that I suspect all those gurus promoting the warrior mindset’ and ‘mental toughness’ are too frightened to ask themselves: “How would you like to spend your time today?“

Don’t stand in nature’s way: on not being your own worst enemy

• “Everybody loves something. Even if it’s just tortillas” – Chögyam Trungpa
• You are already probably generous… get out of your own way.
• Be generous in the moment, don’t wait

Don’t stand in generosity’s way: on the futility of “becoming a better person”

Allow other people their problems: on minding your own business

A good time or a good story: on the upsides of unpredictability

• “People-pleasing is a form of assholery … because you’re not pleasing anybody – you’re just making them resentful because you’re being disingenuous, and you’re also not giving them the dignity of their own experience by assuming] they can’t handle the truth.” – Whitney Cummings
• If you can’t do something, saying no right away usually make it much easier for everyone.
• Very often, the best way to benefit others is to focus on doing your thing.

A good time or a good story: on the upsides of unpredictability

• “It helps if you can realize that this part of life when you don’t know what’s coming is often the part that people look back on with the greatest affection.” – Ann Patchett

Set a quantity goal: on firing your inner quality controller

• “Quantity has a quality all its own” some one, maybe Stalin
• Fall in love of the process
• Quantity overpowers perfection…
• “Here’s the magic trick: if you can’t come up with ten ideas, come up with twenty ideas? Quantity overpowers perfectionism,” as Altucher explains, “Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm. From coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain. We like the brain. But you have to shut the brain off to come up with ideas.’ A quantity goal puts you back in the driver’s seat: instead of hoping you produce something good, you get to know you’ll produce something.”

What’s an interruption, anyway?: on the importance of staying distractible

• “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day?” – C.S. Lewis
• We lose our grip on our plans for the day, and find ourselves tumbling into life.

Showing up

Stop being so kind to future you: on entering time and space completely

• Story of the piano player who took life “too seriously”.
• There’s no virtue in accumulating the greatest number of uneaten marshmallows that would be delicious were you ever to let yourself consume one. At some point… you have to eat the damn marshmallow.

How to start from sanity: on paying yourself first

• “To treat life as a pilgrimage to a future and better existence is to disown its present value.” – W. Somerset Maugham

Scruffy hospitality: on finding connection in the flaws

• Love this term!
• “A perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life.” – Mary Randolph Carter
• “Scruffy hospitality means you’re not waiting for everything in your house to be in order before you host and serve friends in your home. Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have, not what you don’t have. Scruffy hospitality means you’re more interested in quality conversation than in the impression your home or lawn makes.” – Jack King

You can’t hoard life: on letting the moments pass

• “The nature of finite things as such is to have the seed of passing away as their essential being: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.” G. W. F. Hegel
• You can have a hundred tea ceremonies; you could even have all of them with the same people. But you can only have that ceremony, that cup of tea, once.

C’est fait par du monde: on giving it a shot

• “Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” – Samuel Butler

What matters: on finding your way

• “Often think of the rapidity with which things pass by and disappear … For substance is like a river in continual flow, and the activities of things are in constant change, and the causes work in infinite varieties; and there is hardly anything which stands still. And consider this which is near to thee, this boundless abyss of the past and of the future in which all things disappear. How then is he not a fool who is puffed up with such things or plagued about them and makes himself miserable? For they vex him only for a time, and a short time.” – Marcus Aurilius
• You might have never have been born… [but] You are here. This is it. You don’t much matter – yet you matter as much as anyone ever did.