Category: Writing

I write a lot but I’ve never considered myself by the label of a writer.

Habitual Renovation

James Clear’s book Atomic Habits has been recommended to me by a few people, so I have it down on my reading list.  One quote I heard Brene Brown recollect yesterday was this gem:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the context of my work, both personal and professional. The last few months have felt incredibly challenging on all fronts.  The one thing I have missed about my daily work commute (& not the commute itself) was the space to think slowly and act deliberately. With my desk becoming the place for work and pleasure and reading and writing, the only thing that I’ve (not always regularly) done to compensate for that time has been my walk.

[I did do two walks today but forgot to take a picture so here’s another one from yesterday of angry looking skies]

Listening to BB refer to Clear’s quote reminded me – again – that my list fluctuates between things to set up a system and tasks to complete in pursuit of the goal. I tell my 10 year old all the time, you can’t work on more than one thing at once, and it’s advice I should follow myself.

This image on James Clear’s site  simply, elegantly, nails my problem. 

Some of my habits served me well in a past life.  These habits take time from my day and they now seem like a unsurmountable wall between what I am doing and what I really want to do.

Appearances are deceptive. Building a system that lifts the level of my ‘default performance’  is what this 100 days exercise is really about: committing to, and deliberately, consistently building (or renovating) my own system to adapt to the world I’m now in.

 

Strategy & Flying in Formation

It was a solitary walk this afternoon, under an overcast sky today, listening to Brene Brown & her sister Barett Guillen riff on the subject of feedback. I stopped to take a picture here. The tide was in, the skies looked ominous, and lots of people were out, despite the lockdown restrictions loosening from next Monday onwards. We (me too!) clearly can’t wait to socialise!

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Anyway, the podcast conversation between the sisters was riveting. Two things stood out for me:

  1. The analogy that BB uses when describing how she moves between strategy and operations, “balcony” and “dance floor” as the third space, or “the stairs”. You’re either watching the dance from the balcony, or are in the weeds of execution on the dance floor. You learn to move from one to the other, and help others do the same.
  2. The ‘move’ happens not by jumping from the balcony to the dance floor & then worrying how to get back to the top – instead walk down a 5 step staircase, one step at a time.
    (& I her admission while she was describing this to BG that she feels like she’s never actually explained it that way to her team! Yes, she’s used this the context of “paint-done” but not in this context of thinking at different levels)
    The 5 C steps: Color: Physically, what does this look like? Is this an email, a direct mail piece? Do we want just copy or images too?
    Context: Why are we doing this? How does it fit into the company’s mission? Goals? Strategy?
    Connective Tissue:     When is this due and what other actions, deadlines and initiatives are reliant on this? What other pieces should we model this after to ensure consistency?
    Cost    : How much should this cost to complete?
    Consequence:  What happens if this isn’t completed on time?

*****

While I was listening to the podcast, I observed this pattern that the birds seemed to follow, not just the V formation but the way they flew in a wave-like manner. I’ve never noticed that before.

In Pursuit of Excellence? or Perfection?

Another glorious day for a walk on the beach.

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At what point in the progress of any piece of work is it “enough”? If more than one person is working on it, who gets to call “enough”? Deadlines are often the default way this decision gets made – there’s no more time left to do any more work so that’s that.  And I’ve seen enough – pun intended – to know that is most often the case.

I tried to drive a different approach today just because I could. No frantic last minute stuff; instead I created enough momentum that the rest of the team were able to finish work on the document with a good night’s sleep to spare. It was not just good enough, it was precisely what was required. Everyone’s said so.  AND YET:

What I observe is that there’s usually someone who wants to keep working on it. Something else can be changed, even though as a team, everyone felt comfortable with it. The extra effort will break something, need some more last minute work, etc etc.

I wonder if the habits we build over our working life ensure that even when things are ‘enough’, we can’t bring ourselves to accept something as done. The pursuit of excellence is a noble endeavour, and I’m beginning to notice that many folks (sometimes me included) are obsessed with the pursuit of perfection, mask it as excellence, and drive everyone around us crazy.

Take a break, go for a walk with your loved ones, I say.  I did & it was a glorious afternoon for a walk 🙂

Anywhere the Wind Blows

I am truly grateful that I get to live near these parts, get to go on a walk every day with someone I love dearly, and get to do it in the middle of the day too if I choose to.

It was a pretty windy afternoon walk today.  The wind was in our faces, and it was strong enough to whip up small waves over this large body of water. Minutes after I took this picture, the wind changed direction somewhat (how does that happen?) and we walked back home with the wind blowing in our faces again.

My (poor) analogy about some of the things that have been on my mind:
Vision was knowing I had to get home in time for the next meeting. Strategy was knowing I had a couple of paths to get home in the rapidly changing environment. Tactics was holding my cap down and twisting my body to provide as little a surface area as I could against the wind so I could walk briskly.

Reflecting on it, perhaps some of the reasons for my failures have been an inability in the moment to distinguish between strategy and tactics, and forgetting completely about the vision. In other words, just going where the wind blows.

And a reminder when I got back home to stop and appreciate the flowers

 

 

Be Like Water

Today’s walk was a solitary one. The water was cool and the air was warm. The surf was larger than usual, and the number of surfers were too.  The warm weather had brought out a large number of people – walking themselves, their partners, their kids, their dogs.

The waves crashing on the shore seemed felt like the emotional waves I ‘ve been hit by the last few weeks: at work, at home, with friends.  Most times, I’ve felt compelled to be like like the rocks that the waves crash on. The rocks don’t seem to be affected when a few – or even a hundred – waves hit them, & the waves will soon stop, right?

I sat down for a moment to watch the waves roll ashore, and to give my legs a little break, when I took this picture.

Looking at the picture as I sat down to write, Bruce Lee’s words again came to mind:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

 

Sunsets at the beach and board games

It was the nation’s / state’s (?) day of confusing time adjustments today so everything feels a little out of whack.  Besides following a WWI tradition, I don’t know why some parts of the country do this to themselves now.

The one benefit today though was catching a beautiful transition in the western skies over the beach on our family walk this evening.

We walked back hand in all, all of us. We were the only ones on the beach as far as the eye could see. Admittedly my eyesight isn’t all that great, but we didn’t see any other humans on the beach while we walked back.

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I also re-learnt today how infectious  a child’s enthusiasm for  board games can be. With a moratorium on screen-time, the young lad has had to get used again to being bored or finding other things to keep his mind occupied. Practicing his cello, reading a book the old-fashioned way, riding his bike, and this evening, convincing everyone to play a board game with him.

 

Walking in the Rain

I didn’t get a picture today: on our way back from the walk, the skies opened up.

Our ten-year old was on his bike, riding along slowly and grumpily as we walked. The trip back suddenly became a fun experience, getting wet as it was getting dark.

Walking in the rain was a trip back on memory lane too. Two decades or so ago when we were dating, come sunshine or rain, my wife and I would meet every day. On the days it rained, which was quite often given the weather there, we’d get drenched – and would come up with creative excuses for her when she got home.

Also reminded me of this wonderful tune that I’ve shared a couple of times before: Pt’s Shiv Kumar Sharma & Hariprasad Chaurasia Walking in the Rain.

 

 

 

From the Walk today

The weather held up much better than the forecast we had so we trudged up another local mountain for a bushwalk. I huffed and puffed to the top and the magnificent views made me forget the pain immediately.

A Beginner’s Mindset

I didn’t think there was any value in repetition. I remember as a 5 or 6 year old wondering what the point of it was, particularly when some adult insisted on doing some over and over again, like memorising and reciting poetry, or copy-writing.

I’d never considered how much I loathed repetition for certain things, and how ‘in the flow’ I felt when doing other things repetitively.  My conscious observation of what I found myself doing repeatedly may have been when I took up calligraphy again about 5 years ago, and the first task I did this time round was the oval drills. I found pdf versions of historical books on beautiful handwriting on the wonderful iampeth  site, & most of them insisted on the importance of the repetitive exercises.

Whether it has been learning to fingerpick the guitar or learn a new task, deliberate practice and repetition is the only thing that gives me the confidence that I can do it fluently. It isn’t easy, and it often isn’t fun while I struggle with it.

I’m a beginner yet again, this time learning Ornamental Penmanship, aka Spencerian. The beginner mindset is what I have to keep remembering to be in, not to judge my current foundational letterforms, to keep repeatedly doing them until the picture in my mind’s eye and the physical form that I am able to write resemble each other closely. And in the meanwhile, publish whatever I can produce here to keep myself on track.

Here’s some of today’s effort, ovals and a few shades.

 

Farewells

We say farewells all the time. Sometimes explicitly, other times without even realising it.

Today was a farewell to two of my colleagues friends at work.  Over the last several months, I’ve come to laugh, cry, and learn with them to the point where I don’t think I consider them mere colleagues.  The circumstances of their employment changed though, and that required a heartwarming farewell to them, in the context in which these relationships were formed.

The day is also ending – it’s dusk, and I have not made the time today to go for my walk yet, so there is no picture I took today. If I hurry on now, there is some chance to get the faint light and the brilliant imagery in the skies, but it’s also likely that I’ll farewell the day without an image of the day.

late edit: