Month: January 2021

This year began with an attempt to take things slowly. After a year of extreme time dilation, I find it tough to plan far ahead. At first, I wanted to take on this daily lesson idea as a goal for the entire year but decided to start with just the month ahead. While I don’t know that I’ll be able to find a lesson every day, I want to keep adding to the list I’ve started.

What I Would Do Different

First, I’d like to address some aspects where I find I can improve this habit.

While starting out, it was easy to jot down several ideas from a given day – be it from a book, podcast, or some idea that popped in my head. After a couple weeks, some of those days felt that there were “too many” lessons. Days where I read, take a course, or watch a documentary, might lead to five good ideas to jot down. Instead, I like the idea of honing in on just one key lesson from the day.

For the trial, the pressure to come up with an idea helped to keep me thinking about my day. The daily element feels like a burden looking down the calendar ahead, but I fear that without having to put something down every day, I’ll start to let myself slip – starting the possible chain of misses that breaks the habit. In the end, I think just one idea from the whole day should be possible, but I’m willing to mess with the specifics as the year continues.

Favorite Lessons

While every day I had to write down at least one idea, there were a number of which really stood out to me.

When starting something ask the question: “What question am I trying to answer?”

A recurring idea throughout the lessons was asking myself questions. This is the meta-question that I think gets to the bottom of the reasoning behind something. With all of the trials I do, I find there are some that I have this question in mind. Others are just something to write a few posts on. I plan to keep this question in mind for all my trials going forward.

Life is learning; you have to create the lesson plan.

I wrote an entire post as an expansion of this idea, but the short of it is that learning with a plan can be much easier than without one. A lesson plan, even a rough outline, can help direct me through a subject I’m interested in. Whether we like it or not, we are learning things every day. If we want, we can choose the subjects we are focusing on.

Informational content doesn’t necesitate productivity. Believing that consuming news or educational content is justified may just be an excuse for indulgence or entertainment.

My biggest guilty pleasure is “productivity porn.” Books, podcasts, videos, and more all about how to better improve yourself. I rarely implement the ideas that I consume, but often give myself a pat on the back for “learning,” even though it’s often the same ideas repeated over and over.

This has increasingly applied to news. After a wild ride of a year, I began to get deep into news shows, especially political ones. Sometimes there were good updates to follow, like what I needed to do for COVID-19 mandates or political candidates’ policies and goals when it was time to vote. Most often, it was getting upset with one individual or group for doing something dumb across the country and the political spectrum.

In the end, I can’t remember even close to everything that happened in 2020, but I know I spent days of my life following news that ultimately didn’t matter.

Grand gestures seem great, but often it’s the accumulation of the little things that really create positive (or negative) results.

While watching Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ), an interview segment discussed a number of stats for the speedrunning charity event. One of which was that a large majority of the money raised came in the form of donations of less than $100. Throughout the event, donations are read to the audience, some of which are for several thousand dollars. Yet, the vast majority are just a few bucks. It goes to show that the coming together of a lot of small contributions can outweigh a single grand gesture.

While this is certainly applicable to charity events, the same goes for day-to-day life. From small habits that can improve a morning or a minor annoyance felt day after day. These things can build over time for better or worse.

Learning More and Going Forward

This trial is another one that didn’t have a direct impact on my life or productivity, but it led to a variety of improvements in the way I think about life. I find myself looking deeper into things than I had before, and this is speaking as someone who already tried to experience media on a deeper level.

Starting off with a simple idea will hopefully keep the momentum going throughout the rest of the year.

With the first trial of 2021 in the books, it’s time for the next one. For the next few weeks I’ll be tracking my time and energy throughout the day in order to find my “Biological Prime Time.” This is an idea from The Productivity Project, a book that made several appearances in my lessons list. In the process of tracking, I’ll be cutting out caffeine and alcohol, as well as doing my best to wake up naturally. The idea is to find when I’m operating at my best throughout the day.

In reviewing my lessons thus far, I came across one that really stood out to me. “Life is learning; you have to create the lesson plan.” On the surface, it seems to line up with the overall thesis of this blog, but there’s a piece I often leave off the table, the plan.

There’s Something About Freedom

Many of my trials come to me just a few days before starting, if not while I’m writing the very post announcing it. There have been some I’ve had planned prior, but for the most part I pursue what interests me at a given time.

This degree of freedom has been nice at times but stressful more often than not. There have been a number of final posts for a trial which have led to me pacing about trying to determine what I should do next.

This tendency leaks into a number of areas in my life, including my intellectual pursuits. I tend to find a new idea through a podcast, book, or video, and am ready to dive in. I research various resources for a bit, but with no requirements to follow through on anything, I tend to learn a couple things and then move on.

Lesson Planning

I, like many, have probably only had a clear education during my years of school. It’s difficult to get students in a class without an idea of what is going to be taught. This goes for classrooms in schools everywhere to online courses.

Currently, my interests bounce from topic to topic in a moment’s notice. My whiteboards are covered top to bottom with notes and ideas from just a couple of days. A consistent problem I have is poor follow through on those ideas. Even in projects where I get to some level of competence, I often don’t have a plan for developing further.

While perhaps not a trial in itself, I want to create quarterly “courses” that I’m going to take, almost like a semester in school. With that, I can focus on these ideas and develop them further. Each would have an associated syllabus, an outline of what would be required to be completed in the time.

Creating these courses would get the idea out of the “maybe I should do this” part of my mind and provide me a jumping off point for when I find the time is right to do so. In other words, I stop feeling guilty for not making the time for it.

Something I’ve added for myself with these is to have a list of the minimal requirements of what the course will teach me and the purpose, the why. If I can’t list these elements down, the course is removed. It ties to a lesson from the very day which inspired this one, “When deciding to do something, the critical point is WHY.”

This post might not have been directly related to this specific trial, but it was through this documentation of ideas that the idea came to me. I do hope to share the results of this process later in the year, be it success or failure.

In my efforts to record the bits of wisdom I find in the day, I find myself more on the lookout for them. Looking for these lessons has led me to be more aware of what I’m doing in a given moment. I’m more attentive in taking in the things around me, be them a book, a TV show, or just the world around me.

Influences All Around

There hasn’t been another time in history when access to content was greater than it is now. With a few taps on a keyboard, platforms full of articles, books, movies, and videos are found. These platforms have a near infinite amount of content to consume, and, at times, we can be pressured to follow it all.

I’ve long been an avid consumer of many different types of content and some of it influenced me greatly, while others have been lost to my memory. 

A few years ago, I remember seeing this post on social media that was headlined something like, “50 things my economics professor taught me.” It was this list of various things that this professor did, and one sticks with me for some reason. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect of “unpack your suitcase if you are staying at a place for two or more nights.” It was such a specific piece of advice that it stuck with me, and I actually do unpack my things in a hotel if I’ll be there a few days.

I read a lot of non-fiction, especially self-help and self-improvement books, and often I find there are some interesting ideas. Usually, I find one or two big ideas to pull from a given title.

Paying Closer Attention

While I’m reading a book or watching a video, part of my mind is focused on what I can take from this. What perspective or idea I can use from this piece of media to enhance my life. I think all experiences, lived or simulated in media, have lessons to offer, whether they be direct instructions for improving performance in a given area or a perspective to approach certain situations in.

Specific types of media offer somewhat straightforward lessons to be drawn, but not all are as clear cut. It’s easy to draw wisdom from a book on meditation or a documentary on philosophy, but fiction can still offer amazing insights.

My favorite example of this in my personal life was playing through the game Final Fantasy IX last year after a rough patch. The games themes around life, death, and purpose really shook me out of a depressive state.

I think nearly all media has something that we can gain from it, even if it’s what not to do.

Media can be a source of wisdom, but so can our lived experience. We don’t need a book to tell us not to touch a hot stove. Some conclusions we are able to come to on our own. Sometimes an outside source may influence the conclusion we come to, but that conclusion is something we draw on our own.

Time to Reflect

With all these lessons coming to mind, recording and reviewing them is the next step.

Walks have long been a wind down ritual of mine. Ending the day with an opportunity to let my mind wander to the places it wants to go helps me to settle down before trying to sleep. I’ve begun using nightly walks as a chance to look back on the day in more detail, trying to find anything I might have missed in the day or if there’s something I need to think deeper on.

One thing I think I need to make time for more often is reviewing the list itself. A friend of mine recently asked me what my lesson from the prior day was, and I blanked. I couldn’t think of what I had written down just one day ago. Of course, when I got home and checked, “duh, it was X.” I’m still doing weekly reviews every Sunday. That would be a good time to look back on the week and digest everything I’ve taken in.

Even this reflection can act as an opportunity to learn!

At the beginning of last year, I was looking at bigger projects to tackle and explore and to take on goals I thought would really challenge me. I was riding a high from completing all my goals set in 2019 and thought I could get through just about anything. After the roller coaster ride of last year, I’m looking to ground myself and take a look at what’s right in front of me.

Systems Over Targets

Instead of vaguely gesturing “I want to do X,” I’m shifting my focus on the steps needed to make that goal come to fruition. In other words, what systems, habits, processes, technology, etc. do I need to make that thing inevitable?

Another big question I want to look at is “why?” Looking back, it’s probably the biggest challenge I had personally in 2020, focusing on the idea of having done something rather than the actual doing. I don’t think I have any deeper reasons for any of my goals other than “I think it’s what I should do,” or “it seemed interesting.”

I still haven’t figured out the exact answers for this year, but I believe that I’m already off to a better start. I’ve been jotting down ideas in a spreadsheet – projects to work on, places to visit, and even books to read. Just about everything has a column for the answer to “why?” For anything that requires long-term effort, I’m writing down the systems and habits I need in order to actually accomplish it.

Little Lessons

This month, I’m trying out something along those lines, keeping track of any lessons I learn each day. Whatever it may be, I’m making a list of what comes to me. I consume so much content, but it doesn’t always stick. Sometimes I feel I can see a book title and the ideas come back to me. Other times, I’ve completely forgotten the book exists.

Something I started a couple of years ago was to jot down a few notes on the book in Notion, my note-taking app of choice. That way, I could look back and see what I saw as major takeaways. Another service I’ve started recently is Blinkist. It reads highlights that I use as both a preview and review for books. These help a lot with books specifically, but then there are podcasts, videos, written posts and articles, and even just epiphanies my mind comes to on it’s own. 

Here are a some from the first few days of the year:

• 01/01/2021 – Link habits to others, that way even on a bad day, you might find yourself going through the motions
• 01/02/2021 – If you are trying to change someone’s behavior, determine if the change will actually help them before prescribing your “panacea”
• 01/03/2021 – Life is learning; you have to create the lesson plan
• 01/04/2021 – Accomplishment > Efficiency

I’ve made a spreadsheet to store all of these lessons with links to any sources, where applicable. I planned to make a page here on the site, but WordPress is uncooperative with Google Sheets.

This came to me as an idea after a few newsletters I follow pointed to this list of 100 lessons in the same week. After reading through it, with some highlights for my favorites, I thought “what if I did this for the whole year?” If I could learn at least one thing every day, I will have gained 365 pieces of wisdom.