What I’ve Learned So Far

“It has often been observed that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulation of knowledge.”

~

I’m in the middle of a solid day of work, which has had some real sprints in it, but . . . when’s the last time you really went hard at your tasks for a whole day?

We all need breaks, more or less. Even the farmer pauses at the end of a furrow. The millhand catches his breath at the end of a job-lot. But then they get right back to it, doing what they do.

Brad DeLong has been running a series of posts on the economic and work realities that faced American workers in 1900. Even setting aside the physical brutality of the work done by, say, the Homestead millhands, how much shock would most of us encounter if we were suddenly put in an environment where were were required to work that hard all day long?

How hard do you work in a day? What’s the hardest work you do? What’s the toughest pace you can sustain day after day?

WorldChanging talks regularly about pursuing “bright green futures” — i.e. vibrant, tech-savvy, culturally-enriched lifestyles that also put us on a better ecological path. This is all to the good, and no two ways about it. But much of the audience for these kinds of changes, I think, is under 40. That could well be my own bias, since I’m under 40 and I’m thinking of my own friends/contacts/network.

But looking through this Tom Peters slideshow got me thinking about just how much market clout is wielded today by women, especially women over 50, and how long these ladies are going to be in the driver’s seat financially — i.e. for decades to come, or more or less during the same period when James Hansen, Alex Steffen, Jamais Cascio, et al. say that we must make radical changes to our carbon-centered economy.

What can be done to “market” the idea of bright green futures to women over 50?

Simon Gallup’s bass line on “Close to Me” is one of the best ever.

Just an observation . . .

This morning, on my professional blog, I quoted Steven Pearlstine’s current Washington Post column about poverty; Megan McArdle also quoted it on her blog, which led to an interesting series of comments from her audience. Some of her commenters seem stymied as to why poor people don’t save a dollar here or there to make their lives better. McArdle herself suggests that there may be many “threshold effects” in play in the lives of the poor, such that an extra dollar doesn’t — or can’t — make a big difference.

It’s late and I’m tired, so this is just a placeholder for now. But I wonder whether the poor don’t face both threshold effects and the kind of narrative problems that Dean Ornish finds in his cardiac patients: all the facts in the world won’t make an intelligent recipient of a triple-bypass operation stop eating triple cheeseburgers . . . if he doesn’t change the narrative about what he eats. Could the same be true for poor people, beholden to the culture of poverty in which they live?

Do it every ten minutes, if necessary.  So often we act as though we must-must-must abide by the arbitrary rules, the accidentally-adopted “shoulds”, of those around us.  We must do X to build a successful career . . . we must own X to be happy . . . we should be like X if we want to be fulfilled.  All of this without regard to the actual effects of this in our lives and on our selves.

Sure, if you find a good model, copy it.  If you find a pearl of great price, do what you need to so that you can own it.  But don’t play the mug’s game of doing everything the way you’re told to do it.  Often, the folks who tell us how to do it are well-meaning but misguided, or they simply can’t see the world from our own perspectives.  They’re giving you the best advice they can — it just isn’t very good.  In other cases, they’re not particularly well-meaning, and they don’t care about the real quality of the advice, because they’re trying to sell you something.  If you want to buy it, if upon reflection you agree that it’s worthwhile, then sure, go ahead.  But not just because “they” told you to.

Someone (I forget who) said that life leaves us so many clues for success that you can’t stand in one place, turn around slowly with your eyes and mind wide open, and fail to pick up some of these clues.  But it requires that you’re willing to see the world through your own eyes, not someone else’s.  And then you have to be willing to live your life in a way that fulfills your dreams, not a marketer’s or your parents’ or the Joneses’.

Being purely selfish is a recipe for loneliness and frustration.  But too many of us, while still indulgent in the little things (the hors d’oeuvres of life), aren’t nearly selfish enough in the way we pursue our big dreams.  We think it has to be hard.  We think we have to do it according to rules laid down by people whose gifts and aspirations and outlooks are very different from our own.  It’s hogwash.  Move in the direction of your dreams according to your gifts and aspirations and outlook.  Be willing to stack the deck in your own favor, from the time you rise in the morning until your head hits the pillow at night.  Keep re-stacking the deck until you find that magically easy road, the one where you’re the Michelangelo, working hard but not noticing because you’re doing what you’re so obviously cut out to do.

Others will say that success comes easily for you; you’ll smile because you know that you’ve “rigged” the game to work exactly that way . . . and they can, too.

“To know and not to act is not to know.”

—Traditional Chinese proverb

~

* This one comes from regular reader and interesting guy Mark Larson, who quotes it from Don DeLillo’s book Cosmopolis. I’ll quote its context in the book as Mark quoted it to me. Mark explains that this conversation comes between a high-flying investor and his financial advisor “during a rather knife-edge financial atmosphere”.

The stronger the yen became, the more money he needed to pay back the loan. He kept doing this because he knew the yen could not go any higher…

“The wise course would be to back down, stand off. You are being advised to do this,” she said.

“Yes.”

“But there’s something you know. You know the yen can’t go any higher. And if you know something and don’t act upon it, then you didn’t know it in the first place. There is a piece of Chinese wisdom,” she said. “To know and not to act is not to know.”

I’ve heard this saying any number of times, and in fact I’ve used it myself with smart friends who might change their own narratives if they can be persuaded that they’re acting ignorant instead of intelligent. It is so painful to see anyone — myself very much included — know what’s better to do, but then eschew it for reasons of pride or self-delusion. I believe that this apothegm can be a great astringent for self-delusion: taken seriously, it forces us to consider what we do know, and how well or ill our actions comport with our knowledge.

. . . they must cast Roger Allam . . .

Besides the resemblance, Allam’s got chops, too — plus the perfect accent.

“A light heart lives long.”

I’ve been looking at the stats for this blog.

Keeping in mind that TechCrunch and Instapundit and BoingBoing and John Scalzi and Brad Delong and who-all-else need not fear my encroachment on their territory, I’m pleased to report that visitors, page views, and repeat visitors are up, up, up. Within the next day or two, August should be the best month I’ve ever had by all these metrics. And even though it’s less than two-thirds gone, this calendar quarter already beats last quarter, which beat the one before that, which beat . . . you get the idea.

Above all, I’m gratified to see an increase in the number of repeat visitors, since that presumably means that people liked what they found here enough that they wanted to return. So, to all of you who make this blog part of your regular reading habits, thank you.

Now, I’d like to know more from you: Where would you like to see this blog go? Is there a type of post that you’d like more of? Less? Something I could do that I’m not doing? Suggestions are welcome — please just leave a comment or drop me an e-mail.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming . . .