What I've Learned So Far

This time, leave out the “But.”

Try it without correction, without amendment. Don’t be perfectly right this time.

Go with it. Let it flow.

Stop after “Yes.”

Just “Yes,” this time.

Image by Art Siegel.

Folks, I’m mucking with WordPress a bit today. There might be some fallout. Your patience is appreciated.

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UPDATE, 4:30 p.m. — If you can believe it, upgraded all the way from WordPress 2.0.2 (yes, it had an inch-thick layer of dust on it) to WP 3.0.3. Bonus: walked my daughter—the budding hacker—through the last couple of upgrades so she could see an FTP tool in action.

(She says “Hi.”)

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IN OTHER NEWS, Monday, 6 p.m. — About half a dozen years after this would have seemed futuristically cool, the comments here now offer you the option to be notified automatically by e-mail whenever someone replies to your comment. It’s the little things, I tell you.

It’s common sense, but worth repeating to make sure it’s engrained:

The Jeff Francoeur signing in some ways is kind of sad because it is another “hit on 20 and hope for an ace” kind of move for Kansas City.

That’s Joe Posnanski, writing about the Royals’ silly signing of non-hitter Jeff Francoeur. But we could be talking about just about any context, in any area of life. How many misguided people do you know who keep relying on the notion that things will change for them even as they persist in doing things the long-shot way, the doesn’t-add-up way, the hope-for-the-best way?

One more sports analogy. More than a year ago, when people were looking ahead to the LeBron James free agency decision, plenty of New York Knicks fans crossed their fingers hard enough to give themselves arthritis that James would sign with the Knicks. They were looking for the best player in the league to sweep in as the savior of the franchise.

But what the Knicks needed, after years of feckless management by Isiah Thomas and the Dolan family, was about 500 intelligent decisions in a row. That’s what I said at the time to a friend, and that’s the view I’ve continued to hold, not just for the Knicks, but for the Cleveland Browns, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and every other franchise staring back at a long history of stupidity and futility.

You can’t hold out for that ace — the next Peyton Manning, the next Michael Jordan, the lottery ticket — that’s going to save you from the trend of your past decisions. Instead, you have to do the hard work that goes with making a bunch of smart, sober, boring decisions, one after another after another, until the tide turns.

The good news is, you can start by getting savvy with the very next decision you make, and make the taking-the-smart-odds way a trend by staying savvy with the next decision after that. And the next, and the next, and . . .

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(Image by Bob Owen.)

I shouldn’t complain. I got in three good upper-body workouts during the workweek, then repeated last week’s killer squat workout today.

But the squats weren’t so hot.

Normally I would have upped either the weight or the repetitions from last week, but I wanted to stay at the same level so that I could (a) work on my form, and (b) maybe not feel like passing out between sets.

The second goal was achieved, though I won’t say I felt good doing the second, third, and fourth sets of 15 reps with 175#. (I weigh about 165#.)

The first goal was the problem. Rather than improving my form, I felt like I regressed pretty distinctly. Nothing felt fluid, and although I warmed up as usual I didn’t have the freedom and range of movement — much less the timing — that I wanted.

We move on.

I think the answer will be an early-morning squat workout — lower weight, higher volume — in the middle of the week so that I can find the groove of form that I’m looking for. I’ll try that and let you know how it goes.

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(Image by S.L.M.)

I have two inboxes: one for work and one for the rest of my life. (There used to be three, including one for school. That nearly killed me.) My work inbox has been trouble, hovering around 100 items in it, although lately I’ve carved that down a bit. You’ll probably hear about it when it gets to zero. I mean, you may actually hear me shout for joy from wherever you happen to be at that moment.
My personal inbox is now down to one item, and I’ve managed to keep it there for the past week. (If you were waiting for a progress report as in previous installments of this series, there you have it.) The problem is . . . that one item requires work, both in terms of the contents of a particular task, and in terms of the human relationship that goes with that task.

Yesterday I drafted a version of this post that was like a lot of the abstract, self-helpy stuff I’ve written here in the past about getting your head / life / tasks / priorities in order. That post was bullshit. Not because what I said in it was incorrect or invalid — it wasn’t — but because it didn’t talk about the real things in my life, or the real, concrete struggles I face as I follow through on my commitment to kill my clutter.

Part of my advice to myself is “Don’t Struggle.” Instead of staying stuck in a mindset that focuses on the to-do’s that aren’t done, or that focuses on how hard things are going to be, I try to deflate any worries and fears and just get on with the doing of my tasks.

Writing abstract blog posts when I could be tackling that last item in the inbox? That’s struggling. (If another term works for you — “thrashing,” “flailing,” “wasting time,” “spinning your wheels,” or whatever — by all means substitute it.) In fact, writing this blog post . . .

. . . just motivated me to go take care of that one last thing in the inbox. Is that project done? No. But is it moving forward? Yes. Have I communicated that to the right person? Yes.

Call it a win.

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Previously in this series:

• The Death of Clutter, Part 1.
• The Death of Clutter, Part 2: The Twilight of the Bookmarks.
• The Death of Clutter, Part 3: The Roger Craig Way.

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(Image by Erik Mallinson.)

More of the stories that I write to fit inside a single Tweet.

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Never knowing what to say that could pierce the many veils of her grief, he made a firm practice of doing the dishes every night.

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3 little kids, turquoise pumps, & the face & hair of a 40s movie star – or Helen of Troy. Not what he expected at the barbershop.

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Dad tried to explain baseball to the tot; she only wanted to talk about her platypus book. They struck a truce over french fries.

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Can your life turn in a moment? One way to find out. He picked up the fumble, tucked the ball under his arm, & ran.

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The running lowered his triglycerides, but in time it healed his soul. Santa Fe’s air made him dream he was young Keino in Kenya.

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“You’re just a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of girl, huh?” She smiled & said, “I could be talked into more.” He blushed.

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His friends laughed with him at his dogs’ names, Phoebe Cates & Matt Damon. Only he knew their real names: Phobos & Deimos.

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She was very nice, but as he sat there listening to her life story, he realized his profile needed to include “NO FAKE TANS.”

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Previously:

• Tiny Stories.
• Tiny Stories, part 2.

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(Image by JD Hancock.)

At least, I’m pretty sure it was. Here’s what I did:

• 20 x 45#
• 10 x 95#
• 8 x 125#
• 8 x 155#
• 4 x 15 x 175#

In a word, mind-blowing.

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(Image by Syncharmony.)