The NTNY screen in action, tracking weekly goals and (white) carbs eaten.

This is a story.  One time, I wanted to get a lot better at pull-ups.  I wanted to be a good rock climber and to have a lot of upper-body strength, and pull-ups were one of the best exercises I could do.  So I thought about how I could do a lot of pull-ups– there was, after all, no bar in my house or office from which I could do the exercise.  An idea came to me: go across the street to the park, and each night, practice doing pull-ups there.

This was not a good idea.  That should be apparent if you’ve ever tried any self-motivated exercise regimen.  All I was relying on was my willpower to achieve a long-term goal.  I didn’t do anything differently except expect that I would make it to the park.  Every night, even when it was dark and rainy and sometimes cold, and I would magically muster up some willpower and go and do the pull-ups.

I think I went once.  Complete failure.

Now this story has a happy ending.  It’s not about me finding it within myself to walk across the street every night.  No, it’s when I realized that the only thing that could convince me to do pull-ups was to make it dead simple.  I would buy a pull-up bar, but only if it could fit in the door of my kitchen, bedroom, or office.  There was no other place I would see it frequently enough to just stop and do pull-ups.  It had to be visible.  It had to be right in my face.  It had to be zero extra work.

The result: I’ve more than doubled the number of pull-ups I can do to 15, and still improving.

The lesson: if you’re going to change something in your life, make it easy and obvious and shape your environment so it encourages you to make that change.  Make it zero extra work.

* * *

New Tab New You is a piece of software that makes behavior change easier.  It makes it zero extra work.

Here’s how.

I have weekly goals.   I’ve had them for a long time, and kept track of them in various ways.  It used to be my journal– that’s tough, because you only see them the day you write them, then it’s easy to forget about them for a while.  Then I tracked them on notecards posted to my computer.  That was good, but then I had a different idea– track them using my computer, but make sure they’re somewhere I would always see them.

So I thought “I can’t write a new program to store these, because why would I open it?  I’ll have to piggy-back on something else.”

About this time, I was also thinking of tracking the non-paleo carbs I eat every day.  Rather than call myself three-quarters paleo or something, I would actually write down how often I was eating unhealthy stuff.  I could eat whatever I pleased, so long as I accurately recorded how bad it was for me.

I needed a place to store this too– and like the weekly goals, this is something I’d need to see and interact with every day.

But I had learned my lesson from the pull-up bar.  If it wasn’t in sight and already something I’d encounter in my normal routine, I’d never have the willpower to add this into my routine.  So then I got the idea– a new tab screen.

I open hundreds of new tabs every day.  What if I could write a little page in HTML to store that data and show that page every time I opened a new tab?  Fortunately, HTML5 has such a provision.  I won’t go into the details here.  Instead, check out NTNY.  Right now, it only tracks weekly goals and a daily amount (I track carbs, but you could track something else in the graph).  But it’s basically all contained in two files, so if you know any HTML or JavaScript, you’ll find it pretty simple to edit and add your own widgets.  If you do something cool with it, submit a pull request on GitHub or at least drop me a line.

I look forward to hearing how this is useful for all of you, or if there are any changes you want to see!

A lion I saw on safari in Tanzania almost exactly a year ago

The last month, I’ve been just about incommunicado.  There’s a good reason for this– I promise.  Four weeks ago, I told my boss I was leaving Microsoft.  The next two weeks, I prepared for my departure, making sure all of my areas of responsibility were in good shape before I took off, and then, two weeks ago, I went in to the office one last time.

I’m now a freelance user experience designer.  What’s a UX designer?  Someone who makes websites and apps easy to use.  Ergonomics of the mind.

But that’s not what I’m writing to talk about.  I’m writing to talk about being a freelancer, lions, and my theme for 2013– “the lion in the wild”.

I’ve never been a freelancer.  For the last 2.5 years, I’ve had a full-time job.  I’ve been hand-fed a nice paycheck every 2 weeks– more money than anyone my age should be allowed to make, I half-seriously think.  Excellent benefits.  But it’s not without a cost.  At an ultra-large company, things move slowly.  Everyone knows this.  Layers of people to ask for permission; battalions to argue against anything new.  Bureaucracy.  You can receive non-negotiable instructions changing your day-to-day life from people you’ve never met, never even seen in person.  They don’t know you either.  They don’t know what you’re good at, bad at, or want to learn.

They can’t though.  They literally have no time to do so– there are thousands of such people they are responsible for managing.

The whole situation– that of unparalleled comfort yet unnaturally curtailed freedom– seems to have a certain analog to me.  And I’m not the first person to make the comparison.

* * * * *

In his essay “You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss“, Paul Graham makes an observation about founders that go through his startup school Y Combinator.

I was in Africa last year and saw a lot of animals in the wild that I’d only seen in zoos before. It was remarkable how different they seemed. Particularly lions. Lions in the wild seem about ten times more alive. They’re like different animals. I suspect that working for oneself feels better to humans in much the same way that living in the wild must feel better to a wide-ranging predator like a lion. Life in a zoo is easier, but it isn’t the life they were designed for…

Founders arriving at Y Combinator often have the downtrodden air of refugees. Three months later they’re transformed: they have so much more confidence that they seem as if they’ve grown several inches taller. Strange as this sounds, they seem both more worried and happier at the same time. Which is exactly how I’d describe the way lions seem in the wild.

Watching employees get transformed into founders makes it clear that the difference between the two is due mostly to environment—and in particular that the environment in big companies is toxic to programmers. In the first couple weeks of working on their own startup they seem to come to life, because finally they’re working the way people are meant to.

There’s a lot to this analogy.  I imagine kids standing around my desk at Microsoft, pointing excitedly when I started to do work “Look– he moved!”.  Now the kids point at my bank account– “if he doesn’t make it before that runs out, he’s going to get eaten!”  Maybe the choice isn’t so clear for everyone, and maybe I’ll change my mind later, but for now, I know which game I want to be in.

Leaving Microsoft was still dang tough.  Rarely had I heard anyone there speak of their team more highly than I spoke of mine (only one instance in those years comes to mind– and it was so remarkable I had to write it down in my journal).  There was a lot I was walking away from, and a lot of uncertainty in moving to an adjacent discipline, without a degree or full-time work experience in it, to do freelance work for clients I didn’t have.

In fact, I expected to go 90 days without clients, just building skills, doing work for free, creating a portfolio, etc.  I expected to wake up 90 mornings and only spend my money that day.  No trading money for UX work.

It turned out I went 7 days until I signed my first contract.  That’s not to say I’ve made it.  I haven’t.  But I’m making it.  Slowly.  Just like the lion.  ”Hey Lion, you just killed an antelope.  You got it made!”

“For today, yes.”

* * * * *

Last year, my theme was Eurisk and on New Year’s Day of last year, I wrote about the virtue of taking risks where good things might happen.  I wondered about what a future would look like outside of the paycheck zoo.  And now I’m here.

In keeping with my New Year Themes > New Year Resolutions, I’ve made a theme for 2013.  Because what got me here won’t get me there.

My theme for 2013 is the lion in the wild.

From now into the foreseeable future, no one will hand me a paycheck unless I go, spot the opportunity, and sprint after it.  There’s a lot of freedom to this that I’m looking forward to.  But with it comes a lot of responsibility and potentially worry.  And that’s why I have my theme.  So I can remember that no day is just given and that I have no one to blame but myself.

But in my mind, that’s a good thing.  An excellent thing.

- – - – -

PS.  A bit more about what I’m actually doing– as an User Experience Consultant (focusing on interaction design), my job will be to make website and apps easier to use.  I do this primarily by user research (figuring out who uses a product and why), interface design, and usability testing (watching people use a program, trying to understand what they do and don’t understand in it, and making changes accordingly).  I want to work primarily for startups in the near future, but am open to hearing about any UX projects.  If you know someone looking for a UX professional, feel free to give me a shout.

As for this blog, it will continue on as usual.  Perhaps a bit more, perhaps a bit less.  We’ll see how things go.

Photo credit: Susannah Conway

No one’s perfect, and while for the most part our various failings are viewed as obstacles to us achieving our goals, I want to take a different viewpoint here: each of us has many vices that can actually help us achieve our goals.

I think this sounds weird to say, so here are examples.

Laziness over Gluttony

I can resist any temptation until I can see it.  And when I see food– it doesn’t matter how much plaque it will dump in my heart; it doesn’t matter how much fat it’ll layer over my rock-solid abs– if I have room in my stomach, I will probably eat it.

This is not good.  But there’s a catch.  See, I rarely get hungry for sweets, pastries, or beer on my own.  99% of the time, my stomach will be perfectly satisfied with whatever I give it (but not too many vegetables, k?– doctor’s orders).  So the problem is not eating junkfood when I’m hungry for junkfood– it’s eating junkfood when I see junkfood.

Therefore, the solution is not seeing junkfood.  Removing it from sight.

And this is what I’ve done.

To be clear, there is junkfood in my house.  Cookies in cabinets I rarely use, ice cream at the way back of the freezer, and some chocolates I received as a gift and threw into the trash.  If I really wanted them, I could have them.  Just open that cabinet/freezer/trash and dig out the goods.  But honestly?  It’s not worth it.  My fridge is stocked with healthy ingredients, and my tupperware is filled with healthy leftovers (rule: if you’re making unhealthy food, make a small amount).  There’s almost always a liter of water within arm’s length of me, but the soda’s in the small fridge under the bar jammed in the awkward shelf it’s hard to get stuff out of.

Yes, I’m a glutton.  I will eat three pieces of pie without thinking twice.  But I’m a lazy glutton, and that little qualifier may make the difference between heart attack or not.

• Stock your fridge with healthy food
• Put unhealthy food in out of the way places– and never go grocery shopping when you’re craving it
• Keep healthy snacks/water within reach
• I haven’t figured out how to control my see-food diet when eating out… suggestions welcome

Pride over snobbery

Do you ever get that awful priggish feeling like you are so much higher and mightier, so much more intelligent than other people that it’s not worth your time trying to relate to them or even to talk to them?

I admit, it happens to me all the time.  I feel like I can find any excuse not to bother with others.

The problem is not that I don’t recognize this as awfully judgmental– I do.  I believe in my heart that if I can’t find a single thing to talk about or relate to or find interesting in what they’re saying, then it’s my problem, not theirs.  But this knowledge hasn’t forced me to change my behavior– and so I remain, in many cases, a snob.

The thing that changed this more than any recognition of every human being as my equal was actually me pretending to be the ruler of the human beings I was talking too.  This is 100% shameful but ridiculously effective.  Teddy Roosevelt– of US president fame– is one of my models for the good life.  I love the man and his whole general attitude towards life.  One of the things he was known for was being a true democrat, a real cosmopolitan– someone who could converse with any other citizen of the United States at their level, about what mattered to them, and come off as a respectable and intelligent gentleman.  Didn’t matter if they were royalty or a ranch-hand, a Harvardian or a lumberjack, he somehow managed to garner the respect of everyone up and down the social gamut he came in contact with.

I try and think about that whenever I’m feeling all smug and ubermenschey.  Say I were this person’s president: could I not only keep a conversation going, but do so in a way that would earn their respect, trust, and admiration?  My pride forces me to be a good ruler– anything less would be beneath me.

I hate the idea that I’m superior to anyone who bores me for more than two seconds at a time.  I’d rather dig into a person and find what is interesting, admirable, and relatable than maintain my elitist silence.  I’d rather be a mensch than an ubermensch– yet it’s the though of ruling the plebes, not appearing before God as equals, that reminds me exactly where I stand.

Yes, I’m a snob.  But this snob harnesses his pride to be less snobbish.

The how is whack, but the what is solid.

* * *

I wish I could eat less than five cookies in a sitting simply because I knew it was bad for me.  I wish I could try to find something interesting and engaging about every person I had to talk to simply because I knew myself to be no better than them.  One day, I hope those facts are true.  But today, they aren’t.  So I cheat.

I encourage you to too.

You have goals you want to accomplish.  They require discipline, courage, and resiliency.  And while those virtues will one day spring effortless from within us, we’ll take the low road for now.  With enough pride, you can meet any promise you make.  With enough fear of disapproval, nothing will stop you from doing the things everyone has come to expect you to do.

We should all get rid of our vices, but until they’re gone, I’m all for using them.

What are you going to do?

Image credit: Sarah H. Dee (flickr: 31floors)

In the two years that I’ve been running The Finishing School and preaching the gospel of Getting Out There and Doing Stuff, I’ve talked to a lot of people who don’t understand why they should have life goals.

Why go out of your way to list these arbitrary and random things?  Why bother trying to achieve something that doesn’t directly benefit you?

Or,

Isn’t that a first-world luxury?  Something you can only think about because you’re satiated to boredom?  Some people are starving, and you’re checking off continents and crap just because you can?

Having a list of life goals is not about arbitrary timesinks.  Nor is it about boredom and privilege.

Having a list of life goals– and, more importantly, doing them– is about something totally different.  It’s about consciously choosing what you want to do with your short, short time on Earth and then seeing it through to actuality.  All of the reasons I keep a list of life goals are centered around that one reason.  Making Things Happen is something that only humans can do, and it’s a part of what makes us who we are.  I think it’s a glorious endeavor, and I want to touch on one aspect of it here:

Making Things Happen is a skill.

Making up your mind to do something and then doing it is a skill, just like playing the piano is a skill and driving stick is a skill.  We don’t usually think of it this way– usually, it’s only the object of the goal that we could consider as such.  ”Oh, he wanted to learn French, so he practiced a whole bunch and now he knows it”.  The key skill there is not French, it’s learning/practicing– i.e. making the dream a reality.

Making Things Happen is a skill, and it’s comprised of all sorts of techniques you need to master– just like any other skill.  Playing piano requires learning scales and finger patterns and reading music.  Making Things Happen, on the other hand, requires broad skills like self-discipline, organization, leadership, etc.  You need to understand how your brain works– how you work– and act accordingly.  What motivates you?  What distracts you?  How do you get over hurdles?  How do you keep going when the muse is gone?  The answers to those questions are the bullets in the war to master Making Things Happen.

Making Things Happen is a skill, and you can master it just like any other.  Through practice, you can become really good at doing what you say you’re going to do.  You can become someone who is known for turning ideas into reality with surprising efficacy.  Life materializes around you.  There is creation, building up, doing, and happening.

Making Things Happen is a skill, and you can suck at it.  I really dislike seeing people who are bad at MTH.  In fact, I have a visceral disdain for it.  But so many people are.  How do you know if you’re one?  If you feel like you don’t actually do anything you want, that’s a pretty good sign.  You blame others for your ideas not happening.  But it could be even worse– you could be content to sit around unchallenged and watch TV all day.  You don’t even have ideas of what to do.  I don’t know where to start if that’s the case, but I’m glad you’re reading this.

Making Things Happen is a skill, and your life list is a series of exercises to apply it to.  Not because MTH is a useless skill and we need to come up with something to aim it at, but because you’ve chosen things that are worthwhile for you to do with your time, and that is the stone on which you can grind the axe.  The axe will be sharpened, and you will be, as T.E. Lawrence said, a dangerous man– a dreamer of the day, with the power to make your dreams a reality.

That’s what this blog is about, and that’s what making the list is about.  Does that clear it up?

Take the hill.

Photo credit: Vinoth Chandar (flickr: vinothchandar)

We hear a lot of hype about ideas. “Ideas can change the world”.  Right.

“Ideas can move mountains”. Ideas don’t move mountains, Peter Drucker reminds us, bulldozers do.  Ideas just tell the bulldozers where to go.

Know what this means?  I’ll tell you:

Do you fancy yourself a bulldozer? You’d better.

If you have a lot of goals, there’s a good chance that– like me– you’re an “ideas person“.  Your notion of the perfect job is to sit back and do nothing but come up with all the next brilliant ideas in your chosen field.  You love discussing, debating, and especially thinking of new ideas.  You place a high premium on interesting.

There’s a problem with that, though.  Ideas are cheap.  Worthless, almost.  What’s your most ambitious goal?  Oh, to start your own business?  That’s cute!  Do you know how many people could have had that idea of a goal?  Do you know how many do?  The idea of starting your own business does nothing to change the world, and only a bit to change you.  My father always said “Doesn’t cost anything more to dream first class“.  Nifty ideas are traded with dimes.  Moving mountains takes top buck.

Let’s go back to Drucker’s metaphor: bulldozers are moving the mountain.  I like this.  It’s a good, down-to-Earth analogy.  We can stretch it a bit and it still holds.  We look at the bulldozer and keep learning more about the movers of mountains, physical and metaphorical.

If you want to accomplish a large goal– something rare and valuable and requiring a lot of work– then you need to be a bulldozer.  Do you recognize this?  And what’s more– do you glory in it?  See, you will need to be a bulldozer for a long time– perhaps the majority of the project.  For us ideas people, that can hurt.  But bulldozers– and, by extension, us– have some things going for them.  Bulldozers have some glory too.

• Bulldozers are powerful machines.  We’re beautifully and wonderfully made, says the the Book of Psalms.  I believe it.  The beauty of a bulldozer is in lifting the unliftable– only one scoop at a time, though (let’s not get out of hand).  But that’s what we do too.  Stop and consider it– we are good and strong.
• Bulldozers see progress every day.  No building is raised in a day, but if you do it right, you can still see progress every day.
• Bulldozers are the only way to do it.  Every day on my way to the bus, I pass by a construction site.  Right now, it’s at the point where some bulldozers have dug a 20-foot hole the size of a medium commercial building.  This has taken a while, but you know what?  There’s no better way.  They’re in a city– they can’t use dynamite.  And even the John Henry of shovelin’ dirt wouldn’t make for an interesting competition.  A bulldozer doesn’t have it easy, but bulldozing is the only way to get it done.

Life’s rough for the bulldozer.  The bulldozer has to repeat itself.  It has to lift heavy stuff.  When it’s done, a thousand people will pass by and hardly one will think of the bulldozer.  And then, only by chance, and half of them, only to complain at the ugliness of the building.

Remember why you’re bulldozing– because it’s worthwhile.

When a group of us in Seattle decided to start the Finishing School, we realized that the name was a triple-entrendre of sorts.  First, it was the name of schools that trained upper-class girls to be ready to enter high society.  Second, it references achievement as a kind of memento mori– finish your life goals before you finish your life.  But third, and most importantly here, it refers to finishing goals.

Dreaming is cheap.  Starting is easy (starting tonight is less easy).  Continuing on when the muse has dumped you is tough.

And finishing is toughest.

That’s what the Finishing School is about.  That’s what this blog is about.

If you want to do something big and important, your rewards will be the rewards of the bulldozer and your punishments will be the punishments of the bulldozer.  Forewarned is forearmed.

]]> http://thebucketlistsociety.com/2012/10/31/the-sorrows-and-joys-of-the-bulldozer/feed/ 0 http://thebucketlistsociety.com/2012/10/30/oh-hey-there-austin-albuquerque-and-boston-you-now-have-finishing-schools/ http://thebucketlistsociety.com/2012/10/30/oh-hey-there-austin-albuquerque-and-boston-you-now-have-finishing-schools/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 01:58:49 +0000 Erik http://thebucketlistsociety.com/?p=6652 Finishing Schools, dear readers– they are popping up everywhere.  Groups of people meeting to hold each other accountable and help each other with the goals most important to them.  It’s spreading.

Indeed, the following cities around the US are having their first meeting this month:

• Austin, TX — Nov 2
• Albuquerque, NM — Nov 4
• Boston, MA (after a false start last month) — Nov 19, 20, or 21 (TBD)

If you’re interested in attending any of these, give me a holler.  If you want to start one in your city, same deal.  It’s an exciting time to be working on your goals.

We’ll be back to your regular scheduled programming soon.  Of course, tomorrow’s the 2-year anniversary of the Seattle Finishing School, so it may be few days

All the best,
-Erik

Cal Newport wrote a book about succeeding in high school when he was in college, a few books about succeeding in college when he was in grad school, and, now that he’s graduating, he’s– naturally– turned his attention to success in the working world.  The book is called So Good They Can’t Ignore You.

If it’s not clear from the fact that he’s had four publishing deals before the age of 30, Cal Newport is good at life.  From the very first time I read his blog, it was clear that he was a nerd in the best sense– someone who, given an interesting problem and enough time, could simply think unthought thoughts– and then produce value from them.

Cal does something interesting with these thoughts.  Something incredibly simple and powerful.  He names them.

I’ll take the bait.  I’ve read a lot of Cal’s strategies and postulations in the last two years, and some of them have stuck with me since the day I first read them.  Here are a few of my favorite idea’s of Cal’s, including a bit on the book at the end.

* * *

Failed Simulation Effect

This is perhaps my favorite advice from Cal’s older writing.  It’s about how to be “impressive”.  And his idea goes like this:

The things that sound the most impressive are not the things that require the most work– they’re the things that are the hardest for someone else to imagine doing.

Let’s dissect that.  Let’s imagine, as Cal often does, two students trying to get into college:

• One student is the president of an academic club at her high school, an all-state athlete, an award-winning trombone player, and has an ungodly number of volunteer hours with local charities
• The other student published a non-fiction book on oatmeal and was CEO of a half-million dollar business

Which one sounds more interesting?  Which will you let into your college?  I’d go for the second– and so do admissions officers.

The thing that makes the second so impressive compared to the first is that most people have no idea how the second achieved those things.  For the first– the club leader, the athlete, band-member, etc.– yeah, everyone knows an overachiever like that.  Someone addicted to motion.  It’s hard to be her, but it’s pretty easy to figure out how to be her.

But that second student, we have no idea how she got to where she is.  In high school and running a six-figure business and has published a book.  What makes her an expert on oatmeal?  How is she such a strong leader?  Because we can’t figure out how she does those things, she seems way more impressive and way better a candidate for our college.

As Newport says:

An easy way to represent yourself as a medium ability candidate (be it for college, grad school, or a job) is to present a laundry list of activities none of which are all that difficult to achieve; e.g., club memberships, a summer program, a two-week mission trip.

Send good signals, he says, not mediocre ones.

(From “The Art of Activity Innovation“)

The Textbook method

Want to develop an intuitive understanding of difficult concepts?  Cal recommends “The Textbook Method”– that is, writing your own “textbook” on the subject.  Of course, this doesn’t mean a 600-page magnum opus on a broad subject.  Instead, he’s simply advising you rephrase explanations of difficult topics in your own words and write them down.  You know what you write.

This is perfect for students in the math and sciences, but I’ve found that it works for less abstract concepts as well.  I’ve used the textbook method to remember what the various settings on DSLR cameras are for (and how they interact), to keep straight important periods in geology (actually, there are eras, periods, and epochs!), and regularly at work to understand complex proposals to solving difficult technical problems.

This is not a new idea though– the scientists among us might remember Einstein’s chiding “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother” and Feynman’s habit of asking dumb questions until he could break down complex concepts into simple and visual analogies.  It’s all good though– this advice remains as cogent as ever.

(From “You Know What You Write“)

Time Arbitrage

Arbitrage is the idea of buying something for a low price and selling it somewhere where the price is higher.  Custom-made suits are cheap in India; they can be sold at a profit to US customers.  Well Cal applies this concept to time.  You’re given 24 hours every day, but some of those hours can be exchanged for more valuable activities.  The trick is to “sell” your best hours for more productivity.

For instance, most people have more energy in the morning than the evening.  If you want to do something important, like work on a goal, try doing it before you’ve taken care of all your other commitments for the day.  You’ll get more done in that hour.  And that means it’s more valuble– you sold those 60 minutes for more than other 60 minutes will be sold for.

He also brings up the example of consecutive hours vs. single hours.  If you study for 8 hours straight, you may have pretty good focus the first hour, decent focus the next few, but by the end, you’re zoning out regularly.  It’s just tough to focus on something that long.  Instead of burning yourself out on super-long study sessions where those last few hours are exchanged for hardly anything at all, study a little every day.  Same hours spent either way, but the second strategy is far more productive.

A lot of the goals that readers talk to me about are things that take a long time– getting degrees, building houses, writing novels, etc.  For endeavors like that, it’s worth working on goals before you’re busy with the rest of your duties (just like Anthony Trollope did writing a record number of novels while working a full-time job)– and not burning yourself out with marathon focus sessions.

(From “How to Use Time Arbitrage to Master Your Productivity Profit“)

The ESS Method for Accomplishing Big Tasks

When most people are working on a large project, they tend to think about it way too much at one time– mostly because they thought about it way too late, and therefore don’t have time to do incremental work.

The human brain doesn’t do well with cramming.  Nor does it like overwhelming piles of work.  You’re much better off organizing work by the ESS method– early, small, soon.  Figure out when you need to have the work done by, then start early on the smallest piece of the project you can think of.  Even if the project is due far in the future, start that small piece of it soon.

This should sound familiar to reader’s of this blog, which is founded on the principle of start tonight.  Enough said.

(From “Pulverize Large Assignments with the ESS method“)

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In his new book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal argues a ballsy proposition– that “follow your passion” is actually terrible life advice.

There’s a joke about two young fish swimming along when an older fish swims past and says to them “Morning, boys.  How’s the water?”  One of the two younger fish looks at the other and says “What the hell is water!?”

That’s about the same feeling I got when I realized that when it comes to career advice, there really is no alternative to “follow your passion”– that’s all we hear.  We hear it from college counselors, from advertising, from the career-advice bestsellers– even from the world’s best CEO.  When I was bragging that Cal is good at thinking unthought thoughts, I was serious.  I want you to try and remember someone told you not to follow your passion.

Now let me clarify a thing here.  Cal’s argument is not that passion is bad.  It’s not that we should all take jobs we hate.  It’s that work and life satisfaction are due to and predicted better by way more than just whether a job seems appealing as an amateur.

Instead, the things that determine how much we like a job are things that psychology predicted long ago.  Cal enumerates the following:

• Autonomy refers to control over how you fill your time. As Deci [the quoted researcher] puts it, if you have a high degree of autonomy, then “you endorse [your] actions at the highest level of reflection.”
• Competence refers to mastering unambiguously useful things. As the psychologist Robert White opines, in the wonderfully formal speak of the 1950s academic, humans have a “propensity to have an effect on the environment as well as to attain valued outcomes within it.”
• Relatedness refers to a feeling of connection to others. As Deci pithily summarizes: “to love and care, and to be loved and cared for.”

I’ve read an ungodly number of non-fiction books on life advice, and I can say with some certainty that Cal Newport is absolutely one of the best self-improvement thinkers and writers out there.  Not to mention his blog is one of the top three I’ve ever seen for consistently generating new and interesting thought.  I’m disappointed I hadn’t heard of him in high school, but at least he’s one wicked awesome Profile in Awesomeness for now!

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Almost two years ago, I went to Seattle’s Zig Zag Cafe with a handful of friends, acquaintances, and strangers on a Wednesday night to discuss the things we most wanted to do in life.

It was a group we called The Finishing School, and we’ve been meeting almost every month since to discuss what progress we’ve made on our life goals.  Whether it’s learning the cello, meeting a personal hero, or losing 15 pounds, we hold each other accountable and help each other however we can.

In fact, that’s really what the Finishing School is– an accountability group for your life goals.  And given enough interest, I’d like to start one in Boston, Massachusetts when I visit next week.

Here are the details:

Monday, October 8th
8:00 PM
Location TBD in Boston/Cambridge

If this sounds interesting to you, let me know– I’ll make sure to include you.

Personally, I love the Finishing School.  We’ve grown to be great friends and accomplished some really cool goals– goals like writing a novel, climbing Kilimanjaro, and yes, we even had two members whose goals included “fall in love and get married” fall in love.  And get married.  To each other.

The FS Seattle

You can read more about the story of the Finishing School here or a brief overview here.

If you want to join the Finishing School starting in Boston, MA, contact me.

Photo credit: Susannah Conway (susannahconway.com)

Patrick Rhone, author of Enough and Mac Minimal, talked about the Finishing School in his most recent podcast.  It was interesting hearing his thought process in deciding to start a Minneapolis/St. Paul Finishing School.  The sentiment that stuck with him the most was this: something worth doing at all is worth starting tonight.

Boris Taratutin, an engineering student in Massachusetts, saw my guest post about living life like an experiment at The Art of Manliness and is getting together with a group of his friends to talk about self-reflection behavior changing.  Their first tenet is based around this question: what’s the smallest step I can take now?

Running a marathon.  Learning to rock climb.  Reading for self-education.  Learning Krav Maga.  The experiences that led me to start this blog happened only because of this question: how do I start tonight?

I used to write a lot of music.  I wasn’t majoring in music– heck, I wasn’t even in college when I learned, so I had to find other resources to teach myself– websites, books, scores, any mentor who would listen to a green 16-year old’s stabs at polyphony.  I ended up learning a lot from a centuries-old book called The Study of Counterpoint.  It turns out it was the same text the young Beethoven studied.  I still have highlighted a piece of advice from one of the corny master-student conversations in that book, “allow no day to pass without a line written”.  This advice is actually a quotation whose source is obscured– undoubtedly a Mediterranean artist of antiquity though, commenting on the necessity of continual practice.

Never a day without a line written.  Nulla dies sine linea.  This stuck with me, and years later I started a blog whose logo had emblazoned across the bottom that Latin inscription.

This post has been a few days in the making.  Not because I have a good excuse.  I’m as busy as anyone else– but so is everyone.  I mean, I don’t have excuses, I have anti-excuses: I love writing, this blog means a lot to me, and I spend way too much time on facebook.  So to go a day without writing on it is particularly and uniquely pathetic.  I don’t expect to write a post every day– that’s unreasonable.  But I can write a line every day, and yesterday night as I shut down my computer, I noticed the open draft.

No, I’m tired.  My eyes are too tired.

Just one sentence.

No, I can’t think.

Just one line.

Those pillows are soft.  You’ve been out all day.

Just one line.

I wrote one line.  Second paragraph, first sentence.

Today I edited hit; hit post.

One line at a time.  Asking a marathoner friend for training plan recommendations.  Looking up rock climbing and Krav Maga gyms.  Finding out what I needed to get a library card.  That was the reason this blog was started.  That’s how those things got done.

A life of should haves is only a day away, as long as you have an excuse every day.

This is why we have the first rule of the Finishing School: you must make at least some progress on at least one goal.  No excuses.

For everyone arriving at this blog from The Art of Manliness (a fantastic blog, if you don’t know about it), good to have you!  My name’s Erik and I write about life goals.  Feel free to look around– or here are a few things you might particularly enjoy:

What are you doing before you die?  Here’s specific advice for creating a bucket list.

For the polymaths and renaissance men among us: the 4 commandments of reading for self-education.

Do you think networking advice seems sleazy and awful?  Yeah, that’s why I tried this.

Want to be held accountable to accomplishing your goals in life?  See if there’s a Finishing School in your city– or start one.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or feedback!