One year ago, something happened, was it relevant?
Fifty years ago somebody was born, what’s to celebrate?
A celebration is an act of reliving an event with the intent of having the same experience again. A thing that is, by definition, impossible. We’re not the same, and the world is not the same; we cannot feel the same.
So why do we celebrate?
We celebrate to define who we are today. By remembering what happened in the past, we restate a commitment: what we have promised in the past, or the responsibility we took charge of that day. A celebration entails emotional engagement and reevaluating our identities. If we are not the same as we were, why are we renewing our commitment to that memory?
We celebrate to create unity. To bind our present with our past with the intention and the hope of keeping this relationship in the future.
We celebrate to keep sanity. To have the illusion of our identities and our cultures. Especially for public celebrations and remembrance. If everybody is doing it, we can join the group by celebrating together with them. We feel part of a tribe.
A celebration can be part of a belonging ritual. By remembering certain events and specific beliefs, we’re reinforcing our belonging to a group, a movement, or a tribe.
The recurring celebration of the critical events in our lives is part of our culture and identities. We celebrate to convince ourselves we are part of a relationship, a culture, of a group of people. Who doesn’t want to celebrate is an alien, a reject, a separatist, a loner, and is usually seen as disrespectful or undeserving by the group.
It takes courage to question your celebrative rituals.
Questioning the deep motives behind your celebration shatters your identity from the foundations. It’s a disruptive act to redefine yourself.
The more I write the more doubts I collect. I am grateful for all the learnings and the growth, I cannot deny it. But the enthusiasm of the beginning is fading away. Writing every day with the intent to publish is not the same as writing in my private journal. I can feel those few pairs of eyes reading these lines and I cannot help but think about their reactions.
Since I am writing for my future self, these writings are for me, first of all. So I am part of my audience. I have, at least, an audience of one. But knowing that I am sharing these thoughts of mine with a few hundred peoplemakes me think really hard.
The good news is that, well, I am writing, every day. Not only in my journal but in this eclectic sequence of minimal, abstract, sometimes surreal illustrations along with about 200 words of text.
What worked was my being full of experiences, reflections, inspirations, thoughts, discoveries, stories. Really, I just had to curate my long list of drafts. It was so easy writing 30 small articles in 30 days I could not believe I did it.
And there was the public commitment and the incentive of sharing with a small group of fellow shipperswhich helped a lot.
And then: it all stopped. I’ve experienced again the hedonic adaption. When it ended I felt the inertia going, that’s why I’ve reached 51 in a row, exactly today, with this post.
But while the first 30 have a strong theme, a great package, a title, a foundational experience to refer to, now I feel like I am not able to recreate those conditions. So I went back, like a rubber band, to going broad and sidewise on the plethora of things passing through my head. Not very well connected.
The worst feeling is that I perceive this daily task as a choir. I am still not sure why I should do it, although I am perfectly aware of the derived benefits, and, being lazy and still not disciplined, I end up usually rushing it, almost despising it. I don’t always enjoy writing daily blog posts. The only positive feeling is the one of having done it. So, I ask myself, why? Is this a prescription?
It could be. Or better, I am prescribing myself another 50 days of daily writing and publishing.
I’ve got the prompt for writing this article by reading how and why other great minds wrote. It resonates, vividly, what George Orwell wrote in hisWhy I Write.
An exponential is a multiplication of a multiplication.
If you multiply a quantity for another quantity that is less than one, you decrease the outcome.
Conversely, if you multiply for a quantity greater than one, you increase the outcome.
How can you use this to improve your outcome?
What if you could increase your skills by just 1% every day? One-hundredth of improvement every day. What would you get in one year, that is, after 365 days?
You should add 1% to your daily measurement. So, if your current performance is 1, you would get 1 + 1/100 that is 1.01. On the second day, you would have 1.01 + 1% of 1.01, which would be 1.02, and so on.
What if you repeat this process every day for one year? I did the math for you:
1.00
1.01
1.02
1.03
1.04
1.05
1.06
1.07
1.08
1.09
1.10
1.12
1.13
1.14
1.15
1.16
1.17
1.18
1.20
1.21
1.22
1.23
1.24
1.26
1.27
1.28
1.30
1.31
1.32
1.33
1.35
1.36
1.37
1.39
1.40
1.42
1.43
1.45
1.46
1.47
1.49
1.50
1.52
1.53
1.55
1.56
1.58
1.60
1.61
1.63
1.64
1.66
1.68
1.69
1.71
1.73
1.75
1.76
1.78
1.80
1.82
1.83
1.85
1.87
1.89
1.91
1.93
1.95
1.97
1.99
2.01
2.03
2.05
2.07
2.09
2.11
2.13
2.15
2.17
2.19
2.22
2.24
2.26
2.28
2.31
2.33
2.35
2.38
2.40
2.42
2.45
2.47
2.50
2.52
2.55
2.57
2.60
2.63
2.65
2.68
2.70
2.73
2.76
2.79
2.81
2.84
2.87
2.90
2.93
2.96
2.99
3.02
3.05
3.08
3.11
3.14
3.17
3.20
3.24
3.27
3.30
3.33
3.37
3.40
3.43
3.47
3.50
3.54
3.57
3.61
3.65
3.68
3.72
3.76
3.79
3.83
3.87
3.91
3.95
3.99
4.03
4.07
4.11
4.15
4.19
4.23
4.27
4.32
4.36
4.40
4.45
4.49
4.54
4.58
4.63
4.68
4.72
4.77
4.82
4.87
4.91
4.96
5.01
5.06
5.11
5.16
5.22
5.27
5.32
5.37
5.43
5.48
5.54
5.59
5.65
5.70
5.76
5.82
5.88
5.94
6.00
6.06
6.12
6.18
6.24
6.30
6.36
6.43
6.49
6.56
6.62
6.69
6.76
6.82
6.89
6.96
7.03
7.10
7.17
7.24
7.32
7.39
7.46
7.54
7.61
7.69
7.77
7.84
7.92
8.00
8.08
8.16
8.24
8.33
8.41
8.49
8.58
8.66
8.75
8.84
8.93
9.02
9.11
9.20
9.29
9.38
9.48
9.57
9.67
9.76
9.86
9.96
10.06
10.16
10.26
10.36
10.47
10.57
10.68
10.78
10.89
11.00
11.11
11.22
11.33
11.45
11.56
11.68
11.80
11.91
12.03
12.15
12.27
12.40
12.52
12.65
12.77
12.90
13.03
13.16
13.29
13.42
13.56
13.69
13.83
13.97
14.11
14.25
14.39
14.54
14.68
14.83
14.98
15.13
15.28
15.43
15.58
15.74
15.90
16.06
16.22
16.38
16.54
16.71
16.88
17.04
17.22
17.39
17.56
17.74
17.91
18.09
18.27
18.46
18.64
18.83
19.02
19.21
19.40
19.59
19.79
19.99
20.19
20.39
20.59
20.80
21.01
21.22
21.43
21.64
21.86
22.08
22.30
22.52
22.75
22.97
23.20
23.44
23.67
23.91
24.15
24.39
24.63
24.88
25.13
25.38
25.63
25.89
26.15
26.41
26.67
26.94
27.21
27.48
27.75
28.03
28.31
28.60
28.88
29.17
29.46
29.76
30.05
30.36
30.66
30.97
31.27
31.59
31.90
32.22
32.54
32.87
33.20
33.53
33.87
34.20
34.55
34.89
35.24
35.59
35.95
36.31
36.67
37.04
37.41
On the 365th day, the last of your year of practice, you would have increased your skill by more than 37 times. Thirty-seven times what you had on day 1.
That was just a thought experiment, a game if you want—an extreme simplification to give you the sense of what an exponential could do in your life.
Systems, not goals
Change your behavior, not your goal. If you can aim at acting so that, anytime you can, you can have a positive compounding multiplier in anything you do, and you have the first block of this betterment machine.
The second block of this abundance creation machine is consistency. You have to do it always as in every day.
The Multiplication Compounding Machine Effect (TM) has the power of an avalanche, but for your good.
The only downside is the need to develop patience. It’s only after having compounded several (as in hundreds) iterations that you will remain astonished by the results.
Exploit the power of exponentials, do something beneficial in anything that you do, every single day of your life. The compounded effect will lead you to unthinkable achievements.
Did you do it today? Go back, and do it. You still have time.
You can’t track it if you don’t measure it. It’s the primary justification for doing retrospectives, but tracking what? I have always been annoyed by keeping track of repetitive, boring data. As a flat and dry life accountant, writing the numbers about things I did has left me perplexed. I wrote a river of words: and so what? I walked to the moon: excellent! and why should we care? Oh, you read books, cools, we did that too.
I feel the risk of virtue signaling: I am good, I am better than you. And it feels out of place. So let’s focus on the right context: I am doing this only for me. I’ve always been struggling with committing for the long term to an activity. It’s just me. Neoteny is my second name. I am already bored while writing this without getting to the point. I am trying to challenge myself to be better. I perceive the potential I hide (almost always), and I have enough with living in dreams.
The greatest lesson of this year is about building habits. Slowly. Piece by piece. Day by day. Not that I wasn’t building habits the whole of my life. But were those the right habits to build? Not all of them. That’s my great win in 2020. I’ve decided I wanted to create some specific habits. And, dear collective brain sparse in the universe, I did it!
I don’t cry in pain when I walk. Not any more. I started in 2017. I dropped tears after 100 steps. Now, I can walk for 10 Km and feel good. How could I live seated for so many years? The bright screen is one of the worst drugs of our times. Using technology to work and think is one of the most important areas in which design can help make our lives more balanced. There is a lot of work to be done.
Self-reflection
Everybody thinks. Of course. But is everybody dedicating focused time to think about something? Intentionally? It was a new experience for me to reflect on the past day. What did happen? What did I do? Why did I feel like that? Did I learn something? Has it ever occurred to me already?
Daily journaling with the help of prompts is one of the superpowers we underestimate. Thinking about our thinking is one essential step in the feedback loop of self-development and self-leadership. Writing is the most effective medium to accomplish that but also recording your voice helps a lot. I recorded dozens of hours of free-flowing talking. Men, if I am boring! It’s only after having put out all of the words you keep somewhere in your brain that you start to feel fluent. You need to talk a lot to talk better. You need to write a lot to write better. And all of that, if you intertwine it with the right questions, it can only lead to you thinking better.
Journal writing
Writing what you are thinking has enormous benefits. You get to know three people, at the least—your past self and what you felt when you lived that past. Your future self: an unknown and unknowable person, much similar to you but not really you. What do you want to send to the future? How do you want to support your future decisions? And then there is you at this moment: who are you now? What are your dreams and your fears, now?
It might seem stupid but knowing you can be decentralized in time makes you feel less lonely and alien.
Blogging and online publishing
It starts with a blank page on an empty web server. There are so many white pixels: how shall I fill them? So you feel the stupidest in the universe by stating your existence online. Nobody will read you, and still, you check the analytics to see if that one only visit becomes two.
After 100 hundred torture sessions, everything is different. I am not ashamed of what I publish anymore. Excellent or ugly, grammatically correct or not, it needs to go live, now. I will think about it later on, when it is detached from me, living its online life far from my fingers and my neurons.
While in the beginning, I felt the urge to satisfy a non-existing audience with its impossible to know desires; now, I write first and foremost for myself. For my present self and for my future self.
Luhmann! If I like this word! I’ve been collecting notes on paper forever. All of it is lost, forever like tears in the rain. Not any more. Now I gather my thoughts. Still messy, yes. But I have built the habit of adding notes to my slip-box, my second brain, my note archive, my fricking beautiful Zettelkasten!
After many days of just adding notes, I had finally had my epiphany a few days ago. Two notes collided! I had two notes stating one the opposite of the other! What a beautiful realization! I have the creative tension of two opposite perspectives on the same concept and with arguments. I am finally generating ideas. I am note-making. I am lovemaking with ideas!
Reading
I’ve read books. And so what? Reading is the most overrated skill. Can you tell me how you changed thanks to what you read? I feel so guilty about not reading enough. And then I feel even worse when I read a lot, and I remember so little about it. That is what I will change in 2021. I will write-while-reading so I won’t forget what I want to keep. And I will have more materials to connect with my notes.
Online meetings
Too many. Not all of them useful. It was tiring.
And that’s not all, folks!
I am proud. I’ve set goals, and I worked hard to achieve them. I’ve learned so much about myself, my past, and my future. I have so many ideas and inspirations about future projects that I can’t contain them.
What I am sharing about my year is only 5% of what I did. And it wasn’t even about my job.
All of this during one of the worst year in the history of humankind.
Being always in the flow could be exhausting, both physically and creatively. Take periodic breaks to reflect on your path, and be prepared to lay out a new road. You cannot use a network when you need it. To have it tomorrow you need to prepare it today.
I feel like I have nothing to write about because of the calendar. Christmas Eve, you’re not supposed to be working unless you have to. The pressure is lower. You think about the year turning to an end. And what a year.
When I took the latest challenge about publishing every day for a month, I had a specific goal, the intention to tell the lessons learned while writing privately for a year. I kept on writing until today for an extra week. Still, I felt the inertia of the substantial direction: “writing about writing,” and I was so in a good pace that any topic distracting me from that focus almost annoyed me.
So I am asking myself, am I writing about writing forever?
I don’t think so.
Writing is a medium, a means to an end. It helps to clarify my thinking, and that is the best benefit I’ve got so far. But am I going with the flow every day? I am quite tired of improvising and rushing the daily article “because I have to do it”. It’s still a good exercise, don’t get me wrong, and I am proud of my habit. But I want more.
I want to create bricks to stack into buildings. The atomic essays were perfectly fitting this goal: one topic, one page with one repeatable format plus one abstract, iconic illustration. I discovered a great formula that I wasn’t looking for.
But now, I don’t feel like keeping on writing about writing. I have other areas to explore. For instance: design and all its applications; education, teaching, learning; mentoring, coaching, and facilitation. On top of all of them, I always stumble upon Systems Thinking and Critical Thinking with a few trips down the Scientific Thinking road.
So, what am I missing? Why today’s “atomic essay” is not flowing?
Because today, it’s reflection day.
Today I am finally stopping for a moment and reflecting on my current path. A lot changed; a lot I have changed. If I want to be intentional, I need to do reflections like these and, since I have this new custom, I like to do it aloud, here, in public.
What’s going to happen tomorrow is the question I need to ask myself today.
What’s the prompt that will inspire me for the next atomic essay?
See you tomorrow, then.
You cannot always be in the flow. Take periodic breaks to evaluate your achievements in retrospective to plan the next move.
Reserve time in your calendar to be prepared. For what? For the obvious, for the expected, but most of all for the unexpected and the unexpectable.
If you prepare for the obvious, you’ll be doing the minimum required of you. You will satisfy the minimum requirement. It would already be a lot more than the average, but you won’t be able to demand hugs of gratitude for your exceptionality. It’s the recipe to pass unnoticed.
If you prepare for the expected, you will get the warm feeling of doing things right—you went just a bit over the qualifying threshold. You’re smart, but you don’t apply. You show the potential, but you prefer to devote your energies somewhere else.
If you prepare for the unexpected, you’ll conquer the famed extra mile. You’re not like the others. You care. You’re maybe a perfectionist. But of the right kind. You’re thoughtful and resourceful. You make a difference. You like to be celebrated and to surprise.
If you prepare for the unexpectable, you’ll just own the world. You have unlimited willpower. No defeat can stop you. The darkest dark is where you can find a lonely photon to shed light on infinity. You will change history. And maybe you will survive it.
It doesn’t matter if you can foresee, predict, or forecast the future, be mindful in preparing yourself always beyond the expected, and exercise your imagination to be ready for the unknowable. What could happen?
The most significant learning of this whole experience has been the one of contributing to my self-growth. By finding the way to be consistently and continuously practicing and learning, I have discovered more about myself and my behaviors.
Soon after I started my challenge to write daily, I’ve found myself recording my notes while walking.
So, daily writing became daily walking. I’ve walked for more than 1’000 km in a year, for a total of 2’000 km in two years. I cannot conceive a day, now, without having even a short walk. You can imagine the benefits, but this is another story I will tell somewhere else.
How can you write about your thoughts, only, without confronting yourself with what other excellent human beings have said? That’s how my daily reading habit started. Of course, I’ve been reading all my life, but I have never consistently tracked the books. So I’ve challenged myself to read at least ten books a year, then it became 12, now it’s 14. And I am doing it.
My next challenge is about sharing. I want to absorb new knowledge and experiences and sharing them through my view lenses. And that is why I’ve started my blog.
What am I going to be tomorrow?
I am working on it today.
You choose to be who you are by repeatedly doing what you decide to do, consistently, continuously.
The Meta-Habit-Building skill is systemic, fractal, iterative, and recursive. (Thanks to Jorge Arango for the inspiration found in the cover of the book “Mastery”.)
You might feel inadequate at writing. You feel a failure when you’re skipping a day. You might write so bad you think you’re not worth it. You might discover your writing to be unoriginal, repetitive, boring, flat, dull. You might feel you write about senseless topics: “who’s going to read this crap, anyway”? You might feel days, weeks, and years pass by without a breakthrough. You put the “reps” in, but where is the improvement?
Your writing compounds despite all of the odds, the demotivation, and the perception of useless efforts.
You change your attitudes, your skills, your communication capabilities, your stamina, your patience, your observation, your perception. Slowly, bit by bit, each time you transcribe your thoughts, you are making progress, willing or not, either if you feel successful or better if you feel like a failure, especially if you can learn from your mistakes.
While watching an innocent how-to-cook TV show, I’ve noticed something with horror. A fly was going from ingredient to ingredient. But from a distance, very small. The vast dimensions of my TV and the astronomical resolution allowed me to see the tiny insect distinctly making a banquet.
What was the initial warming feeling of somebody cooking something good while wasting time having breakfast became a whirlwind of thoughts about that shooting set. How’s the hygiene there? Will they eat that food? Is there anybody aware of that?
A more resolving lens allows us to see more details of reality, and sometimes details we were ignoring before influence our perception heavily.
The same happened when I dedicated long hours to think and write. I was able to appreciate reality through a new lens. What before was quickly put down in a reductionist way, as good or bad, became, then, richer in detail.
Writing is your 8K Mega HD TV Set. Write to have a richer picture of your world, understand it better, and live it better.
A small insignificant detail could change the meaning of what you understand. If only you could see it.
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