Silence, Awareness, Simplicity

Sorry for this post being late.

I feel like I am on the edge of something new. Like a leaning out over a cliff edge with waves crashing far below. The sea wind blowing on me, about to leap off and fly or fall into something new and big and powerful.

Right now I am acutely aware of the power of focus and awareness. I'm starting to notice something. During certain times like as I get ready for bed or sometimes in the middle of the day when I get off track from my tasks, or when I start quietly, (much more quietly than in the past,) berating myself for getting distracted or for giving into temptation, there is something I can do. If I am aware while this is going on, or even partway through, I can learn and make different choices in the moment and different choices the next time I'm in a similar situation.

I'm feeling the urgency and the importance of simplicity. This ties in with focus and it ties in with action. When I don't have simplicity it becomes hard to focus and it becomes hard to take action, especially meaningful action, on what's important to me. It's hard to have clarity; clarity of purpose, and related, clarity on what is actually important to be doing right now.

Somewhat ironically, going slower actually allows me to have this awareness and return to this focus, which then lets me be far more productive, get more important things done. But I think also, more things done, period. Any things.

I'm getting more and more aware of the way I sabotage myself or distract myself or get sidetracked, and what I can do about that.

The awareness opens new avenues. For example, why do I keep going to bed late? Sometimes it's because I feel a little lonely and unfulfilled. Sometimes it's because there is something that I want to do, some loop to close, that is itching at me. If that is consciously recognized and accepted, than I can either find a healthy way to meet that need: maybe talk or cuddle with Suzannah, or read/listen to something uplifting, if I need comfort and warmth. Or, recognize my compulsion as unnecessary, and let it go, if that's it. Or even recognize my feelings of guilt or unworthiness, if I'm giving myself a hard time, and forgive myself, or practice self-compassion, or remind myself of some other bit of wisdom or inspiration.

These are all habits that hold me back, and with patient awareness, I am slowly replacing them with much more healthy, helpful, and loving habits.

Suzannah is away for the week on a business trip, and it's been an opportunity for more quiet introspection and awareness than usual. And, it's much easier to go off the rails when I'm alone, so it is an added layer of challenge, and an added amount of negative patterns etc. that is coming to light to be seen.

I'm into it! :D

So, that's what's up for now.

Take care and much love ^_^

-Isaac

3,2,1, add more weight and drain fuel tanks? Training wheels. Streamlining.

 I'm doing some very simple things these days, but I'm doing them well, and learning a lot from it.

For example, my main objective is plowing through my inbox backlog. Simple enough. Is it really necessary? No, it's not essential for my life and well-being. HOWEVER, it is somewhat a prerequisite for my organizational and task-management system. I need to trust that my journal has all my important tasks on it. I can't be worried that there's an important one lurking somewhere amidst the giant stack of papers I've accumulated. And I need to know that any relevant thinking on the various projects I'm working on, is findable, in the project support folder/notebook I've got for that project. And that the various reference documents I have, are where I expect them to be. I searched for a half an hour yesterday, looking for something, because I wasn't sure where it was. That's a huge waste of time, and it's solvable without a huge time upkeep investment, if I just have a simple to use system where everything has a clearly designated space.

And, that task management system, which is pretty simple really, even though it is not complete, is already really helpful. My stress levels are significantly down, and my focus and productivity are significantly up. More than that, it's actually fun most of the time.

Having clearly designated goals, and getting to track them and check them off and see progress being made on them, is freaking awesome. Having an up to date calendar that I can trust, so I know I'm not missing important events, is relaxing.

My goal, of going through and purging, organizing, simplifying, all my piles of 'stuff' is a rather large goal, but I'm making steady progress on it, while keeping up with more time-sensitive demands and general day-to-day upkeep. I feel like the inbox processing task is kind of a great 'training wheels' for me. It's relatively simple, nice and easy to track (today was a record 114 items from my inbox processed) and plentiful (though I've only got about 24 more pieces of paper left in my small papers inbox, I've got a fair bit more in my large papers inbox, and maybe 30 notebooks/journals to skim through as well. Not sure how I'm going to handle those yet so I don't get sucked down rabbit holes...).

So I get to practice. I get to practice, making sure I'm making progress on my main project every day, while balancing ongoing demands. I get to practice refining my systems, my daily routine, etc., while the task itself is nice and easy. And, this project is foundational to almost all future projects. It is my 'project managing software' so to speak, though it's mostly analoge in notebooks. Once that is up and running nicely, it will mean all future projects are then easier to manage, focus on, and complete.

After this one are a few others that I've got lined up that make sense to handle first: after clearing up and organizing my 'external mind' so to speak, next is clearing up and organizing my phyisical environment. It shouldn't take as long as the first time I did it, but I still seem to have accumulated a lot of stuff, and I think I'll feel better with the stuff I'm not actually using, gone. It will certainly result in less work for me, moving it, keeping it organized, finding places to store it, etc. And will make it much easier to have a beautiful, clean, orderly space to work in, which will make any future work I do in that space more pleasant, focused, etc.

Another super important part of this is that the less stuff I have, the less work it is to keep it organized. I have no illusions that this is the least busy I'm going to be in a while. Kids and whatever my career shapes up to be are going to take up a lot of time and energy. What I'm doing now is trying to get my systems and most especially, my habits, in place, so maintaining order is not something I have to put willpower into, but is just a habit that happens on autopilot. I tried doing this while I was teaching, back in Texas, but there was just no way to find the time or energy to do it while juggling a 10 hour a day job that left me totally drained and exhausted by the end of it. Now is my golden window of opportunity.

A neat, clean slate, in terms of my task/project management system and physical 'stuff'/environment, and the time to ingrain habits that will keep it that way, the same way I brush my teeth and go for my morning run.

After that, I think I'll take some time to refine how I take notes. I'm planning on teaching a lot of things, and the way I go about learning and recording what I learn, are what will determine the quality of what I create and teach. Learning how to learn I've already started on a while ago, but how I record information for easy retrieval could use some love, and I already have some ideas for how to do that which I'm excited to implement.

While I'm learning that though, I need something I'll actually be learning on, something I'm taking notes on, and I've got at least two projects lined up, which will serve much the same purpose as this inbox processing is currently doing. I will learn and create, and as I do so I'll refine how I learn and create.

And of course, while doing that, I'll be creating some of the things I want to be creating, what I want to be doing, as work!

This is ambitions. Probably the next two months, I'd estimate? Maybe more. It ain't gonna be done in two weeks. But I am chugging along and it's starting to feel great.

Attention! Don't shoot me down right now, I'm like a tender shoot. I need encouragement, not critique. Save critique for once I've got momentum and confidence and am more firmly established. Motivation can be a delicate thing sometimes.

Sprouting enthusiastically,

-I

Spring. Enjoyable work. Swabbing the poop deck.

 61 items processed today. It is satisfying to get each little one taken care of and click my little counter. There are still a lot left. I'm gonna estimate maybe 200 more items, but hopefully that's an over estimate. It makes sense though, this is a year or two of backlog. Many of the items are old, and I get to just throw out. A few are important, and I record them somewhere that makes sense. A few are journals or stacks of notes, and I have to decide what to do with them. It's not the right time to read through them all now, but at least a few of them will represent a fair time input down the road, when I go through them, making sure there's no more important tasks or projects hiding in them that I want to pull out. And with some, summarizing important notes I've taken, to use on projects I've got in the works.

After that's all sorted, I get to go through my lists and start actually doing as many of the smaller projects as I can, or deciding they're not worth doing and taking them out of the boxes I've designated as "physical things to do." Then do a kon-mari run through of my stuff, before or as I transfer it over to the new house.

At the end of all that, I'll have "cleared the decks" as much as possible, freeing up physical and mental space, for new, fresh action and direction.

I'm not only doing that mind you, but it's some of the most immediately satisfying stuff I'm doing, as I get to see the results right away, like cleaning a room. And it's some of the stuff that then makes the rest of the stuff go smoother.

It's quite satisfying to do. In fact, I'm running into a new problem, in that sometimes work too much, because it's clearly defined, satisfying work to do. And even the other work I have to do, is so nicely defined and easy to check, that there's little friction to me getting done my important tasks. This is a great problem to have, and confirms the wisdom of spending the time to set up and maintain this system.

A next step I'm starting to put together, is a good research and note-taking system. There is a lot of information I want to turn into practical insights, and I need a good system for organizing it and summarizing it, and the things I create from what I'm learning, so I can find what I need as I pull stuff together for my own learning and improvement, and to share with others.

I want something simple, lightweight, but effective. That's going to be a mixture of technique: what to do, and habit: actually doing it. Too soon to go heavy into that yet. Chase two rabbits catch none, I think the saying goes.

I'm also slow-baking ideas for working with children. I've got some ideas of what I'd like to do, to be of service, but I'm thinking about what are the best ways to actually go about doing that. But if I go heavy into that right now, I'll never finish 'clearing the decks.' So I'm letting those ideas simmer and gathering more as I go about other stuff.

I'm also really enjoying my morning sit: I go out into nature and just enjoy the beauty for a few minutes, most days, and it is so beautiful and uplifting. It grounds me in reality, and gives me so much beauty and wonder to be grateful for. Spring is happening, and I get to see it progressing, day by day. Crocuses shooting up, little white bell flowers I don't know the names of, and green leaves shooting up, probably from some type of bulb flower. Maybe daffodils?

OK, that's all for now. Did I mention I've turned doing the dishes into an enjoyable job by letting myself listen to audio fantasy novels while I do them? It's working very well, turning a chore into play. This is an idea I was reminded of recently from one of the better nonfiction books I've listened too recently. I think it's just called, "How to Change"

OK, time to go, though there's more I could share.

Be well, hope you have time to spend with those you love, and savor the beauty of spring beginning. (If that's happening where you are)

-I out

47, Spring, Twenty minutes to two hours.

 I'm overdue, so here's a second post.

A few simple updates: beginning to research and reach out to people for potential volunteer opportunities. Continuing the reaching-out process for a few people I felt intuitively called to connect with for help. That should be resolving itself in the next few weeks.

Came up with a fun and wildly overambitious project that I may take a bite out of as a test project to complete.

Spring is happening! Daffodils coming up, seed balls from Sycamores coming down, and squirrels pruning the Silver Maples they live in. If only we could get them to prune our fruit trees too. Some nice warm days happening.

Today, among several other things, I started working through my backlogged (from at least a year or two) inbox. 47 items processed. That doesn't mean I did them all. Some I decided weren't worth doing, some I realized I'd already done, some were just reference to be filed away, and some went on my todo list. I actually did a few more things than that, including the two things I had as most important for today.

It feels like a fairly a productive day. And it's far from done, as I'm about to make a new recipe for dinner from a meal kit. They say they take 20 minutes to prepare and end up taking 1.5 hours, so they are not exactly "pre-prepared" for you, at least with this company. Also everything takes longer when I 

a) am not very familiar with cooking techniques, and

b) am listening to a book on tape to make it more fun, and

c) am cooking double portions so we have a second meal from it.

Then I've got a 2 hour class where I'm learning about mentoring and community building from Jon Young and others. Jon is a student of Tom Brown Jr., in some ways the first student, I think, and one of the few to be mentored in the way Grandfather mentored Tom.  Jon is also a super nice person, and has his own nature awareness school. I think it's called the Kamana school. Tom often has him come and teach at his Tracker classes.

OK, I'd better start cooking now if I want to eat before class starts.

Love and blessings to your own journeys,

-Isaac

Habit tracking, Happiness having. Deep work doing.

Quick update: I've stopped filling in the google sheets habit tracker. I've been doing that and a physical paper copy, and it's wasted time and brain cycles. I prefer analog, pen and paper to computer, so that's the one I'm sticking with. Just got out a shiny new sheet and re-organized it a bit, for the new month. The habit tracker has been going pretty well, as has the beeminder tasks. So far, I've kept up, and the various methods (habit tracker, monetary repercussions and social accountability) have been sufficient. I removed one (or two?) habits from my previous habit tracker, though I also added several that I hadn't thought of initially.

The one thing I'm not quite happy with is my 'deep work' habit on beeminder. It is perhaps a bit too vague. What I really want is help doing things that are a bit challenging or uncomfortable, but super important for making progress on my main goal (work I love). Sometimes that's not classical 'deep work', sitting somewhere with no distractions doing something, it may be writing an email or reaching out to someone, in my case. The vagueness of that makes it hard to quantify. That means when I succeed, I'm not totally sure I actually succeeded, and when I've maybe failed, I'm not sure I've actually failed. I think perhaps the best I can do for now is state that I will come up with one or more "#1's" for the day. Whatever task(s) seem like the most important ones to work on. And then I time how long I work on those, without distraction, and that's my 'deep work' hours.

The next question of course is what constitutes the best use of my time. Do I just start working on projects I'm excited about? Or do I start taking on part time jobs/volunteer work to test out my hypothesis about kinds of work I enjoy? One way is more externally shaped, the other starts from internal shaping.

Currently listening to "The How of Happiness" by Sonja Lyubomirsky. It is fascinating to learn the science and facts behind what makes us happy and what does not. Also, the nitty gritty behind the more simplistic things you hear bandied around, like how gratitude is good. To use that example, yes, scientifically it is one of the effective strategies. But only if done properly. If the ritual becomes rote, for example if you end up saying the same things over and over, not really feeling and connecting to the things you mention, the practice of gratitude can lose its effectiveness. How it's done matters. Same for acts of kindness.

OK, I should wrap up this post, good-bye for now ^_^

-IO