PicoBlog

Hey team,

The line that’s stuck with me most from Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — which I mostly loved — is one character’s grandmother saying:

“Life is very long, unless it is not.”

Which sort of encapsulates the themes of the entire book, and also feels like a bit of a truism, but also feels more meaningful and helpful the more I think about it. Because the thing is, life is long, for a lot of people in the modern world, and you actually might well have plenty of time to do and try all the things you want and talk to all the people you want as much as you want: but also, maybe you won’t, and you should probably act accordingly.

But how does that actually work, on a day to day level?

In Organize Tomorrow, Today, performance optimisation coach Tom Bartow talks about the idea that there are two categories of productive behaviour: activities that produce immediate financial results, and activities that bring about a consistent supply of revenue-generating opportunities. He uses the analogy of being an orange farmer: short term revenue means picking fruit, while long-term cultivation is about taking care of the trees, planting new ones, and so on.

This sounds sort of obvious — surely almost every job does that? — but Bartow suggests that both short-term and long-term “revenue collection opportunities” should be emphasised every day (if you’re not in a revenue-collecting field, this might mean doing continued training or relationship-building). He’s actually a bit scant on suggestions for how to do this, but I already use something similar to his advice on daily planning, which is to have:

• 3 “most important” things to do in any given day, and then pick…

• 1 “must-do” — the most important thing that absolutely has to be done.

• …and then a normal ‘to-do’ list of stuff that’s nice if you get to it.

Bearing this in mind, something I’ve been playing around with for a few weeks is making one of each day’s “most important” tasks a long-term, brand-or-business building exercise. That might be reaching out to people who I want to work with in future, but it might just be building up my skills in some important area, by reading up on scriptwriting or watching a tutorial on how to do a video effect.

The idea is to make immediate gains and set things in motion for the long term, and it’s fairly easy to see how this might also apply to fields like piano or Brazilian jiu-jitsu: in piano, for instance, you might plan to learn a piece but also gradually speed up the chromatic scales and trills that are important for learning more complex repertoire down the line, and in BJJ you might learn new moves that work immediately but also put some time into drilling a footsweep that might take a thousand reps to pull off in sparring. You could, if you want, try applying this to your relationships: for instance, by making sure you’re playing with your kids every day but also learning skills that will (hopefully) make you a better parent in the long term.

Life is very long, unless it is not. Think like an orange farmer, and maybe you’ll be better prepared either way.

Have a great weekend!
Joel x

📖 Book - Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett

I’m only about halfway through this collection of thinking tools by cognitive scientist/philosopher Dennett (it’s huge!), but it’s full of interesting little ways to reframe your own ideas, or recognise the tricks that other people are using.

🎶 Hype Music - Back To The Past by Pluffaduff

When I was running a lot I used to love listening to mashup albums as a way of staying sane and changing up the pace — kind of a musical fartlek, if you like. Now that I’m getting back into endurance training I’ve been seeing what’s new, and I love this collection of weirdness, which feels like a 3:31 celebration of music. YMMV, though.

🎥 Movie - Wish

I watched this with the six-year-old and enjoyed it more than most recent Disney films I’ve seen. Partly, I think, because Chris Pine is great — maybe the best Chris! — but partly because the message, that you should chase your own wishes rather than hoping someone else fulfils them, seems sort of cool for all ages.

“My experience is that knowing something is almost useless under stress, but understanding is often helpful.”

From Conflict Communication: A New Paradigm in Conscious Communications by Rory Miller

Please forward it to someone else! Also, if you’ve got a book or an article you think I should read, or something you think I should watch or try, please send it my way.

And if you haven’t already, please check out my YouTube channel, where I deep-dive into stuff like productivity, lifelong learning, piano and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

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