Tag: Reflection

Know This: Motivating Yourself Can Be Difficult

Posted on by Greg

Rupert is watching.

Questions often asked of me by people who frequent ToVa include: How do I find the time? How do I maintain the energy? How can I be so organized?

Confession: it’s not as easy as I try to make it look.

I started taking personal development seriously nearly three years ago. I’ve always chased opportunities to learn so when I say I began to take it seriously I mean that I began to pursue development with intention and purpose. It was the difference, I guess, between aimlessly surfing Wikipedia and actually chasing down intellectual resources on topics I was interested in learning more about. It truly changed my life.

This “awakening” coincidentally (but fortunately) coincided with the commencement of my graduate studies and for two and a half years these two segments of my life complemented each other in tremendously satisfying ways. I concluded my studies in early June this year and launched ToVa about a month later. I planned six months of Monday / Wednesday / Friday posts and got to work.

For the first two months this went swimmingly. I was having fun, I was learning new things and a few of my friends were coming along for the ride. Unfortunately, this didn’t last.

There were no posts last week and in the two weeks prior to that there were no Friday link posts. I had fallen behind and I began to let the Friday posts go so I could spend that time getting Monday and Wednesday posts caught up.

Last week was meant to be a week about sleep: sleeping better, leading to better health and improved focus on our goals. Ironically, my own sleep was suffering at the same time as the hours that I work at my day job shifted from day to night (meaning I finish work between midnight and 1:00 AM). I began to feel hypocritical and the voices that always ask me “how do you do it?” rang in my head, growing louder and more accusatory in tone. I felt like a fraud.

So I’m coming clean.

People… I got lazy. I stopped nurturing my systems and they atrophied and died.

The insights that I share on this blog are the ones that make the most sense to me. The methods I describe are not always the methods that I use; the suggestions are not always ones that I employ in my own life. There is truly no one size fits all solution to enhanced productivity or relentless high achievement, there are only things worth trying.

Even the very best of us – and, for the record, I do not count myself among the best – do not knock it out of the park on every swing. The important thing (and pardon the well-tread cliché here) is that we keep swinging; that we find better ways to swing or different attitudes to bring to the plate.

While I have fallen behind on the blog I have also fallen behind on my novel. Both are passion projects for me and – having completed my studies – I have plenty of time to work on both. I have woken up every day over the past three weeks with a goal to write and most days I went to sleep (too late) having written nothing.

What happened?

Even our passion projects can come to feel like work. Mix in a day job (with irregular hours), a relationship, planning for a wedding, a broken camera, etc. and you begin to justify taking time off here and there to unwind. That is, you make excuses and convince yourself they’re good ones.

I’m not even saying it’s not okay to take a break. What I am saying is that your passion projects will not complete themselves. Eventually you will need to get back to work.

We all fall off the horse sometimes.

Only the best of us – and that can include you and me – possess the strength of character to climb back on and continue riding.

So I’m doubling down and inviting you to do so with me. I’m working on my blog and my novel every day – what are you working on?

Convert Routines Into Rituals For Meaningful Progress

Posted on by Greg

Rupert is a creature of habit.

You might not think that you’re a creature of routine but consider the course of your average day for a few seconds. Maybe you always have a cup of coffee in the morning and try to wait until noon before having another. You iron your shirt for the next work day just before you go to bed. Maybe you can’t fall asleep without some light reading. The first thing you do in the morning is mindlessly scroll through your Facebook feed while you will yourself to rise from bed and face the day. You probably always have lunch around the same time.

With the same person.

In the same room.

You might be realizing that you have a lot of routine activities that you don’t actively consider. Imagine how much more your day would mean if you did actively consider them; if you engineered your routine activities into a set of daily rituals. No matter what your idea of success looks like, meaningful rituals can help you get there.

Drive The Plot Forward

Where a routine is mechanical and rote, a ritual is ceremonial and injected with meaning. A daily ritual can’t be a ‘token’ activity that you do merely because you feel like you should or because you’ve seen other people do it – it must mean something to you and that meaning should ideally relate to whatever you’re trying to accomplish.

It is common wisdom among writers that each word of a story should drive the plot forward. The same rule applies to your daily activities: if the activity at hand isn’t getting you closer to your goal, why are you doing it in the first place?

A powerful enough ritual can set the pace for our entire day, so it is important to consider the pace that we want to set. This begins with knowing yourself and your natural rhythms. If you’re developing rituals around writing, for example, you would want to tee these rituals up at a time that you are naturally more creative. The ritual, then, serves to maximize and enhance your natural rhythm.

My own rituals that lead into my creative work (usually writing) involve a cup of coffee, reading and – depending on the type of writing I’ll be doing – a walk around the neighborhood. I am naturally more creative in the afternoon and early evening so if I were to deploy these rituals at 5 A.M. they would be less effective than if I started them after lunch. Likewise, a walk only fuels my creativity if I’m going to be writing a blog post. If I’m going to be writing fiction, it’s best for me to get right into the work with my coffee in hand. Once I’ve followed the given pattern of rituals, I am well and truly in the ‘zone’ for creative work.

Your own rituals should likewise suit your own personal and specific needs. It’s interesting to know that F. Scott Fitzgerald arose at 11 A.M. most days, but that doesn’t mean you’ll write the next Great American Novel if you also wake at that time. Rising at 11 worked for him, but only when combined with any number of other rituals that fell in line with his own creative rhythms. There is no formula for creativity and maximum productivity – there is only what works and what doesn’t work for you.

Your Rituals Evolve Along With You

I was raised on a lot of colloquial wisdom in West Virginia. A saying that I heard pretty often while growing up was “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s true that constant tinkering eventually (and sometimes rapidly) reaches a point of diminishing returns. In the same way that you can only coax so much power out of an engine, you can likewise only derive so much power from a ritual.

Life-hacking your cup of coffee, in other words, won’t make the muse any more forthcoming. Your ritual will only ever be what it is until – one day – it’s not.

The day that it’s finally ‘broke’ and needs fixing.

Your rituals will evolve along with your personality, goals, rhythms and surroundings. A walk around the neighborhood might inspire you around your current suburb but if you move across town it might cause anxiety. The ritual will be broken and need to be adjusted or jettisoned.

It is important to remember that rituals are not end states – they exist on a continuum along which they must serve your needs for the moment (via). They may eventually stop serving your needs as you move toward your goal. Your rituals of the moment must always be helping and not hindering, otherwise they become rote and you guessed it: routine.

Periodic reflection is necessary to prevent your rituals from leaving you in a rut. It’s important to pause every so often and consider the purpose of your rituals, the same way you did when you considered your daily routine at the outset of this article. What activities in your day are filled with meaning and which are just examples of you going through the motions? Lose the meaningless ones and substitute in ones that will actively bring you a step closer to your dreams each time you perform them.

If we are all floating downstream, daily rituals are our paddles. Without them we have less control over our path and are ultimately at the mercy of the current. By empowering ourselves with rituals we give ourselves the freedom to choose our path; to chart our own course. Don’t settle for going with the flow – make your activities mean something.

Self-Awareness, Being Provocative, Shaking Up The NFL

Posted on by Greg

Rupert is reading 'No Country For Old Men'.

An unintentional theme developed as I compiled the links for this weekend: moving confidently forward and shaking things up. The first link shows us how to establish a foundation for development before the second challenges us to not just question the status quo but to take action toward changing it. A piece on Chip Kelly, coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, rounds out the links with a practical example of these ideas in action and the results that have been achieved.

Why Self-Awareness Is the Secret Weapon for Habit Change

The dedication required to change our mind and behavior is the fight of our lives.

This fantastic piece by Paul Jun about self-awareness underscores the importance of understanding yourself and then using that understanding to further your development. He begins by challenging us to stop fooling ourselves with excuses before encouraging reflection on our mistakes (and successes) that should eliminate the need for those excuses. He also prescribes a “philosophical foundation” for your actions that will help keep you centered and focused.

Unlock Your Creative Genius: 4 Steps To Being Provocative With A Purpose (via)

Following from the first article about knowing ourselves and moving confidently forward, here are a few thoughts on being disruptive in a productive (and creative) way. The premise is familiar – the 9 to 5 doesn’t inspire us, children are more imaginative than adults, etc. – but the recipe for innovation on offer here is a practical one that you can put into practice immediately (and without quitting your day job). Resting on your laurels certainly isn’t moving you forward, so click through for a few easy tips on how to stave off stagnation.

The Influencer

Rounding out a week of innovation is an interesting examination of the ways in which Chip Kelly, coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, has tackled (pun shamelessly intended) the status quo in the NFL. His innovations extend beyond playcalls (there is some football nerdery in the middle of the piece but handy GIFs illustrate the plays being described) and into the way the organization is structured and operates in regard to practices and meetings. His implementation of sport science advances (such as monitors that track player health vitals) resulted in the Eagles having the second-fewest injuries among NFL teams last season. For (even casual) sports fans and productivity nerds, it doesn’t get much cooler than this.

ToVa Rewind:

Build A Custom ‘Inflow’ To Stay On Top Of Things
‘Create’ Free Time By Being Early

Rupert is reading: No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Have a great weekend!

Define Yo Self Before You Refine Yo Self

Posted on by Greg

Rupert is defining himself quite literally.

Defining yourself is the critical first step in establishing an ongoing and intentional program of personal development. Even if you consider yourself to be pretty self-aware, a little reflection might yield surprising results. If you fail to take the time to get this definition right you may find yourself swimming against the current in order to get somewhere you don’t actually want to be.

You are complicated. I’m not saying this because I’ve seen your Facebook statuses about your ex, I’m saying it because who among us is so simple? Add external forces to the mix and you’re talking about a cocktail of personality that is rather difficult to reverse-engineer.

But we’re going to try.

Your Inherent Nature (And Nurture) Sets The Scene

If I asked you to define yourself before we go any further, you would probably go straight for your hardwired traits:

  • Intro/Ambi/Extrovert
  • Shy versus outgoing
  • Type A or B personality
  • Creative or technical mind
  • Early riser or night owl

Our brains are all wired differently and I’m sure you can pick one of the options on each of the above lines that describes how the synapses in your own brain fire.

It’s important to understand these inherent elements of our personality because they are essentially permanent and incredibly difficult to overcome. Shy people can learn how to work a room, sure, but while working said room they will be fighting against their very chemistry and creating a cognitive dissonance that might lead to anxiety. Owners of a Type A personality can take a vacation like the rest of us but they may never be able to fully relax on that beach. Creatives have no time for trigonometry, night owls think the ‘sunrise’ is a fairy tale, etc., etc.

Nurture also plays a significant role in the equation. My girl was born and raised in a city while I grew up in a rural area. The characteristics that were ingrained in our personalities as a result of these differing circumstances mean that we sometimes look at the same scenario in very different ways. Single children will have differing worldviews to those who grew up with siblings. Guys who had an older sister will grow up to be quite different than those who had a younger sister. The prism through which you develop your worldview will have a not insignificant impact on your personality. Even if the effect is subtle, it’s there.

By understanding where you stand against all of these measures you can design your own development and steer yourself in the direction of a destination that will please your inner nature (and nurture).

Understand How You Want To Be You

I assume you have goals (you are reading a personal development blog, after all) but there are any number of avenues by which you might pursue those goals. Type A and B personalities again come into play with this concept. Type A are always on the go (hello, mobile readers!) and don’t sit still for too long before getting on with multitasking, while Type B are more laid back and happy to take things one at a time (hello, read-it-later gang!).

This whole Type A/B idea is more of a theory than a hard and fast choosing of sides but it’s a good place to start when considering the manner in which you’d like to move ahead with your personal development. Do you prefer gold stars and rapid achievement or does slow and steady win the race for you?

Context Changes More Than Just The Scenery

However straightforward the core you may be, things get complicated when you consider the different contexts in which we all must operate at different times. When alone in your living room, I imagine it’s pretty easy to be you – but what about when you’re in any of these places:

  • Work
  • School
  • A family dinner
  • A friend’s birthday party
  • On the train

I’m guessing that your behavior would vary across these different contexts. For example, our work self is not the same person that has dinner with our parents. The contexts can get even more specific still; the you that rides the train to work probably doesn’t chant and sing like the you that rides the train to a football game.

If it all seems a bit two-faced (or five-faced, even) I guess that’s because… it is. But in this instance you’re not only allowed to get away with it, society would rather you get away with it. Ever had a boss that engaged in overshare about his sexual exploits? That’s an example of somebody who can’t keep his contextual selves within their appropriate contexts. Don’t be that guy – nobody likes that guy.

There are many behaviors and traits that are appreciated across all contexts (like punctuality and patience), so this is naturally where you want to start. It only makes sense to allocate time to the areas that will yield the greatest harvest. However, once these universal traits have been addressed you can really get to work on maximizing each of your contextual selves. Learning to cook a dish isn’t going to advance your career but it’ll impress the hell out of your parents. Likewise, brushing up on your Excel skills will do wonders for your work self but won’t hold the attention of your girlfriend (spoken from experience).

Sometimes The Context Gets Official

Throughout your life you will encounter – and probably align yourself with – any number of organizations. These could include alumni associations, trade unions, social clubs, fraternities or even mastermind groups.

I’ll dedicate more digital ink to associations and organizations in the future but they’re important to consider now and in the context of you because it is you who actively chooses to join them and the act of forming this association with an organization – whether passively or directly – reflects on you.

Choosing to join Boy Scouts of America, for instance, is a direct, opt-in decision that implies your own values and beliefs align with those of BSA – otherwise you wouldn’t have signed up. Choosing to attend a particular university, on the other hand, is rather passive and suggests value alignment that may not be present. You might have attended a Catholic university because their chemistry program is tops, but people may assume that you’re Catholic (and thereby live by Catholic values) as a result of your decision to attend school there, even if that was never a factor that you considered.

Whether directly or passively, these associations become part of the definition of you.

And Oh, The Things You’ll Do

The wild thing about all of this is that we’ve considered so much of what makes you you and we have only just scraped the surface of the actual things you get up to while being you. All of the activities in which you engage will speak volumes about you (actions speaking louder than words and that). Think about your high school friends who went to work and those who went to college. I’ve biased the result a bit by framing the exercise in this way but that fact – whether they studied or not – is probably a factor in your own impression of those people but all they’ve really done differently to each other is pursue different activities.

Think about car decals. When you see stick figure families on the back of a car, you assume (without knowing anything else about that person!) that they are all about their family. Somebody with “26.2” on their car has run a marathon and – you’d be safe assuming – would include “running” in their own definition of self.

What activities would be included in your own definition of self? What stickers are on your metaphorical back car window?

  • Education?
  • Cooking?
  • Photography?
  • Writing?

Now – what are some activities in which you engage that would not be included in your definition of self?

  • Drinking a liter of soda everyday?
  • Watching three hours of TV every night?
  • Spending (a lot of) company time on Facebook?
  • Eating fast food instead of preparing a fresh meal at home?

Nobody would ever know you were doing these things unless you told them – but you don’t tell them, do you?

And Now We Get Real

You don’t share these naughty activities because you’re not proud of them and you continue to engage in them because nobody is calling you out on being so naughty. It’s exactly the vicious cycle that it appears to be and you probably wouldn’t define yourself by these less desirable activities. Unfortunately, it’s still a part of your definition of self, even if it’s not a public part.

Your definition of self is about what you do more than what you think or say. The self-described “healthy eater” can’t have his cake and eat it, too.

Defining yourself, then, helps you to clarify your priorities and make better decisions for your own development. So here’s your new mental filter: what if everything you do were included in your definition of self.

Thinking of grabbing another soda? You’d have to add it to the definition.

Feel like another House of Cards marathon? Add it.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying you have to drop all soda and TV. I’m merely suggesting that you should consider the outcome of such activities. It’s possible to enjoy our vices without allowing them to define us.

For a long time I had a terrible habit of drinking too much cola. Three cans a day – often more – and virtually no water. I knew this was not healthy and it slowly came to define me. It haunted me. It made me feel bad but I kept drinking cola at the same rate, anyway. And then one day I decided I had had enough of doing what was easy. I wasn’t going to let this habit become part and parcel of my character.

I had to trick myself. I stopped keeping cola in the fridge and didn’t keep any ice on hand, so I had to plan ahead if I wanted one and usually the fact that I couldn’t have a can immediately was enough to make me get a glass of water instead. I got down to one can a day – still not great, but my water intake was up to at least 2 liters a day (the average adult male needs 3 liters a day).

By the time I got to this stage I noticed that I was craving the flavor of the cola again. It had been some time since I had a conscious desire to drink a can rather than just grabbing one because I was thirsty and water was “lame”. So I went a step further and stopped keeping cola in the house. Now I might have two cans over the course of a week – almost always with a meal – and I regularly get my 3 liters of water a day. The cola has gone from my dirty little (not so) secret habit to an occasional treat that I really enjoy when the craving strikes.

The point of this story is that I didn’t cut cola completely – I still get to have one here and there and now it tastes even better when I do – but my cola drinking habit no longer defines me. I’m no longer the guy who drinks too much cola – I’m the guy who is always hydrated.

I would recommend you start framing your own definition of self in this way. Start with “I’m the person who….” and follow that up with “I’m not the person who…” in order to filter out undesirable activities. Use of this positive and negative language will enable greater clarity in your developmental decision-making.

Only by knowing what you presently are (and are not) can you move confidently in the direction of positive and intentional personal development.