“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

– John Cage, quoted in Hell Yeah or No: What’s Worth Doing by Derek Sivers.

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“I think ideas are as real as trees.”

– Jim Harrison, Conversations with Jim Harrison

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Having new ideas is like planting trees.

We enrich the air that we all breathe.

An idea, like a tree, is a benefit to the community.

Cutting down a tree, like disparaging the idea of another, is an act of vandalism.

I walk in a forest planted by others.

Do I want to spend time in a monoculture?

A managed forest of pine has a dead understory – nothing else can survive in the sterile sameness.

The best forests are diverse and wild.

I want to encounter multiple species on my walk.

Perhaps I can drop a few seeds of my own. Maybe there will be the shoot of a new tree.

I want the forest to enlarge, the old falling and rotting to feed the new.

The ecosystem of ideas.

“When she mentions Richard Ford, I ask if she’s heard of his dead-rabbit-swerve philosophy—of how, if one is to review books, there’s no sense in reviewing a book one doesn’t like. It’s akin to driving down the road and swerving the car in order to run over a rabbit.”

– Rick Bass, Travelling Feast

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“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer”

– Simone Weil, quoted in EMBRACE FEARLESSLY THE BURNING WORLD: Essays, by Barry Lopez.

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For all the books that I’ve read, and continue to read, I’ve never written a review.

However I always leave a five star rating when I finish a book on my kindle.

And it will always be five stars.

If I’ve invested in, and chosen to spend four or five hours reading a book, it has to be five stars.

I value my time too much to read something that I don’t value.

So if I’m giving a book three stars, all I’m really doing is giving myself three stars for my attention.

I want to give everything five star attention.

A five star book, for me, is one that is the most precious, illuminating, actionable, and profound thing that I could read at that time.

My book selection is instinctive. An energy is transmitted that cannot be quantified.

And if the book doesn’t give me that feeling, I’ll stop reading, leaving it unread forever.

It’s a readers market. I can always find another great, inexpensive, book to replace the mediocre.

I only want to have positive things to say about books.

“I don’t hire experts to tell me what to do. I hire experts to tell me how to do what I want to do.”

– William Randolph Hearst, quoted in The Power of Ignorance by Dave Trott

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“I’m very secure in my ability to focus on what I want. If I have an agenda or a goal, no one is going to deter me from what I want to do. When I’m trying to make a statement or prove something, I might joke around with you, but don’t confuse that with changing my motivation.”

– Michael Jordan, Driven From Within

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I wish I were more decisive.

It must feel powerful to have self confidence enough to set and pursue a goal unwaveringly.

To declare that everything and everyone else is to be utilised in service of that ambition.

I imagine those focused people would see my indecisiveness as laziness.

But laziness can often be a symptom of fear.

Or more precisely, laziness might be advice whispered in my ear by fear: ‘don’t try, you’ll only fail. Don’t bother, it’ll be too hard.’

I’m sure I could read a hundred books by and about Michael Jordan and not get any more focused on what I want to do.

Is it as simple as saying: ‘this is what I want to do, and this is how I will get there.’?

Perhaps I am a little like MJ. I refuse to allow a day to pass without writing a blog post.

My goal is simple, and mine. It’s not in service of anyone else.

But I am grateful for not having to code my own website to do it.

WordPress allows me to do what I want to do.

I just don’t need anyone to tell me how to do it.

Can I extend this focus to other areas of my life?

Let’s see…

“Hard choices, easy life

Easy choices, hard life.”

– Jerzy Gregorek, as quoted in Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

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“There is no school of thought that can save us from the simple fact that hard decisions are best made by good people, and that the best people can only be shaped by hard experience.”

– Eric Greitens, The Heart and the Fist

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It’s easy to do nothing.

But all those nothings add up to one big something.

A loosening of our internal stitches is caused by a lack of care and maintenance.

Keeping an eye on the simple things in our control every day adds up to a tighter sense of self.

Avoidance is easy today.

I’ll take care of it tomorrow means I don’t care and I never will.

I need to do that right now means this is important and will always be important.

Creating daily habits and goals builds up a rhythm of success, but it is hard to start.

These words are all advice to myself.

I need it.

It’s painful to admit to being a mañana kind of guy.

Time to add some difficulty today.

I’m in search of an easy life, the hard way.

“‘(Reporter) Do you view this season as a failure?’

‘That’s the wrong question. There’s no failure in sports. Every year you work, you work towards a goal. To be able to take care of your family, provide a house for them, or take care of your parents. You work towards a goal. It’s not a failure. It’s Steps to Success. There’s good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful. Some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn, some days it’s not your turn.’”

– Giannis Antetokounmpo, in Giannis The Marvelous Journey

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“I CAME TO CHICAGO WITH NO EXPECTATIONS. NONE. THE ONLY PRESSURE I FELT WHEN I WENT TO THE NBA WAS TO PROVE I DESERVED TO PLAY ON THAT LEVEL. And that was easy because it was a step-by-step process: playing hard every day in practice, playing against veteran teammates, making the starting five, then playing against NBA players in games. No one knew what I was capable of scoring, and no one tried to define me by putting a number to those expectations. No one had in mind what would be acceptable for me. After the first year, the expectations came, but by that time I had positive habits. I had built a foundation for my game, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. I UNDERSTOOD THAT THE REASON I WAS GETTING ATTENTION WAS BECAUSE OF THE WORK I HAD PUT IN UP TO THAT POINT, NOT BECAUSE OF WHAT I HAD DONE TO MEET OTHER PEOPLE’S EXPECTATION FOR ME.”

– Michael Jordan, Driven From Within

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Failure can be reframed as a lesson, and lessons should have no end.

If you stop turning up for lessons, the learning stops. Our growth, which represents life, slows and we are in danger of stagnation, then rot.

It’s in the expansion and retraction, where we strike forth with new ideas and ventures, that we really live.

Inevitably, by trying, we fail. We are forced to withdraw when something doesn’t work.

A new route must be found.

We retrace our steps often.

The steps to success are not an inevitable journey. We are not on a conveyor belt that automatically delivers us to our goal.

We must take those steps to success ourselves. And because we are not machines we will trip and stumble. Why blame ourselves for our imperfection?

Perhaps failure, true failure, is not meeting our own expectations, allowing ourselves to come up short on what we know we could do.

People like Michael and Giannis are remarkable because of their ability to focus and to be relentless in their pursuit of a goal.

Sport is a way for us to witness humans striving in a controlled environment. We can observe athletes like scientists looking for a cure for complacency.

We are free to choose the game in which we experiment.

The arena where I choose to pursue my humble goal of excellence is on this blog.

Writing is a form of play in which I am happy to put in the hours of practice.

And so failure for me, which would result with my head in my hands, would be if I said it was ok to stop practicing and sit on the sidelines, by not writing.

I don’t know what success looks like in any larger sense other than my ability to schedule a post and go to bed content.

Whatever else has happened in my day, I’ve taken that small step in the right direction. Even though I can’t see what the destination is.

I’ll sort out the details along the way.

“To this day, my citadel protecting me from the immobilizing fear of conceptual nothingness is a journal, or a logbook, even a motley sheaf of notes of crudely organized notions, often just loose phrases, ramblings, trial paragraphs, jotted inklings, the best of which have only a lone value—a potential to hatch.”

– William Least Heat-Moon, Writing Blue Highways

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“About this journal: My basic intention is to write down, at the end of each day, what happened — what I did, thought, felt, and so forth — so I can read it, years from now, and remember what it was like. I think it’s best if I don’t concern myself overly with style. I’ll only get frustrated and quit. The second pitfall to avoid is using this journal as a kind of valve to let off steam — for example, writing 20 pages one night about how depressed I am. I’ve kept that kind of journal before. Rereading it, I invariably get disgusted and throw the notebook away. If I’m depressed, I’ll just say so and leave it at that. Basically, I want to write what I’ll want to read later. I’ll probably get better at that with practice. In short, I’m not very concerned with quantity or quality; I just want a reasonable entry for every day of my life, starting now.”

– Jordan Mechner, The Making of Karateka

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Writing every day is a protection against passivity.

The world daily demands energy, sucking our attention and resolution.

My journal is a levee against the threat of other people’s thoughts and ideas.

If I have this space to write I can better determine who I should or shouldn’t listen to.

Because the most important voice is myself. If I don’t know what I think and feel, what chance do I have against the flood tide of stranger’s voices.

I create a paper armour. Only powerful if it has been blackened by my pen. The page, a simple, benign substance, rendered impenetrable only if my words express what I think and feel right now.

“If you walk about your organization talking to people, I’d suggest that you be as curious as possible. As with a good dinner table conversationalist, one question should naturally lead to another. The time to be questioning or even critical is after trust has been established.”

– L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!

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“My most essential possession is a standard sized school notebook, which can be bought at any stationery shop on any high street. I carry this everywhere. And I write down all the comments that are made to me by Virgin staff and anyone else that I meet. I make notes of all telephone conversations and meetings and I draft out letters and list of telephone calls to make. Over the years I’ve worked my way through a bookcase of them. And the discipline of writing everything down ensures that I have to listen to people carefully.”

– Richard Branson, on The High Performance Podcast, Episode 258

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Taking notes is recording curiosity.

The answers to our questions are valuable, whether directed to ourselves or others.

But it is also very hard to actually listen. What if we valued the views of everyone we meet?

Valued enough to collect them in a notebook?

By writing we give words power. They exist for us to revisit when we need to. Like worshippers to a deity. I look to what has been written for answers to the big questions in life.

Rather than nodding along waiting for the other person to finish talking so I can launch into my own point of view, what if I said ‘that’s interesting, I really need to write that down.’

Everyone we communicate with can be a teacher if we allow them.

Writing is permanent listening. We have a record of answers to questions.

Sometimes we didn’t realise we were asking a question, but got just the answer we needed.

“I’m more about organized behavior routines. Yes, I do put my toothpaste on the same spot all the time. I’m not O.C.D., but I love routine. I get less depressed with routine. You’re just a trained animal in a circus. I like that feeling: Now we’re going to do this trick, now we’re going to do that trick. That makes me feel better. I don’t want too much mental freedom. I have too much of that anyway.”

– Jerry Seinfeld, New York Times

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“When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas.”

– –T. S. ELIOT, quoted in, The Houdini Solution by Ernie Schenck

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Focus is a form of harnessing energy.

A routine is a way of creating a pen in which to hold the unthinking sheep of our day to day routines.

Once we’ve shown up, as usual, to complete the task there is an extra bit of energy derived from the pride of having done it again.

By reducing indecision, friction is reduced.

We put ourselves under strain by placing a box around our creative selves.

It’s in the flexing against the constraints that we get stronger.

Judgement of the rightness of the activity is removed if it is part of a larger system of routine.

It’s like dressing our minds in the same clothes every day. A self imposed uniformity is it’s own style. There is nothing dramatic or wild. But there is consistency.

Routine is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result. The work is done. The routine does not assess quality. It only guarantees delivery.

Once I’ve been delivered, I do not think of the million other things I could be doing. I am free to do the one thing that needs to get done.

It’s a routine superpower. But it’s powerful.

And free.

“I was in shock, unable to muster the kinds of inner resources that real artists use to fortify themselves when faced with such a challenge. When I teach today, I often judge young artists’ chances of survival based on whether they seem to have the character necessary to solve the inevitable problems in their work. I didn’t. I also didn’t understand how to respond to an outer world that was out of step with my inner life without retreating into total despair. Oscar Wilde said, “Without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all.” Artists have to be self-critical enough not to just attack everything they do. I had self-doubt but no real self-critical facility; instead I indiscriminately loved or hated everything I did.”

– Jerry Saltz, Art Is Life

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“The aim is to remove horrors. This really takes a specific level of attention. Pigs love mud and there is a real streak of muddiness in our psyches. It can be soothing to wallow. We prefer to be stunned rather than overwhelmed. Unfortunately the variations of self-pity are the most injurious emotions we have.

Oddly enough our main weapons in controlling drinking are humor and lightness. The judgment of others and self-judgment (stern) are both contraindicatory. When we fuck up we mentally beat ourselves up. It doesn’t work at all and has to be expunged. The reason to slow down is to feel better and it works real good.”

– Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

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Life is not binary. Not a one or zero. Love or hate. Do or do not. Good or bad.

Life is nuance. There are gaps everywhere for us to inhabit and create little worlds.

I write in a tiny crack of the internet. I’m invisible from just about any perspective but right here.

I try to avoid comparisons with what others are doing. I appreciate the simplicity of the setup here.

I am not building empires. This is not writing as conquest.

It helps to have regular reminders that as much as I feel like I zoom around like a hare, my work here is the method of the consistent tortoise.

I am not in a rush. Some days my work brings me joy and satisfaction, others I know when I have compromised to hit my self imposed deadline.

But I show up. Little by little. I don’t write to excess, nor do I binge to console my shame of absence.

Here every day. Like a glass of table wine with dinner. A reliable habit rather than a weekend blowout.

“Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence”

– Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

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“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me wherever I fall

You say it best, when you say nothing at all”

– Ronan Keating, When You Say Nothing At All

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Sometimes there needs to be a pause.

An intake of breath, an appreciation of not having anything to say.