Systems.

 

Recently I ran across a quote I like from a guy named James Clear from his book Atomic Habits:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”

I have not read Atomic Habits because I try to steer clear of anything that has the whiff of a self-help books, because I think it is a fairly exploitative genre, however I have head about a couple of books recently that seem to be carefully straddling a line between self-help and just — you know — topic-oriented non-fiction. Clear’s book seems to be one and Greg McKeown’s Essentialism is another.

I have heard both of these guys on podcasts and … I’m not sure. They seem like nice people, but I also suspect they may be on that Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Donald Trump axis somewhere … white men, amIright?

Anyway, my point is simply that I agree with Clear’s quote above. Your goals only really matter to you, it is the work you do underneath them that makes all the difference. This is why I write here all the time about the schedules and diets I am trying to refine. However I also thought about it the other day when I was walking through Target and half the lights were out because California is trying to avoid rolling blackouts. It is also what I thought about when I talked to a friend up in Portland who is backing in 112 degree heat with no AC, just sitting in front of his fan and trying not to move for days at a time. 

We are a nation of people and those people all have a lot of goals, but we do not seem to be a nation of effective systems, which begs the question of the level we will fall to.

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Inconsistent Failures.

 A friend of mine joked once that the third post on every blog says, “Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile.”

That’s a funny joke, but it also speaks to something very true about our human tendency to let our ambition outrun our execution and I have got to tell you, I am feeling that lately. Back in February I started thinking about ‘redesigning” my life so that more of it would belong to me and less of it would belong to my job. I gave it a shot in March and had a good month. Then in April work completely consumed my life again. In May I have fine tuned the re-design and I was all clear to leap into it, but then I kind of just … didn’t?

I’ve made some changes that have stuck. I’ve been getting up earlier so I have more morning time, but I haven’t been consistent enough with it. Every morning I post a silly drawing on my Instagram (@standard_kink) and MOST mornings I write a blog post like this one. I’ve also standardized my bedtime and I’ve been able to stick with that. My diet is better now than it was a few months ago, I’ve even been eating fruit and vegetables consistently! 

So those parts of the re-design are functioning, but the other big parts aren’t. I’m not writing more, I’m not reading more, I’m only running and doing yoga sporadically. These are the things that the re-design was supposed to be in service of. A lot of the minimalism stuff I read/listen to tells you that what you actually do is what you actual value and if there is a misalignment between what you value and what you actually do, that is a point that you need to deliberately address. So obviously these are the things I need to address. I have built out a daily schedule that (generally) has enough runway in it that I COULD and in fact SHOULD be able to run and read and write all in addition to what I am already doing.

Admittedly it is hard to work a stressful 8 hours and then say, “Well, I need to go out running now even though I’m totally drained and it’s cold and gray outside.” I know that I have it in me to do that because I have done that sort of thing before. I just need to find a way to do it again.

I know that I am lucky to have such small problems in my life, but that doesn’t make them not problems. As I grow older, I really do feel the hallway of the rest of my life narrowing. I feel like I’m approaching a lot of last chances. If the person I want to be is someone who writes and runs and reads everyday, I feel like I’m running out of days to become that person. 

But the one great thing about the relentless forward movement of time is that every morning we get a whole new day. Let’s see what I can do with this one.

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How to Have a Good Day.

Most days don’t feel like anything. This is not a quarantine post. It’s just that most of the days of our lives run like sands through an hour glass and who wants to remember that? Do you know how many times I’ve paid an electric bill in my life? Do you know how many I remember? And why would I?

One of the things I’m trying to do lately with the changes I’m making in my life is to find a way to have more good days, not GREAT days, mind you, just low-key good days. Days that didn’t slip away.

Over the last few years I came to a slow realization about what I like to do on a normal, boring, otherwise forgettable day and I have turned it into a simple little metric. I’m going to tell you what it is and at first you’re going to be all like, “Well that doesn’t sound that hard to pull off!”

But I assure you, it is.

Are you ready?

Here it is: Run. Write. Read.

That’s it! 

If you can manage to fit those three things into a normal workaday, normal forgettable, normal day kinda day, then you will have had a good day. 

This is when you go, “Well I could do that!”

Oh yeah buddy? Well give it a try!

It is harder than it sounds.

Let’s do the math: I sleep for 8 hours (obviously the first 6 are in the morning and the last 2 are at night), I work 8 hours a day, but (as they keep telling me) I am “required by law” to take at least a half hour lunch, so really my workday allotment of time is actually 8.5 hours end-to-end. 

Add those up = 16.5 hours, which leaves me 7.5 in a day in which to live my life. 

I get up at 6 and I start work at 8:30, so I have allotted 2.5 hours in the morning. This is for the yoga I haven’t been doing (did some today though), I shower and clean up, I do one of my silly little daily drawings that I post on my artsy Instagram account (@standard_kink), I write a blog post like this one, I listen to a couple of morning news podcasts, I drink coffee. Around 8:15 I drink a meal replacement protein shake and put on my work clothes (Just a t-shirt and a button up. I have worn jeans the entire quarantine. I don’t own sweats).

Okay, so that’s 8 hours of sleep, 8.5 hours of work, 2.5 hours in the morning doing cool stuff, which leaves me precisely 5 hours when I log off work at 5pm. At 5pm I immediately change into running gear and head out the door. (I have to do it this way so that I can draft off the last of my work energy to get me out the door. If I waited until 5:30, I wouldn’t actually go. Plus, the sun sets just after 6pm here right now, so I have to go at 5. Lately I have been running for about an hour. I come back, I shower and clean up, and I start making dinner. Lately I eat pretty much the same thing every night (jasmine rice with sauteed veggies and fish. Throw in some curry powder, some onion powder, soy sauce and black sesame oil … *chef’s kiss*). I watch Youtube while I eat (often the first half of PBS News hour). Then I do the dishes.

By the time all of that is over, it is usually about at or approaching 8pm. Two hours remaining.

From 8 to 9 I have scheduled time to either write or read. Last night I sat down to read and ended up reading until almost 9:30.

BUT! And here is the cool part, because I had written a blog post that morning, I had TECHNICALLY written already (Though considering the writing of a blog post to be “writing” is kind of like in Interview with the Vampire when Tom Cruise in living on rats; it will do the trick, but isn’t really anyone’s preference). 

So yesterday was a Run, Write, Read day! I closed the book about 9:30 and still had about a half hour to kill my brain on Twitter.

I plan to have more RWR Days in the future. Those days make me feel like I did something. Like I didn’t just live another day that will forever slip away, like sands through an hourglass.

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