Busted

(Or, How Math Homework Can Teach You to Not Worry About Yesterday)

When I was little, I hated getting in trouble.

Being a nerd when you’re 24 is cool; being a nerd when you’re 11? Not so much. But a nerd I was, and so I was mostly well-behaved, studious, and terrified of rule breaking. Not of other kids breaking rules, but the thought of personally getting in trouble made my little pre-pubescent heart palpitate.

One night, when I was in sixth grade, I didn’t do my math homework. Well, I wrote down the numbers to the problems, and stared at the paper for a little while, and then scrawled a big question mark next to the problem to fill up some of the very blank page. Unfortunately, question marks weren’t considered acceptable. When my teacher checked my homework the next day, despite my stammering attempts to explain, all I got was a smug “Boo-hoo. Sign the book,” in her elderly southern drawl. The book, as in, The Detention Book.

Needless to say, I was a wreck for the rest of the day. Detention? I don’t even know what that means! What do I have to do? Where do I go? What are the procedures? How do I get home? How can I avoid mom and dad finding out about this? What the heck is a “late bus”?!

It’s funny, in retrospect, how much anxiety a little boy can experience just from having to stay an extra 45 minutes after school, but what can I say? I hated getting in trouble.

I still do, even as a post-pubescent. Fortunately, my last math assignment was over four years ago. Still, even a simple, “Sir, you can’t park here,” makes me flinch. I end up repeating the incident over and over again in my head, replaying it ad nauseum until enough time passes, and it fades from memory.

Fortunately, as an adult, I rarely find myself in trouble, and the occasional incident is far less debilitating than it was in the halls of John Wallace Middle School. What I’ve come to realize is there’s no point in worrying about things that have already happened. Repeating a mistake in your head over and over again rectifies nothing. It only causes you to experience the same unpleasant emotional response you felt at the time.

It sounds simplistic to say you should learn from your mistakes, but that’s really all you can do about them once they’ve been made. I should have done my homework. Oh, well. Can’t do anything about it now — except prevent it from happening again.

Dwelling on the past beyond any meaningful reflection is a waste of time.

That’s not to say it isn’t hard to do, but sometimes you need to ask yourself what you’re gaining from allowing a thought to take up residence in your head. What purpose does this thought serve? Is it healthy for me to continue to think about this thing I can’t do anything about?

Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe it’s taking a long time to figure out exactly what happened and how to learn from it. That’s okay. But anguishing over things you can’t change, and things that, in thirteen years, might not be such a big deal, isn’t productive. In fact, it can be counterproductive if it prevents you from moving forward. It’s another form of paralysis generated by the mind. Fortunately, that means it’s also something you can control.

Everett Bogue puts it splendidly:

Spending one moment more than necessary worrying about what I should have done yesterday is a moment that I’m not spending now taking concrete actions that are necessary in order to achieve what I need now.

Don’t worry about yesterday. Do your homework, and soldier on.

A Fair Fight

Leo Babauta on the amazing power of being present:

If you are completely present, the external forces are no longer a problem, because there is only you and that external force, in this moment, and not a million other things you need to worry about.

Vital, but so very challenging. It’s really hard, for example, to do yoga when you’ve got a hundred things on your mind and a ton of stuff to do after you’re done. It’s really hard to go to work after having a rough morning and realize it’s only Tuesday.

I thrive when I have things to look forward to. It can be anything, really: plans with friends, a new podcast to listen to, a new album coming out. Having these things in the back of my mind helps me get through the stuff I’d rather not be doing. It’s a means to an end; you have to get through the obligations in order to reach the things you’re passionate about.

But when there doesn’t seem to be anything to look forward to other than long workweeks and uneventful weekends, things can seem pretty bleak. So while having stuff to look forward to can be an advantage, it can also be a detriment when there’s nothing exciting on the calendar. That is, reliance on always having something to look forward to is not the most effective method for avoiding a bad mood.

Leo’s advice about being present is the solution. It’s a form of mindfulness:

Being present becomes, then, a way to handle any problem, any distraction, any stressor. It allows everything else to fade away, leaving only you and whatever you’re dealing with right now.

If I’m at work, I’m responsible for teaching a great karate class. I can’t let the thought of having nothing to do this weekend affect my performance. The better option would be to focus on the present moment and think about what I can do to make this class memorable for the students. Then, my fear or longing for things outside the moment will fade away, rather than dictate how I feel. This allows me to give my full attention to whatever I’m doing right now. In other words, don’t let something happening in the future affect your happiness in the here and now. Deal with it when it arrives, not when you can’t do anything about it.

If you’re present, you can fully enjoy the moment. Even if the moment finds you working on something you’d rather not be doing, you’ll be better equipped to deal with it when it has your full attention, not when you’re simultaneously thinking about ten other things.

When it’s just you and the moment, it’s one-on-one: a fair fight. All that other stuff will still be there afterward. One thing at a time.

Simplicity In Your Pocket

(Or, Why the iPhone is Minimalist)

Dave Caolo rolls out his new, practical 52 Tiger with a post on how to de-clutter your iPhone. It’s a good article with simple strategies for keeping your device clean and tidy. A personal favorite:

I like to keep the bottom row icon-free. This habit developed when I bought the original iPhone years ago, and there was a dearth of apps for it. Since then, I’ve always keep that bottom row empty. It looks nice and provides an obvious lane for swiping back and forth.

I’ve been keeping my bottom row free since I got my iPhone 3G, and I find it makes a world of difference in how calm my home screen looks and feels.

Still, as with all Apple products, the iPhone itself is designed with focus and simplicity in mind so you don’t have to actively think about keeping it clutter-free.

From a software point of view, iOS has a uniform design; everything is consistent across each screen. Every icon is the same shape and style, and they’re all organized into a neat grid in the order of your choosing.

A friend once asked me to fix one of the icons on her Android phone, which was inexplicably out-of-line with the others. I tried several things, but the icon refused to conform with the grid. Staring at one rogue icon all the time would drive me nuts. Fortunately, the iPhone makes it impossible to have a messy home screen. Even if you have the maximum twenty icons or an entire page of folders, they’re still neatly arranged and offer a soothing user experience.

Dave also suggests being ruthless about which apps you keep on your device. I generally don’t keep apps that I might need “someday” for the precise reasons Dave describes: Re-downloading an app from the App Store is simple and free, and iOS 5 will save my app data even when I remove unused apps. Quick and painless.

Any self-respecting nerd will tell you home screen organization is a science. A judicious approach to app selection allows me to only have two screens-worth of icons. My home screen contains my most used apps, and the second screen contains folders for games, reading, utilities, and apps I’m intrigued by or experimenting with. This setup keeps all my apps only a swipe or tap away and protects me from having to dig through pages and pages of icons to find what I’m looking for.

Of course, the iPhone’s minimalist design is not only limited to software. The hardware itself is also clean and free of any extraneous buttons, keyboards, or trackballs. The iPhone’s Home button, for example, has a single function: return to the home screen. Its simplicity allows virtually any user to be able to navigate the phone within seconds. There’s practically no learning curve; if you’ve pressed it once, you’ve mastered it. This ease-of-use is what enabled my grandmother to look up something on Wikipedia despite having never owned a computer.

“But it’s so expensive!” you protest. “How can can something so expensive be considered minimalist?”

You could certainly make an argument that a free flip-phone is more minimalist than an iPhone, but this brings me to the issue of quality.

I’m a fairly ardent minimalist, but I agree with Marco Arment on this issue:

If you sit on, sleep on, stare at, or touch something for more than an hour a day, spend whatever it takes to get the best.

Why? Well:

1. Quality lasts longer. You can buy something cheap that will need to be frequently replaced, or you can buy a high-end item that will serve you well into the future. My iPhone 4 is fifteen months old — forever in technology years — and it still seems brand new.
2. Quality feels better. I love using my iPhone. I don’t get frustrated with it because I can’t figure out how to do something or because something isn’t working properly. That’s one less source of stress in my life.
3. Quality inspires you. My MacBook Pro is so enjoyable to use that I actually want to write posts with it. My iPad makes me want to read articles, essays, and novels. I don’t dread using these devices, so they actually allow me to get more done. Could I get by on a phone that just makes calls? Yes, but I’m a nerd, and I need more than that. Maybe not as a human, but as Andrew Marvin, I need to be able to read the latest news and check Twitter and play a game here and there because those things make me happy.

Everyday, the iPhone makes my life simpler and easier. I don’t have to carry a dictionary around with me. I don’t have to wait until I’m at a computer to send a quick email. I don’t need to buy a GPS for my car or a pedometer for exercising. I don’t need to keep a planner or a book with me all the time. The iPhone simplifies all of these areas in my life, which in turn makes me more productive, calmer, and happier.

This Week

(Or, Three Ways to Survive Bad Times; a.k.a. The Big Perspective Post #1)

This week promises to be what can only be described as “a bitch.”

Allow me to explain.

As I’m writing this, it’s Sunday night. This week I will be teaching at our annual Karate Camp, which runs from 9am to 3pm, Monday through Friday. Our regular classes will continue unabated from approximately 4pm to 9pm. On Friday evening, virtually the entire school will be graduating via three different ceremonies, and on Saturday, after I teach the regular classes from 9am - 1pm, I have to do a birthday party for what is sure to be a manic group of youngsters. This week ends at 3pm Saturday, a horrific 126 hours after it begins, and about 70 of which I will be hard at work teaching little kids how to defend themselves using only their shoelaces. Personal fitness, healthy dietary choices, and solitude are sure to take a backseat for the next six days. Not to mention it’s going to be difficult to find time to write and maintain this website, which threatens my 30 day writing commitment.

In addition, summer was slapped across the face today by a 68 degree and relentlessly rainy day, with the rest of the week looking to offer more of the same. All the while, my exquisite girlfriend will be sequestered in a draconian training program for her upcoming job, the likes of which does not allow for much verbal or textual communication.

All in all, the week of August 15, 2011 appears to be a prescription for angst, exhaustion, and general burnout.

Fortunately, this post is not intended to be a colossal woe-as-me rant. Nobody likes a complainer. Rather, I thought I would take this opportunity to document exactly how I intend to survive this hellish week and emerge in six days with my sanity mostly intact.

To put it simply, as I often try to do, the answer lies in Perspective.

For the past few years, I’ve been intrigued by the concept of Perspective and how it can be practically applied to help us lead healthier, calmer, and overall happier lives. This week provides an excellent chance to explain some of the strategies I use to ensure life doesn’t beat me when the going gets tough.

Perspective is a very complex topic, and there are many ways to implement it. I’m only going to talk about three in this post. More will follow in future posts.

The first thing to remember when dealing with any sort of challenging situation is also perhaps the most important:

1. You aren’t going to die.

Obviously, heartbreaking situations do exist, and they do happen, but those extraordinary circumstances aren’t the challenges we’re talking about here. We’re talking about beating the average bad day. Or week, as the case may be.

Always ask yourself, when presented with a scary or otherwise stressful situation, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Chances are it’s not that bad, and chances are even greater that the worst thing probably isn’t going to be what actually goes down. Realistically, the worst thing that could happen to me this week is I get exhausted, run down, and frustrated. Maybe I even get sick from working too long and too hard. But even then, what’s the worst thing that could happen? I’m bedridden for a few days, I suppose. That probably won’t happen, but even if it does, it’s not going to kill me. I’m not going to die.

Bob Parsons, CEO & Founder of GoDaddy.com, says in one of his rules to live by:

With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”

This is huge. For many people, the worst case scenario in life is death, or, in Bob Parsons’ case, to be literally devoured by humans. I agree completely; that’d be terrible. But, it’s not going to happen. No matter how badly you screw up a presentation, disappoint a loved one, or fail to meet a goal, no one’s going to eat you for it. That’s a very comforting thought. Say you embarrass yourself in front of a packed room of people. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They all laugh at you? You end up on YouTube? I suppose, but those outcomes have slim odds. You’re not going to die, and you will live to see another day. This is incredibly empowering if you can keep it in mind and not let fear consume you.

“Alright, fine,” you say. “I know I’m not going to die, but this is still going to be awful!”

Yes, you’re right. But that just means you need to ingrain this second mindset:

2. Time never stops.

I’m staring down a 70-hour workweek right now, and nothing in the world is going to change that. No matter how badly I wish it wasn’t so, nothing’s going to change the fact that I have a long six days ahead of me. The 70 hours are a reality I cannot alter.

What I can change, however, is how my mind thinks about and deals with those 70 hours.

When it comes to challenging parts of life, there is no fast-forwarding, but at the same time, there’s no pausing, stopping, or rewinding either. Time never stops moving forward. That means once the clock starts on those 70 hours, every day, hour, and minute that goes by brings me a little bit closer to 3pm Saturday afternoon. This mindset can have a tremendously augment your ability to deal with tough times. No matter how much it sucks, it will never be worse than it is at moment zero, when the pain or stress first starts. Every minute that goes by brings you a little bit closer to being okay. Thus, the end never gets any further away. Time never stops. You’re always moving closer to the goal, to the end, to the solution.

If you envision your challenge as a tunnel you need to walk through, you could say the worst part is the first step because you’re still the entire length of the tunnel away from your goal at the other end. But in fact, you’re also one step closer than you were when you were outside the tunnel. As long as you don’t give up or turn back, as long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you’re always getting closer to the end and to being okay again.

You can apply this thinking to virtually any situation:

If you’re sick, you can wallow in self-pity and mucous-filled tissues, or you can take comfort knowing you’re not going to be sick forever. The pain is temporary. There is a fixed point in the future when you’re going to feel better, and every passing hour brings you closer to that moment.

If you have to do twenty push-ups, and you hate push-ups, you can focus on the pain and agony in your triceps, or you can enjoy the fact that every push-up you do brings you closer to number twenty. Twenty is never getting any further away! Plus, the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there.

If you’re devastated you haven’t met the love of your life yet, and you think you never will, you can beat yourself up about it, or you can decide you believe he or she is out there, and it’s only a matter of time before you find that person. They aren’t getting any farther away, even if you have no idea when they’ll show up.

In some of these cases, you can’t control when the end/relief/solution arrives, but you can always control how your mind deals with the time until you reach that moment.

If I sound like I’m repeating myself, it’s because you have to treat this step as a mantra. The more you say it, the truer it becomes.

And finally…

3. We are all wonderfully irrelevant.

There’s no doubt about it: this is going to be a trying week for me. Still, in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t that big a deal. In seven days, the previous six will be just a memory.

What might be a big week in the world of Andrew Marvin is really just an undetectable blip on the timeline of the Universe. My rough week isn’t that important to anybody except me — apologies, dear readers — and as such, it holds a complex duality. It’s a big deal to me because it’s my life, and my life is my whole world. But at the same time, it’s practically nothing in the larger picture of humanity.

The Universe is incomprehensibly big. We are tiny infinitesimal specks on a minuscule little planet in a vast solar system, which is just one small part of thousands of galaxies and stars and space.

You may find this depressing, but it’s actually incredibly liberating. When you keep in mind how insignificant we probably are, things have a way of becoming far less serious.

As George Harrison wrote:

Try to realize it’s all within yourself,
No one else can make you change,
And to see you’re really only very small,
And life flows on within you and without you.

So there you have it: three strategies for beating a bad week. Note that none of them change the bad week itself, only the way you approach it.

The bottom line is you usually have no control over the things that happen to you, but you will always have control over your mind and how it deals with them.

Now, I’m off to bed. The sooner I sleep, the sooner tomorrow comes, and the sooner day one is complete. If I don’t see you, I hope you’ve found this article useful, and I encourage you to adapt my strategies to suit your own thinking.

I’m sure I’ll see you, though.

If you enjoyed or benefitted from this article, please consider sharing it with the button below! Also, you should follow me on Twitter. Need something? Email me.

All There Is To Know

A little while ago, I wrote about the Know Nothing Principle as a way to circumvent the emotional tension stemming from differences of opinion. But that’s just one altered perspective, which may or may not work for you.

Colin Wright, of Exile Lifestyle:

Other people’s stupid opinions have just as much merit as your own, in that they are opinions backed by individual experience and a closed body of knowledge. Perhaps they – or you – simply haven’t lived long enough yet to see their error of their – or your – ways.

Colin’s idea is equally effective, particularly if you can’t imagine ever freeing yourself from your opinions. As he says in his post, people’s opinions develop as a result of their own experience and a closed body of knowledge. If you’re going to have an opinion, personal experience is a good thing to go by. After all, you can’t just blindly accept as fact something from another source; you have to investigate that thing on your own, and then decide whether to agree or disagree.

But the second clause is even more crucial. If we take “a closed body of knowledge” to mean knowledge limited to one’s own experience, then people’s opinions become much easier to accept. If everyone had the same experience as you, — the same upbringing, values, exposure, etc. — then they would probably have no trouble seeing, if not agreeing with, your point of view. Someone who disagrees with you probably hasn’t seen what you’ve seen, read what you’ve read, or felt what you’ve felt. Of course they disagree.

But at the same time, as Colin says, you likely haven’t shared their personal experience either, which is what lead them to their opinion. Colin suggests that living long enough might give you the time needed to experience or understand their point of view. Eventually, you may actually change your own opinion.

But what if the topic is incredibly complex? What if it’s so multi-faceted that it’s impossible to gain a truly open body of knowledge? That is, a scenario where you’ve read all there is to read, heard all there is to hear, and felt all there is to feel about a given topic, to the point where you are 100% knowledgeable and thus 100% equipped to establish your own opinion.

In my view, such a scenario is impossible, which is why I find it easier to accept that I know nothing. Remember, we’re not talking about literally believing you know nothing; it’s about understanding the very real possibility that your opinion is wrong and subsequently freeing yourself from that fear.

I don’t feel comfortable fighting for an opinion unless I’m completely confident I know all there is to know about the topic, and in my mind, such a state seems unattainable.

You could just accept this impossibility and formulate your opinions based on the portion of total knowledge you’ve absorbed. I think this is what most people do, but without realizing it. By accepting their personal experience as all there is, they become attached to their opinion and closed to anything that challenges it. But if you become aware that you can’t possibly know everything there is to know about something, that your experience is but a fraction of the entire body of knowledge, and thus understand that your opinion is just as susceptible as anyone else’s, you’ll be less afraid of being wrong and less compelled to fearfully defend your idea. This is a way of keeping our opinions in perspective, which in turn allows us to be content with others’ points of view and avoid the negative energy so often associated with differences of opinion.

This IS the Perfect Time

Ali Hale, over at Daily Writing Tips, on finding the perfect time to write:

Trust me, I know how you feel. For years, I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t actually write. I had lots of ideas and dreams, but they never made it out of my head and onto the page.

Why? Because I was waiting for the perfect time.

The perfect time rarely comes, if ever.

As I’m typing this right now, only a handful of people are aware that I have a website where I write about things. I haven’t made any efforts to publicize the site. No tweeting about new posts. No emails saying, “Hey, check out this thing I made.” No links in my various online profiles.

I’m doing this because I made a commitment to myself to write consistently for 30 days before I made any attempt to make the site public. There are a couple benefits to this strategy.

1. It removed an enormous amount of pressure. I didn’t start writing and expose myself to the scrutinizing eyes of the internet the very same day. Like Hale says in her article, writing is a high-resistance activity. It’s hard work, especially if you aren’t used to it or feel self-conscious about your writing. Since no one was going to see what I wrote, even after pressing “Publish”, I was free to be myself and not worry about other people’s reactions. I had unlimited privacy.
2. It gave me time to build up a solid foundation of posts. Anyone can create an account, write about their awesome workout, post it, and then tell everyone to check out their new blog. Having a respectable number of articles posted beforehand both legitimizes the site in the readers’ eyes and makes me feel confident that I can actually do this.
3. It forced me to stop waiting for the perfect time to write. I have to make words appear every single day, whether I’m feeling it or not. Before I made the commitment to 30 days of writing, I never wrote. Ever. Even when I was feeling particularly inspired about something, I would think, “Ah, that’s going to make a great post someday!” Daydreaming is nice, but you’ll never have anything to show for it until you start making those dreams reality. Cliché, but true.

Waiting for the perfect time is a barrier for any project, writing or otherwise. There will never be a truly perfect time to start a new health regimen, build a website, or ask somebody out. The only way to break through that barrier is to jump in with both feet and just start… then the hard part’s over.

Write Like You Talk

Everett Bogue:

A few months ago, I was at a talk Seth Godin gave in Seattle, and he said something that continues to resonate with me.

It’s not hard for me to blog everyday, because I write like I talk.

Seth’s quote is a great tactic for writers. Often, we paralyze ourselves into not writing because we feel self-conscious about our voice. We think, “This sounds terrible. No one’s going to want to read this,” or “Who cares what I have to say?”

This self-doubt comes from a lack of confidence and from not having fully realized your unique writing voice. Luckily, the way to overcome it is simple: remind yourself that people listen to and are interested in what you have to say every day when you speak. If your writing voice mirrors your actual voice, there’s no reason to think people won’t also want to read what you have to say.

Everett:

It’s tempting to constantly be pushing the edge in the world of writing. However, what I’ve found is that when it comes to blogging, it’s easier for me to get a post out every day if I don’t. Instead, I relax around the words. I don’t try to be perfect.

I agree completely. The pursuit of perfection often prevents us from ever writing at all. As writers, our minds create enormous pressure to “push the edge.” To write masterpieces. To create Art with a capital A. We build up the craft in our heads to such an absurd level that it becomes impossible to actually start typing.

We compare ourselves to the masters: “Stephen King is a writer; He writes 2000 words a day. 2000 bestselling words. I could never do that. I’m just little old me.” This thought process causes writing to become an exotic art inaccessible to mere mortals.

But such an attitude is self-defeating, and, thankfully, writing doesn’t have to be extraordinary all the time. Moby Dick is ridiculous. It’s unlikely your blog post will be able to compete with a work like that, so don’t even worry about it! You’ll be better off if you eliminate all the pressure, which you’ve likely created out of thin air. Write well, of course, but don’t force the tormented artist motif.

Like Everett says, it’s better to relax and let the words come naturally, rather than psyching yourself out all the time. Don’t try to use unnatural fancy language, or be overly witty, or sound like someone other than you. Just pretend you’re talking to a friend over dinner, or that you’re sending them an email. Then, with practice, your writing will start to sound like you.

Writing teachers everywhere tell students to read their final draft aloud before submitting it, which allows them to hear and fix every awkward sentence. An awkward sentence sounds unnatural. When you speak, you sound natural, so write like you talk. Unless you talk with bad grammar, in which case, send me an email.

Remember, no one is as good as you when it comes to your writing voice. Stephen King can write a lot of stuff, but he can’t write like you. He’s an expert at sounding like Stephen King, and you’re an expert at sounding like you.

Finally, keep in mind this quote by Thomas Mann:

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

See? Very comforting. So, relax, and just write.

To Follow, or Not to Follow

Frank Chimero:

The new criteria is that I will follow you on Twitter if I would help you move. If I’m willing to carry a box full of photo albums, kitchen gadgets, and spare blankets, I’m probably also going to be interested in hearing about how it’s annoying to file receipts, in seeing photos of your coffee, and in knowing how it smells like wet dog on your subway ride to work.

Exactly.

A lot of people don’t get Twitter. They say, “I don’t want to read about what somebody is having for lunch.” For a long time, I agreed with them. It wasn’t until after I joined Twitter that I finally understood how valuable it is.

The amazing thing about Twitter is that it can be as useful or useless as you want it to be. Twitter doesn’t force you to read about what people are having for lunch. If you, the user, choose to follow people who tweet such inane minutia, then yes, you will have to put up with that. But the better option is to only follow people who make quality contributions to your timeline. For example, I follow a bunch of writers and minimalists and nerds because I care about what each of them has to say. So much so that I’m willing to put up with the occasional tweet, as Frank Chimero says above, about something that doesn’t interest me. Like when John Gruber tweets about sports.

Unlike Facebook, where you’re socially obligated to accept someone’s friend request or risk offending that person, Twitter is not a forced two-way street. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you, and just because you’re following someone doesn’t mean they have to return the favor. There’s no fake virtual friendship to maintain. You’re either following someone, or you’re not.

On Paralysis, Starting, & Cookies

Richard J. Anderson, of Sanspoint, on developing a superego:

All it takes, one thinks, is one misstep, one moment of weakness, and you’ll have to start over from scratch–so why even bother? In other words: fear of imperfection leads to paralysis. The expectation of perfection is, in many ways, a built in escape clause.

This is a huge point. Regardless of what self-imposed challenge you’re currently undertaking — diet, exercise, changing a habit — you cannot let the fear of imperfection prevent you from ever accomplishing anything.

Richard uses the perfect word here: paralysis. I had the idea for this website more than two years ago, and yet I could never bring myself to actually start the damn thing. I second-guessed myself so often — “Who would possibly care what I have to say?” “Do I even have anything to say?” “Why don’t I just leave it to someone else? Someone smarter.” — to the point where I was almost content with daydreaming about what my website could be rather than actually realizing it. Imagining the site was exciting, but if I started it and failed, I would only have disappointment to show for it.

Richard quotes Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution:

Oftentimes people strive to be perfect just so they can “fail” and give up.

Most of the time, perfection is unattainable. After years of excuses, I finally told myself there would be no “perfect” time to start a website. If you spend all your time waiting for the perfect opportunity to try something new, you’ll probably be waiting a very long time.

Fear — both of failure and success — is a paralyzing force. If you remain paralyzed, you won’t fail, but you also won’t succeed. Starting is the hardest part. For me, it was one tiny little link post. That’s it. Just a block quote and barely a sentence of commentary. But it was enough to get me started, and the second post came much easier.

Once you’ve started, of course, you will have missteps. Richard has a great way of looking at these setbacks:

The path is always there. You can step off the path, you can go miles off, get hopelessly lost, and wander barefoot in the desert for forty years, but the path will remain, and you can always find your way back.

Again, this is essential, and it’s a comforting perspective that will help you sum up the courage to begin.

When people try to change their diet and eat healthy, and they accidentally eat a cookie at 10am, they think, “Damn. Welp, the day is shot. I’ll just start again tomorrow.”, which results in a day of junk food. There are two points here. The first is, yes, you can start again tomorrow. But starting over tomorrow everyday is not a path to success. The second point, and the better perspective to have, in my opinion, is that one cookie is not as bad as two, which aren’t as bad as three. This isn’t an excuse to have two cookies. Rather, if you step off the path, as Richard says, it’s important to recognize it immediately and step back on as soon as you can. It’s better to have one cookie than to eat an entire pizza for dinner. One unhealthy bite is better than one unhealthy meal.

Striving for perfection is a good way to go insane. Mark Sisson calls this the 80/20 Rule. The idea is that if you’re reaching your goals 80% of the time, you’re doing pretty damn well.

Even though 100% compliance isn’t the exact everyday expectation, 100% commitment is the intention.

In whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, you can’t be perfect all of the time. Missteps will happen. But if your commitment is strong, and you keep everything in perspective, it will be significantly easier to recognize that pesky 20% when it happens. You can always step back on the path; the key is, after that bite of cookie, are you going to do it tomorrow, or right now?

Clean is Calm

Michael Lopp, of Rands In Repose, on how a clean workspace allows you to get in The Zone:

Try it. If your desk isn’t already OCD-tidy, go find a piece of paper hiding on your desk where upon discovery you realize its importance — was it important before your [sic] discovered it? Yes. Did it matter? No, because you forgot about it.

His article talks mainly about virtual desktops, but in any case, a clean workspace is often a tremendous boon for productivity.

Your external environment reflects your internal state of mind. When things are clean and organized, you feel calm and relaxed. When your desk is laden with things demanding your attention, you probably feel behind or stressed. I know when I’ve gone three days without putting my laundry away, going through my mail, or cleaning my room, I’m much more likely to get flustered or anxious for what seems like no particular reason. I’ll eventually get so fed up, knowing I still haven’t done what I’ve been meaning to do for days, that I’ll rip through those chores in a burst of productivity. And afterward, I immediately feel better. It’s like a great sigh of relief.

The more your desk accumulates piles of things over time (mail, books, papers, etc.), the more your brain reminds you, “Hey, you need to go through this stuff.” The longer you put it off, the more the task weighs down on you because you know you still haven’t done it yet. The thought of “Ugh, I need to do XYZ…” is still bouncing around in your head, and it will continue to bounce around up there until you either A) write it down, or B) do it. Since your mind only has a finite amount of space, it’s vital that you not leave too many things bouncing around at one time.

Of course, you might be a person who loves clutter and thrives under pressure; in which case, by all means continue doing what works for you. But if you’re at your best when you’re relaxed, try getting your environment to reflect your desired mental state. When your workspace is clean, you have more room to breathe, and you can focus on the one thing in front of you. As Lopp says in his article, “Distractions damage creativity.” I totally agree.

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The Man Who Knows Nothing

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
-Socrates

I have mixed feelings about Everett Bogue. I admired him when he was writing Far Beyond the Stars, a wonderful resource about minimalism and business, and I still admire the success he’s achieved as an independent presence on the internet. But when he self-righteously abandoned his label as a minimalist and started pontificating about augmented humanity and mental cybernetics, I grew weary. He took down Far Beyond the Stars, the blog that made him a role model for the minimalist community, and decided he was moving on to other things. (Fortunately, Far Beyond the Stars has been archived here, and I still recommend it to folks interested in learning more about minimalism.) I appreciate Everett’s courage and quest for personal growth, but his talk of cyborgs and cybernetic yogis was a bit much, so I too moved on to other things.

After declaring he would disconnect from Twitter and most other forms of social media, Everett recently decided to end his digital sabbatical — his resolutely-titled “foreversabbatical.com” is now forwarded to his personal website — and has since decided to grace the internet with his presence once more. He’s been writing daily posts on his website, and I’m genuinely glad, because he still has plenty to offer us humans.

Part of Everett’s new approach to existence is explained in his post, Unlearning What the Internet Wants. He writes:

This is a new section on my site. Let’s call it: unlearning. Every week, until I decide to un-post schedule myself, I’ll be writing an intention to unlearn something for that week.

It is, characteristically, a bit melodramatic, but the notion of “unlearning” is intriguing, and in my opinion, it can have very valuable real-world applications. Let me explain.

The quote at the top of this post was introduced to me by my undergraduate philosophy professor, and it remains one of my favorites. The idea of knowing nothing seems paradoxical, but it can actually be a highly effective way to look at the world.

To put it simply, when you declare yourself to be an expert on something, whether explicitly or implicitly, you bring upon yourself a great deal of responsibility. People will demand answers of you, and you must deal with their reactions. You may have to deal with people who vehemently disagree with you and attempt to persuade them to see or acknowledge your point of view. Some people might love such a challenge, but I can’t say I do.

Everybody likes to be right, and most people believe their opinion is the right one, or at least the best one. But being right all the time takes a great deal of energy. This is especially true of larger issues, like politics, religion, and so on. In these areas, people are increasingly unlikely to change their point of view, regardless of how strong an argument you might present to them. This stubbornness can be frustrating when you’re passionate about your ideas.

That frustration is almost inevitable. When you claim to be an expert — that is, when you claim to know something — you become an authority, either in your eyes or the eyes of others. The more you claim to know something, the greater your attachment to your ideas and, most likely, the more determined you’ll be to make others agree with you.

For example, this evening I witnessed a lively political discourse about the state of the country between two people. Fortunately, the participants were on the same side and subsequently were able to enjoy repeatedly agreeing with one another. They both validated each other’s ideas.

If you were present for such a conversation and held strong convictions contrary to what was being discussed, it would likely be frustrating to hear your point of view being disparaged. As a result, you might feel compelled to interject your opinion and defend your ideas, especially if you’re convinced your ideas are the right ones. But initiating an argument, friendly or otherwise, probably wouldn’t result in either party changing their point of view. Acknowledging the opposing side, perhaps, but that would be an optimistic outcome. To put it bluntly, a conservative is not going to become a liberal over a conversation at the dinner table, nor is the converse any more realistic. This is true of any great social debate: atheist versus theologian, pro-choice versus pro-life, many guns versus no guns.

People who claim to know things — i.e. people who believe they have the right answers — are so attached to their ideas and so afraid of being wrong that they will go to great lengths to defend themselves, verbally or otherwise.

But the man who knows nothing will never experience this problem. He will never be angered by another’s opinion, and he will never feel compelled to force his ideas on other people.

You cannot be wrong if you know nothing.

To go back to the political example, I personally would never feel fully confident having a debate unless I was sure I had obtained my information from a neutral source (which in itself is a tremendous challenge) and read every article on the subject. And even then, I would have to sift through and evaluate hundreds of essays and reports, each potentially full of opinion or baseless claims. So, even if I could complete this infinite investigation, how could I ever be 100% certain my position is the correct one?

It’s an impossible task, and I simply don’t want to dedicate my life to reaching a point where I can confidently prove people wrong. It’s a waste of time and energy.

Everett gets it right here:

Whenever I think I’ve mastered something, chances are I’ve just achieved a false sense of entitlement. People with a false sense of entitlement I generally want to smack, unfollow, and put on my zombie wall.

The process of unlearning is an exercise in letting go. Letting go of preconceived notions. Letting go of the concept of correct and incorrect, of “you’re wrong” and “I’m right”. Knowing nothing is not about playing dumb; it’s about recognizing the absurdity of being attached to your ideas. When you know nothing, you can float above the din of people competing for the supremacy of their knowledge.

The man who claims to know something chooses to spend his life defending that idea. The man who knows nothing has no such obligation, and thus, he is free.

Update: A follow-up to this post can be found here.

Lion's Hairpin Turn

I finished John Siracusa’s Lion review late last night, and as I’ve said before, it’s a tremendous achievement. The level of depth and insight is wonderfully impressive.

A few episodes ago on Hypercritical, Siracusa explained his desire to weave a narrative into his Mac OS X reviews, rather than provide a laundry list of technical changes from the previous version. The result is a better understanding of the big picture: Mac OS X’s history, its current state, and where it’s heading in the future.

In keeping with that mindset, the final paragraph of Siracusa’s review reads:

Over the past decade, better technology has simply reduced the number of things that we need to care about. Lion is better technology. It marks the point where Mac OS X releases stop being defined by what’s been added. From now on, Mac OS X should be judged by what’s been removed.

Apple has always had an affinity for simplicity and minimalist design, and Lion is the next evolution of those tenets. As Siracusa explains in his review, the emphasis of OS X has shifted from the addition of new features to the subtraction of those deemed obsolete in the computers of today and tomorrow. Tiger (10.4) introduced over 150 new features, and Leopard (10.5) boasted over 300. Then things changed: Snow Leopard (10.6) explicitly contained zero new features, instead offering many under-the-hood improvements. It’s as if the first six incarnations of OS X saw Apple speeding toward an optimal number of features, and, once reached, Snow Leopard finally saw it putting on the brakes.

With that deceleration comes the ability to change direction. Much has been said about how Lion challenges computing conventions that have existed for decades, and what we see with 10.7 is Apple moving its desktop OS even further into the realm of simplicity. The removal of scrollbars and introduction of Fullscreen apps both contribute to a decluttering of the interface. Features like Autosave, Resume, and Launchpad all seek to remove barriers from the average user’s experience.

For us nerds, however, these changes can be quite unnerving. Siracusa repeatedly mentions “geek panic!” in his review and on last week’s episode of Hypercritical, when he revealed many power users misinterpreted his review’s final paragraph as containing a negative tone. That is, “removal” is a bad thing, more akin to maliciously taking something away than simplifying or improving an experience.

I disagree with this reading, and I think Siracusa makes it very clear that these changes are, overall, for the better. As he explains, technology should eliminate, rather than create, things we need to worry about. Lion eliminates visual elements, like scrollbars, but it also eliminates the fear of not saving, the fear of not knowing where you installed something, and the fear of finding documents amidst what seems like hundreds of files. The realization of these fears can be catastrophic for a typical user. But in Lion, the features that made those users feel unconfident about their computing abilities are now gone, replaced by reassurances and safety nets.

So, as OS X turns a corner and heads off in a new direction, we have “lost” some features of old, but we have gained a simpler, more user-friendly experience. And while it may take time for us nerds to adjust, Lion also opens up a host of new possibilities, and for the majority of its users, a world with far less fear.

Favorite Apps: Droplr

Droplr is a great app that makes it easy to upload and share files, links, images, etc. It’s a little icon that sits in your menu bar. Drag a file to it, wait a second or two, and a link to your file will be automatically copied to your clipboard. You can also post the link directly to Twitter if you so choose.

One caveat I had with the app was embedding images. I do a fair amount of message boarding, so it was annoying to have to upload the image, follow the link, and right-click/copy the image URL before posting it online. Not very simple.

I googled the issue, and found this solution on Droplr’s support forum. The original poster had the same issue as I did, and as it turns out, right-clicking and copying the image URL causes the image to expire when embedded anyway.

Fortunately, the actual solution is infinitely simpler: just add a “+” to the Droplr URL. Awesome, easy, and works like a charm.

If this website had sponsors, I’d want Droplr to be one. Check it out, and watch the 45 second video.

Behind the Screen

Philip Bump, writing for The Atlantic:

Our always-on society is, in fact, becoming a Golden Age for introverts, in which it has become easier to carve out time for oneself.

The full article is here.

As a introvert myself, I completely understand and agree with Bump’s argument. One might think the onset of technology and our current state of always being connected would be the bane of an introvert’s existence, but it’s actually quite the converse.

As Bump points out, introverts likely found pre-Industrial Revolution America to be quite the safe haven. Communication was more difficult, and there were less people and more space between them. As technology and populations exploded over time, the advent of the city packed more people into smaller spaces. As a result, introverts likely found themselves in stressful situations far more frequently. Regular telephone calls, increased social interaction, and solitude that was much harder to come by.

Fortunately, technology today has actually managed to rescue the introvert, as Bump illustrates:

A brilliant first volley was the answering machine: ostensibly a device meant to ensure that a call wasn’t missed, it quickly became a tool to ensure that you could miss any call you wanted.

A puzzling point for an extrovert, but for the introverted among us, a brilliant one. As technology has grown, so has our ability to hide our introversion without anyone else (i.e. extroverts) noticing.

Bump, a self-described introvert, explains the distinction between these two personality types:

For introverts like myself, it takes energy to engage with other people. Doing so requires thoughtfulness. It’s tiring. Expending energy, for us, isn’t energizing. Please note: we’re not talking about shyness, some character flaw. The problem isn’t with the introvert — it’s with the demands you make on the introvert. An introvert can’t force an extrovert to sit quietly in a room and read a book, but extroverts (and the stigmas they’ve inadvertently created) can impose social demands with ease.

I’m not complaining, because I wouldn’t trade my introversion for any amount of gregariousness, but I believe an extrovert will never be able to fully understand what it’s like to be an introvert for the precise reasons Bump describes. Through no fault of his own, the extrovert can’t possibly know what it feels like to be physically and/or mentally exhausted after, say, an hour in a room full of strangers. The stigmas Bump mentioned are undeniably true. How can you possibly not like going to parties? The notion that someone could feel this way is nonsensical to many, and we introverts often come off looking rude and stand-offish, even though we don’t intend to be.

But technology has in many ways given us an out. Bump goes on to detail his four reasons why technology protects the introvert, and for the most part, I agree with all of them. The notion of essentially lying about what you did this weekend in a status message (Bump’s first reason) seems suspect, but it’s actually just a means to create the solitude the introvert needs. As such, a simple “Be back later” status can achieve the desired result: personal space and peace and quiet.

Serial communication in the workplace, Bump’s second example, is something not just limited to introverts. I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where we email someone instead of calling, because the latter is a little too personal, or we might be slightly afraid of the impending response, or we just don’t have the energy to get roped into a twenty minute telephone call.

I used to pride myself on responding to emails instantly; it’s the kind of disciplined and respectful response I’d prefer from others. Plus, it helps keep my inbox at zero. But in reality, one of the main benefits of email is that it doesn’t require an immediate response, which contributes to a more relaxed correspondence. The same can be said for text messages; you can read a text and take your time to think about your response, which contrasts with the more rapid-fire cadence of a telephone call. While certainly not appropriate in all instances, these “slower” forms of communication have distinct advantages.

Bump’s third reason, that technology fosters serial communication everywhere else as well, is perhaps the most beneficial to introverts. Nowadays, communication is expected to be brief and to-the-point. After all, the crux of Twitter is its 140 character limit. People are used to this concision, and introverts and extroverts alike groan upon discovering a three-minute voicemail. The brevity of a text message has become the norm, personality type notwithstanding.

As twenty-somethings and frequent texters, we’ll often hear our parents shake their heads and mutter about how we always need to be connected, exercising that typical “kids these days” tone. Whatever happened to writing letters and talking on the phone instead of being glued to a little glowing screen? A valid point, but I would argue that reliance on the text message or tweet is rarely a character flaw displaying a rude aversion to human interaction, though that’s possible. Rather, texting allows me to be in almost constant contact with friends and family while maintaining the personal space I need as an introvert. I can still have a conversation and enjoy that human interaction without expending the energy a phone call demands. Texting allows me to preserve solitude while eschewing loneliness.

Bump concludes by pointing out that technology allows us to simply “push [our] thoughts out into the world, to be responded to at some undetermined future point.” In this way, technology has allowed the introvert to thrive. I’ve always been far more articulate in writing than I am in speech, and our always-connected world encourages that sort of thoughtful expression and reflection.

Bump’s essay, nor my response, are not in any way meant to be an attack on extroverts, and they are certainly not apologies for introverts or modern forms of communication. Bump concludes:

I speak of the struggle between introverts and extroverts in antagonistic terms. But it shouldn’t be considered that way. Extroverts, we love you. We just don’t want to talk to you all the time. Happily, we live in a time when the expectation that we do so is much lower.

I whole-heartedly agree. While technology is growing at a rate that may be scary to many, in some ways, it has allowed me to be more expressive, and thus truer to myself, than ever before.

Via Minimal Mac, who found it on Boing Boing

Much Ado About Scrolling

Arguably, no other feature has caused more of an uproar than OS X Lion’s new “natural” — that is, inverted — scrolling. On a trackpad, for example, you now swipe up to move the page down, and down to move the page up. Additionally, in keeping with last October’s “Back to the Mac” event, Apple has brought its fading scrollbars to the desktop: gone are the scroll arrows and alleys, and the thumb now only appears when in use.

Ever since the first developer preview of Lion, many people, even the most Mac-savvy among them, have been disturbed by these changes. I know several of my Mac-owning friends will soon be experiencing a similar reaction, so to them and all of the afflicted, I offer two reassurances:

1. Yes. You can turn these features off. But!
2. Give it a week first. If you’re still unhappy, then you can turn them off.

As John Gruber and Dan Benjamin discussed at length on last week’s episode of The Talk Show, Apple seeks to bring a more natural feel to the way we interact with content on our machines. As Gruber put it, Apple has “removed a slight layer of abstraction” by doing away with scrollbars.

According to the naysayers, this form of scrolling is a perfect fit for iOS, but doesn’t make sense when translated to the desktop. On the iPhone and iPad, screen real estate is limited, so the presence of a permanent scrollbar would have been both displeasing to the eye and a waste of space. Further, the touch interface makes the inverted scrolling feel natural because your finger is making direct contact with the content. Flicking the page up to go down feels good, as does going in the opposite direction.

As for the fading, the arguments against it are well-founded. An always-present thumb shows your position on the page, and its size allows you to know approximately how many more screens of content you have left before you reach the bottom; i.e. a thumb that’s a third the height of your window lets you know you’re looking at a third of the total content on that page. Subsequently, you know you have about two more screens worth of content to go.

For my part, it only took a couple of days before I got used to the new scrolling, and I’ve always loved the fading scrollbars. Everything looks much cleaner. To help ease the transition, imagine you’re grabbing and moving the content itself rather than a scroll thumb. Apple clearly believes we’ll be better off accepting the changes, since the inverted scrolling is described as “natural” in System Preferences, implying that the old way is unnatural. Again, I recommend sticking with it for a week or two, but I think you’ll start to prefer it much sooner than that.

For a more impressive analysis of Lion’s scrollbars, check out John Siracusa’s colossal Lion review over on Ars Technica. It’s an incredible piece of work.

Adding Signatures in Preview with Lion

One of the myriad new features in OS X Lion is the ability to digitally add a signature to a .pdf document using the Preview app.

The process is very straightforward:

1. Open the .pdf in Preview.
2. Click the Annotate button in the toolbar.
3. Pull down the Signature drop-down menu.
4. You can then create a signature with your Mac’s built-in iSight camera, or add a signature you’ve used before via the “Manage Signatures…” option.
5. If you’re creating a new signature, simply hold up a piece of paper with your signature on it so that your autograph is on the blue line. Click Accept when it looks good in the preview window.
6. Finally, just click where you want the signature to appear. You can then move and resize it however you want.

For me, the hardest part was writing down a good version of my signature. Unfortunately, since Preview doesn’t improve one’s legibility, this took several hours. But, if you’ve already got your signature down, you’ll have your .pdf signed in a minute or two.

Farewell, hellish fax machine.