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Focus on two minutes (Podcast Notes: James Clear)

 

I’ve been walking more:

When I started, my goal was to get to ten miles daily. After actually getting to ten miles in a day and seeing just how long that took, I’m thinking something like 3 in the morning and 3 at night would be sustainable. Then 4 and 4 or 5 and 5 on weekend days.

I’ll write about this walking routine more (when I’m a few more weeks in). Right now I want to see how it breaks into habits and routines.

On the past few long walks, I’ve been listening to James Clear interviews—he’s been on a lot of podcasts in the past month talking about his book Atomic Habits which is coming out next week. (I can’t wait.)

Focus on what you can do in two minutes. Walking for an hour isn’t really the habit. Just like lifting weights for an hour isn’t really the habit. Though I do see the value in calling it a workout habit, it’s useful to separate habits and routines for thinking through them and executing.

I’ll just break down walking.

  • The routine: Walking for 60-90 minutes first thing in the morning.
  • The habits involved: Drinking water/coffee, showering (cold), brushing teeth, putting workout clothes on, putting headphones on, heading out the door.
  • The key two minutes: Water/coffee and putting workout clothes on.

When I wake up, a tug of war starts between the apartment door and my bed. All those habits If I have coffee, it helps remind me that I won’t be able to go back to sleep anyway. All the other habits are like wrestlers jumping into the tug of war  against a lion (more sleep).

(James mentions that he doesn’t cheat himself on sleep. I do the same. No 4am alarms for me unless I’m asleep by 9pm. Aka no 4am alarms for me ever. If I don’t sleep enough, I walk less in the morning and try to make it up in the evening.)

I use my phone while walking and restrict my first check to when I’m outside. This is an attempt at using some of the enemy’s momentum positively. I’m addicted to my phone. Getting better, but still it tugs at my brain first thing on waking up. Now I use it as a reward. Once you’re outside, you can check your phone.

The key two minutes are the two habits that really get me out the door. If I have water and coffee, I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep even if I lie back down. If I put workout clothes, I’m ready to step out. When you can break something down into two minutes, you can focus on practicing just that small piece. Then I can get out the door as fast as possible.

And then I have nothing else to do but the walking routine.

Write in the editor Vol. ?

I’m writing in the editor again. When I do, I finish posts. When I don’t, I don’t finish posts.

I write in Evernote and Ulysses often. Over the past weekend I broke things down so and made a bunch of different notes in Ulysses to treat as components to put a newsletter together.

Mission accomplished: Now I have a bunch of pieces that I need to put together as a newsletter.

What I don’t currently have is the urge to finish that up. Instead I’m writing this post about finishing things.

When I was planning how I’d break things down it had a familiar feeling of previous times I wrote a little at a time and then let things linger as a giant draft too long. Then I never got around to ever posting anything.

That newsletter post is a few thousand words long and it’s about 80% of the way there. I need to remember just how long everything can take.

Also, the math for motivation doesn’t work that well. Let’s say I have 2 posts:

  1. 500 words long
  2. 2500 words long

It might seem like editing would take 5x as long but it seems to take more like 10-15x as much time and energy. There’s got to be some kind of mountain climbing analogy. It’s a light at the end of the tunnel thing.

(And by editing I don’t really even mean culling words and improving the writing. Pretty much making sure I add links and get rid of all the notes to self. Which is another thing about writing giant pieces. Scanning it end to end takes longer because there’s so much less confidence that you caught everything that could be in there. My point is: Writing a book is probably 1000x worse.)

Ok I’m going to just post this and put it out into the world.

Oh give me a hell yeah (a calm yeah works also)

Stone Cold Steve Austin has a podcast and is pretty much his wrestling character because his wrestling character was him. From an IGN interview (2005):

I didn’t know, so I asked Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat what I’m doing wrong. I was a great mechanic, but the entertainment value was clearly missing, so when I finally began making the transition to “Stone Cold”, and was venting my frustrations through the character, it all sort of fell into place. Letting loose and being myself I owe to those guys.

It’s a great position that he earned and has taken advantage of to have great things post-wrestling. In 1998, he was working the same character that he would be happy to work 20 years later.

That’s worth striving for. Even if you work at a desk.

Jason Fried and DHH released “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work” this week. “The Calm Company” was the working title. If you think calm is a good thing, you’ll enjoy this book.

If you like things crazy, this might go a step toward changing your mind.

Particularly if you think the craziness is only temporary. For now. To kick start things and then you can calm it down later.

From “It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work”:

You have to keep asking yourself if the way you’re working today is the way you’d want to work in 10, 20, or 30 years. If not, now is the time to make a change, not “later.”

We always think we can do things later. That things will be better later. After you get through these three years grinding then you can relax. But if you grind for three years (or, hey, ten) and attribute it all to hard work, you’ll be pretty hesitant to take your foot off the pedal.

I like that the book’s themes can apply generally outside of just working in tech. You carry around a portal to be everywhere except where you are. There are notifications for everything. You can over schedule yourself with a few taps here and there. Then fill the gaps in looking at other people’s perfect lives.

It’s great to step back and calm down.

Pair this book with a podcast…

DHH and Jason Fried have each been on Tim Ferriss’s podcast (DHH Oct 2016, DHH Nov 2016, Jason Fried Jul 2018) and they’re some of my favorite episodes of any podcast. On one of those episodes, Tim and DHH talk about people who drive themselves hard to build and sell a company and then end up unhappy on the other side of that.

Something that’s stuck with me and that jives with the idea from that book excerpt above is that you should practice being rich. Because you’re not just going to flip a switch 10 years from now. You have to start changing today.

If you’re on a path to become rich, you better start practicing being rich:

If you want to be good and you hope to enjoy all these things by using your time for fun when you have money, you have to practice that before you have money. It sounds ridiculous, but I think that money is like alcohol in the sense that it just makes you more of who you already are.

Stone Cold always says he was just himself but turned up a notch or two. He became successful being himself so it didn’t really change all that much when wrestling ended.

Lastly, if you remember one thing remember this: if you’re ever in doubt, ask Rick Rude and Ricky Steamboat.

Practice directing your attention

Chris Bailey in his appearance on The Art of Manliness:

The more distracted you are, the less you’re able to delve deep into what’s actually complex on a daily basis. One proven way of doing that is meditation. Meditation is a brain training technique where you train your ability to give focus to what’s in front of you in the present moment as opposed to wherever your attention wants to go, to whatever’s novel, pleasurable or threatening. It totally is possible to not only make your attention bigger and not only be able to take on things that are more complex, but it’s possible that your attention can almost wither over time. It decreases as your energy levels falter, for example. It decreases the more distracted you are, with your distractibility level.

I read Hyperfocus (full notes to come) after listening to this podcast episode. Here’s something from the book about directing your attention:

Directing your attention toward the most important object of your choosing—and then sustaining that attention—is the most consequential decision we will make throughout the day. We are what we pay attention to.

I’ve been meditating more since reading Hyperfocus. I’ve meditated on and off and always want to meditate more. This book gave me whatever motivation I needed to start it up again. Actually it was this book along with an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast (#1161 – Jerrod Carmichael & Jamar Neighbors) where Jamar talks about his meditation practice. I listened to both of these on a flight to Seattle and meditated a bit on the flight.

Directing your attention is worth practicing. Meditation lets you continually practice it for a set amount of time.

Here comes a workout analogy. For directing your attention, meditation can be like a cardio workout. You’re constantly moving and working out the entire time. You continue to notice your attention wandering and directing it back to your breathing (or other things depending on what type of meditation).

Then there’s a concept called greasing the groove. Often you’ll hear about it for increasing the number of pull-ups you can do. You do pull-ups throughout the day. Not to failure. It should feel easy. Every hour do a few pull ups. The reps will add up.

Similarly, this is valuable for practicing directing your attention. Chris Bailey recommends having an hourly chime for this. Every hour, reflect on what you did in the past hour and what you’re currently doing. It’s a time to refocus.

I’ve been using the pomodoro technique in the past week. It must be the 17th time that I’ve tried it in my life but it’s been pretty effective this time around. One difference is that I’ve been really respecting the 25-minute timer. Meaning that I’ll end when time ends. In the past I would work through it—“I’m focused, why stop now?” Well, because if you stick it through to an hour then you’ll be completely drained. (Think: NBA Live turbo button.)

Each pomodoro is a rep in directing your attention. You’re greasing the groove. Combining that with meditation has been really effective.

I’ll write more book notes (I really enjoyed it, if you couldn’t tell). Check out Hyperfocus for yourself and listen to The Art of Manliness episode.

Kobe Bryant: Every day math

What did you do today to improve?
Was it deliberate? Did you do it yesterday? Will you do it tomorrow and the day after?

Kobe Bryant is retired from basketball and is now focused on being a great storyteller. He was recently on Lewis Howes’s podcast The School of Greatness: “Mamba Mentality, NBA Championships, And Oscars”. Here’s what he says about the math of every day:

It’s simple. If you do the math on this, right? If you’re thinking about how often kids are playing. I tell this to my daughter, and my daughter’s team as well, that I coach. it’s a simple thing of math.

If you want to be a great player. If you play every single day 2, 3 hours. Every single day. Over the course of a year. How much better are you getting? Most kids will play, maybe, an hour and a half two days a week? Do the math on that. That’s not gonna get it done. Not gonna get it done.

So if you’re obsessively training 2 or 3 hours every single day over a year. Over two years. You make quantum leaps, man.

Zooming in on the header image. It’s a photo from my desk in 2007. Lots of other memories in a single photo but I erased the background on this Kobe dunk and printed it at the school library. Good times.

That math scales down well, but keep the “every single day” part. Adjust the other numbers. You really might only be able to carve out 30 minutes.

  • 2 or 3 hours every day over 2 years
  • 1 hour a day over 4 years
  • 30 minutes a day over 8 years

Eight years starts sounding like a pretty long time, but the time is going to pass anyway.

It’s clear that the opposite is true: negative action adds up. (Eating a box of cookies every day.) What’s easier to forget is that seemingly neutral action can add up negatively as well. (Sitting at a desk every day.)

In The Slight Edge, Jeff Olson writes about the importance of paying attention to small things that you do every day:

Simple daily disciplines—little productive actions, repeated consistently over time—add up to the difference between failure and success. The slight edge is relentless and cuts both ways: simple daily disciplines or simple errors in judgment, repeated consistently over time, make you or break you.

Taking it even further, cutting the input in half and doubling the time scale:

  • 15 minutes a day over 16 years
  • 7 minutes a day over 32 years
  • 3 minutes a day over 64 years

I’ll think about this more but it does seem that preventative things fit well further down the scale. That last one being pretty close to the time it takes to brush your teeth every day over a lifetime. (But neglecting this for even a year could be bad.)

Take action: Think about what good you’ll do today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that and the…

Read more books (until you need to read fewer books)

What are you reading right now?

Do you know what you’ll be reading next?

If so, good. Please teach me how.

I’ve got too many books going at any one time. I’ve been trying to improve on this. Which means mostly not doing anything to improve on this and just feeling bad every time I realize I’ve mindlessly switched to another book.

Anyway I came across a couple passages this week about book selection. Here’s the first, from Dan Meredith’s How to Be F-cking Awesome:

Next, I read. Now I have three books on the go at all times. As I mentioned earlier, I used to beat myself up over having all the books and not reading them. Now? I pick the most suitable three and read one–two chapters of each of them every day. For me, a combination of an autobiography, a business/marketing/mindset book and some easy, fun-to-read fiction works well.

I subscribe to that idea that if you’re thinking about buying a book then you should just go ahead and buy it. So I buy a lot of books. Well, ebooks. Which is great. I’ve read a good number of books since buying a Kindle in 2010. A lot of which I probably wouldn’t have read if I stuck to hard copies.

(Here comes the…) But now I’m seeing that having hundreds of books with you at all times can be distracting.

I usually am bouncing 3 Kindle books around along with 3 Audible books and then I have a hard copy. To illustrate this, here’s what the current rotation looks like.

Kindle books:

  • Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan
  • The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
  • Pomodoro Technique Illustrated by Staffan Noteberg

Audiobooks:

  • The Audience of One by Srinivas Rao
  • American Kingpin by Nick Bilton
  • Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam

Hardcover:

  • Maverick by Ricardo Semler

(I have The Wise Man’s Fear as an audiobook and hardcover so I’ll jump into those once in a while as well.)

Just going to quote myself on this. From a post titled “Journal 18: The Duel”:

Ravikant says he treats books like they’re blogs. I like his comparison to blog archives. You wouldn’t just read an archive from start to finish. You would look and try to find the most interesting posts. In the same way, he goes through books and reads the most interesting sections.

Which is referring to Naval Ravikant’s appearance on The Knowledge Project. Actually sort of a life changing episode. In that I definitely changed how I read books immediately after listening to that episode. I may have gone too far to where I’m not retaining anything at all.

Anyway here’s another thing I wrote about being more deliberate about what I’m reading, “The second diet”:

This blog acts as a bit of the best things from my mental diet. Hopefully I’m sharing meals that taste good and are good for you. Of course, it’s a highlight reel. I read and listen to a lot of stuff that isn’t as good.

A lot of it isn’t varied enough. I started stepping out of the echo chamber of tech startup, design think piece, growth hacker, productivity type of things.

For that post, I was referring to Shannon Briggs’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

I’m approaching two years (originally posted Dec 2016) since writing that post and… I think I’m pretty close to being entirely back in that echo chamber. That’s a sign that it’s what I’m interested in. But I still think it’s worth deliberately reading outside of those topics at least half the time and I’d like to be beyond half the time outside of those things.

Oh yeah, at the top of the post I said there were two passages that I came across—the second one is from something in Laura Vanderkam’s book “Off the Clock” about how she picks the books she’ll read. I found something similar on her blog in her post “My year of making time to read (plus a most memorable books list)”:

I get a lot of recommendations from Modern Mrs. Darcy/What Should I Read Next? and from write-ups in O magazine and the Wall Street Journal. People send me a fair number of non-fiction titles. I will read through other works by writers I like.

Which reminds me that a month ago (while reading In the beginning was the command line) I decided I’d read all of Neal Stephenson’s novels. So Anathem might be next after The Wise Man’s Fear.

Okay so here are the two things that should be helpful:

  • Have a strategy for picking books: This takes some of the fun out but I think something general like 1 non-fiction, 1 fiction, 1 narrative non-fiction could be good. I’ll keep trying different rotations out.
  • Write about what you’re reading: Just to help with retention. I’m aiming to write 1000 words a day. (Re-inspired by Srinivas Rao: “Shortly after that conversation I started writing 1000 words a day and it’s something I’ve been doing ever since. To say that the habit changed my life would be an understatement.”) A lot of what I write (~10 days into this hopefully-new habit) has been about what I read that day. I suspect that will continue. I’ll try to share the good parts.