That's a pretty depressing and fatalistic post title, but I actually mean it in a positive and encouraging way. Let me explain. It's easy to go about your life, every day, feeling like everyone else has their shit together and that the things you struggle with are unique to you. But then, when you get down to it, it turns out that everyone -- every single person I know -- is dealing with profoundly difficult and stressful things. Sometimes that's money, sometimes it's health, sometimes it's work or family or relationships. It's worth remembering this so that we cultivate some empathy when dealing with people -- in general and in particular in difficult situations. For example, with all of the controversy and strife over police brutality and race relations in the US, it's easy for both sides to look at the other and not understand. My personal default stance on all of that is: of course police treat black males unfairly, and black people in the US are so structurally fucked over that it's hard to really comprehend it. I also have a police detective as a future brother-in-law, who sees it from a different perspective. From his, and my sister-in-law's point of view, he does something incredibly dangerous and scary, for the safety of all of us; and further, he's a good person and so are his colleagues. He also sent me this video (graphic) which grounds those sentiments in reality. And of course, he's right. Or take congress. It's poisonous there. I went down to DC last week, and met with two Republican senate staffers, two Democrats, and an independent. Reasonable people, all of them, and I'm sure each with their own struggles. Now, I'm not in the thick of the DC mess, but it seems to me that it's easy to lose sight of that and just fucking hate everyone in the heat of the fight. Or the torture report. Jesus. Or look at celebrities, or the ultra rich. I have an old friend who is very wealthy and just went through a really painful divorce that broke up his family. The number of privileged kids with broken lives due to substance abuse is staggering. The number of upper middle class, middle class, and poor people with broken lives due to substance abuse is staggering. A fabulous couple I know, with one of the best relationships I've ever seen, is on the brink of losing it because of stress and alcohol. We've got two close friends dealing with life-threatening cancer right now. Someone in their thirties and someone in their sixties. Everyone has these things, either directly or adjacently. And they all go to work every day (or don't), and get on twitter, and blog, and talk on TV, and run companies, and etc. I am not exactly sure what my point is here, except to say that thinking about it this way really makes me want to redouble my support for my friends and family, and to give everyone (including myself) a break now and then, because there are things in their life that are broken, and life is hard for everyone.
"Workflow" apps hold so much promise. Whether it's a CRM, project management tool, to-do list, or some other tool, the promise in each case is to clean up our messy lives and help us be more organized and effective. The problem, though, is that getting people to adopt a workflow is really really hard. That's why there are so many to-do apps out there, each one with a slightly different user experience, and none of them "just quite right" for everyone. Workflow apps are like Goldilocks' porridge. Everyone is a little different, and it's hard to get people to change. A solution, then, is to take the "anti-workflow" approach. Make me more productive without shoehorning me into a new workflow. For example, Zander has been building a side project called Ansatz, which is the "anti-CRM". All you do is auth it into your email, and it builds intelligence your whole team can use, about who you know and how well. It's a CRM with out the CRM. And yesterday, I found out about Taco, which is the "anti-ToDo" app -- gives you a handle on all of the things you need to do (as defined by starred emails, github tasks, zendesk tickets, etc), and puts it right where you want it: on the Chrome new tab screen (side note: Taco should merge with
When I first started to learn programming, about 15 years ago, I remember being surprised at how easy it was for me to get focused and stay focused. I loved (and still love) the feeling of getting lost in a project, and could easily spend hours upon hours "in the zone". No procrastination, no resistance, only focus and enjoyment. It was easy for me to find Flow. Part of why this surprised me so much is that I had always struggled to achieve (and still do) a similar state when writing. Dating back to the first paper I ever wrote (maybe 4th grade? Certainly 6th grade), the feeling I most associated with writing a paper was terror, dread, resistance, and avoidance. Procrastination station. Programming and writing are pretty similar activities, so I often think about what makes programming such a joy and writing such a chore (for me at least). Recently, the answer has been revealing itself to me, as I've been seeing a mindfulness therapist. Mindfulness centers around the practice of noticing your thoughts -- developing a kind of "meta awareness" -- so that you can then develop more control over how you react to your thoughts. In other words, often times, the thing that troubles us isn't our direct experience, but rather our reaction to that experience. Mindfulness (at least at the stage I'm at) helps you distinguish between the two. So, as I've been working on the mindfulness practice, and at the same time working on a few long-form writing projects, I've been paying a lot of attention to that moment when I find myself resisting the task. When that feeling rises up in my belly that pushes me to turn away, break focus, check my email, snap out of whatever Flow I may have achieved. And each time that happens, I've been trying to take a second and examine that feeling, try and figure out why I'm pulling away -- trying to notice what, exactly, is going on. It's a really odd thing to do, and is pretty illuminating. As far as I can tell so far, the difference between writing (where I feel the constant pull of avoidance) and coding (where I easily melt into Flow) is a certain form of terror, of not knowing "the answer" -- whether that's a certain wording, and idea, a structure, etc. Whereas with coding, I don't expect to know the answer, and bring wrong (try, break, repeat, repeat) is just part of the process. Also, I often get intimidated by the scope of a writing project, whereas it's easier for me to tackle programming work in pieces, so no one piece feels looming and huge. Recently, I've been trying to focus my time on smaller pieces (now I'm going to focus on
That's a pretty depressing and fatalistic post title, but I actually mean it in a positive and encouraging way. Let me explain. It's easy to go about your life, every day, feeling like everyone else has their shit together and that the things you struggle with are unique to you. But then, when you get down to it, it turns out that everyone -- every single person I know -- is dealing with profoundly difficult and stressful things. Sometimes that's money, sometimes it's health, sometimes it's work or family or relationships. It's worth remembering this so that we cultivate some empathy when dealing with people -- in general and in particular in difficult situations. For example, with all of the controversy and strife over police brutality and race relations in the US, it's easy for both sides to look at the other and not understand. My personal default stance on all of that is: of course police treat black males unfairly, and black people in the US are so structurally fucked over that it's hard to really comprehend it. I also have a police detective as a future brother-in-law, who sees it from a different perspective. From his, and my sister-in-law's point of view, he does something incredibly dangerous and scary, for the safety of all of us; and further, he's a good person and so are his colleagues. He also sent me this video (graphic) which grounds those sentiments in reality. And of course, he's right. Or take congress. It's poisonous there. I went down to DC last week, and met with two Republican senate staffers, two Democrats, and an independent. Reasonable people, all of them, and I'm sure each with their own struggles. Now, I'm not in the thick of the DC mess, but it seems to me that it's easy to lose sight of that and just fucking hate everyone in the heat of the fight. Or the torture report. Jesus. Or look at celebrities, or the ultra rich. I have an old friend who is very wealthy and just went through a really painful divorce that broke up his family. The number of privileged kids with broken lives due to substance abuse is staggering. The number of upper middle class, middle class, and poor people with broken lives due to substance abuse is staggering. A fabulous couple I know, with one of the best relationships I've ever seen, is on the brink of losing it because of stress and alcohol. We've got two close friends dealing with life-threatening cancer right now. Someone in their thirties and someone in their sixties. Everyone has these things, either directly or adjacently. And they all go to work every day (or don't), and get on twitter, and blog, and talk on TV, and run companies, and etc. I am not exactly sure what my point is here, except to say that thinking about it this way really makes me want to redouble my support for my friends and family, and to give everyone (including myself) a break now and then, because there are things in their life that are broken, and life is hard for everyone.
"Workflow" apps hold so much promise. Whether it's a CRM, project management tool, to-do list, or some other tool, the promise in each case is to clean up our messy lives and help us be more organized and effective. The problem, though, is that getting people to adopt a workflow is really really hard. That's why there are so many to-do apps out there, each one with a slightly different user experience, and none of them "just quite right" for everyone. Workflow apps are like Goldilocks' porridge. Everyone is a little different, and it's hard to get people to change. A solution, then, is to take the "anti-workflow" approach. Make me more productive without shoehorning me into a new workflow. For example, Zander has been building a side project called Ansatz, which is the "anti-CRM". All you do is auth it into your email, and it builds intelligence your whole team can use, about who you know and how well. It's a CRM with out the CRM. And yesterday, I found out about Taco, which is the "anti-ToDo" app -- gives you a handle on all of the things you need to do (as defined by starred emails, github tasks, zendesk tickets, etc), and puts it right where you want it: on the Chrome new tab screen (side note: Taco should merge with
When I first started to learn programming, about 15 years ago, I remember being surprised at how easy it was for me to get focused and stay focused. I loved (and still love) the feeling of getting lost in a project, and could easily spend hours upon hours "in the zone". No procrastination, no resistance, only focus and enjoyment. It was easy for me to find Flow. Part of why this surprised me so much is that I had always struggled to achieve (and still do) a similar state when writing. Dating back to the first paper I ever wrote (maybe 4th grade? Certainly 6th grade), the feeling I most associated with writing a paper was terror, dread, resistance, and avoidance. Procrastination station. Programming and writing are pretty similar activities, so I often think about what makes programming such a joy and writing such a chore (for me at least). Recently, the answer has been revealing itself to me, as I've been seeing a mindfulness therapist. Mindfulness centers around the practice of noticing your thoughts -- developing a kind of "meta awareness" -- so that you can then develop more control over how you react to your thoughts. In other words, often times, the thing that troubles us isn't our direct experience, but rather our reaction to that experience. Mindfulness (at least at the stage I'm at) helps you distinguish between the two. So, as I've been working on the mindfulness practice, and at the same time working on a few long-form writing projects, I've been paying a lot of attention to that moment when I find myself resisting the task. When that feeling rises up in my belly that pushes me to turn away, break focus, check my email, snap out of whatever Flow I may have achieved. And each time that happens, I've been trying to take a second and examine that feeling, try and figure out why I'm pulling away -- trying to notice what, exactly, is going on. It's a really odd thing to do, and is pretty illuminating. As far as I can tell so far, the difference between writing (where I feel the constant pull of avoidance) and coding (where I easily melt into Flow) is a certain form of terror, of not knowing "the answer" -- whether that's a certain wording, and idea, a structure, etc. Whereas with coding, I don't expect to know the answer, and bring wrong (try, break, repeat, repeat) is just part of the process. Also, I often get intimidated by the scope of a writing project, whereas it's easier for me to tackle programming work in pieces, so no one piece feels looming and huge. Recently, I've been trying to focus my time on smaller pieces (now I'm going to focus on
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
, which I love). So now, I can track and prioritize what I need to work on, without having to adopt a to-do routine that I'm guaranteed not to stick to. Already, using this has helped me manage my inbox, as I know that I can archive starred emails knowing they'll show up in my todo list, where I can prioritize them and work on them later when I have time. Both of these examples build on perhaps the biggest productivity treasure trove: the inbox.
was one of my favorites). My inbox knows pretty much everything about me, and it's really poorly organized. Maybe it's because entrepreneurs are afraid of
(I suppose I would be). Regardless, it seems to me that there are countless ways to help me make my inbox more meaningful to me, and nearly all of them can accomplish that with an anti-workflow approach, which is a winning one IMHO.
, now I'm going to flesh out the second section, etc), and have had some success. I am curious if others see this the same way, and/have techniques that work for them? The thing is: writing is powerful, exciting and fun, if I can just get over the hump, and then stay in the zone. So this is something I'm going to keep working on. P.S.: other places I've found flow: skiing, cooking, doing carpentry/construction work, singing, playing drums, building powerpoint decks, talking on panels at conferences. It sure is a good feeling.
, which I love). So now, I can track and prioritize what I need to work on, without having to adopt a to-do routine that I'm guaranteed not to stick to. Already, using this has helped me manage my inbox, as I know that I can archive starred emails knowing they'll show up in my todo list, where I can prioritize them and work on them later when I have time. Both of these examples build on perhaps the biggest productivity treasure trove: the inbox.
was one of my favorites). My inbox knows pretty much everything about me, and it's really poorly organized. Maybe it's because entrepreneurs are afraid of
(I suppose I would be). Regardless, it seems to me that there are countless ways to help me make my inbox more meaningful to me, and nearly all of them can accomplish that with an anti-workflow approach, which is a winning one IMHO.
, now I'm going to flesh out the second section, etc), and have had some success. I am curious if others see this the same way, and/have techniques that work for them? The thing is: writing is powerful, exciting and fun, if I can just get over the hump, and then stay in the zone. So this is something I'm going to keep working on. P.S.: other places I've found flow: skiing, cooking, doing carpentry/construction work, singing, playing drums, building powerpoint decks, talking on panels at conferences. It sure is a good feeling.
