On the morning of April 4th, my “self reliance” ritual was cut short when I looked at the calendar and saw the day before was an empty box, where there needed to be a checkmark. I felt a dull ache rising in the back of my gut.

“Did I forget to write yesterday?”
“Did I break my unprecedented 123 day streak?”
“No no no! This can’t be!”

My panic rose steadily, but I simply wasn’t sure. So, I seized the benefit of the doubt, slowly filled in the missing checkmark, and went about my days, trying to forget this lie I told myself.

It’s now 3 weeks later. My mini-habits of writing, programming, and exercising daily have lost all their former power. Even my morning ritual is starting to slip.

Rationally, I know that one misstep shouldn’t matter. That I should brush it off, learn from it, and keep going. But I can’t stop myself from feeling that it does matter.

Worse, this pattern is disappointingly familiar.
Something is deeply wrong here… Continue reading The Lies I Tell Myself →

Productivity and wealth are both powerful aids in enabling flow.
But we need to keep these in their place, as a means to an end: Freedom.

If you must do a great deal of work that is unsatisfying and dreary, you are poor.
If you can do only what you love, you are rich.
There is no other definition that matters.

We can achieve this for every one of us, but we must first change our beliefs and our mental models…

Continue reading The Pump and the Generator →

I’m often a victim of the “Curse of Knowledge” when it comes to Gingko. I’ve been embedded in it for so long, I find it hard to see it as a beginner. This makes it hard to explain why it works so well.

But this TED talk by designer Tom Wujec goes part of the way to explaining how three elements come together to help us gain clarity:

1. Node-based thinking.
2. Freedom to move and to group nodes.
3. Ability to work together, in parallel and in silence.

Gingko not only allows, but encourages, all three of these elements.

I have an odd relationship with money. Often I feel that I’m beyond it or above it. I focus on the pursuit of happiness over the pursuit of wealth. At other times though, I think maybe these are stories I tell myself because I have deep-seated fears or misconceptions regarding wealth.

The truth is, I’m not sure if my attitude towards wealth is incredibly wise, or incredibly stupid.

I know that I’m not making as much as I could if, for instance, I were to focus more on promoting Gingko as-is, and less on creating Gingko as it ought to be. On the other hand, I’m very happy most days, so I must be doing something right.

In any case, since I don’t fit into either the “Profit profit profit” camp, nor the “Money is evil” starving artist category, I do a lot of thinking on the subject. In particular, I try to argue both for and against wealth as a goal.

Here’s an argument that occurred to me, in favor of wealth:

Money is a way to travel into the future.

Continue reading The Wealth of The Future →

Every morning, I wake at 5:30am, put on my jogging clothes, and run up and down the stairs of my building a few times (I admire those who jog in -25*C weather, but I’m not one of them). When I’m done, I freshen up, fill a glass of cool water, head towards the office (quietly, so as not to wake my wife and son), and sit down for a few minutes and just breathe.

Then I perform my most important ritual. I open to where I left off in my copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”, and read.

A few minutes later, I mark my place, close the book, turn on my PC, pull the keyboard towards me, and get to work.

The recurring litany of Emerson’s words has a powerful effect on my mindset. In short, it’s brought me closer to my ultimate goal: a life of tranquility and creative flow.

What is it about this work that is so profound?

Unlike almost anything else you have ever read, “Self-Reliance” is wholly and completely about you. The essay is a battle-cry not for any one flag or banner, but for every person’s own inimitable self.
Continue reading Trust Thyself →

I’ve been writing daily for 3 months, so you’d think I have a mass of content to output.
But I’ve had a week since the last post, a looming deadline in 35 minutes, yet I have no post.

I started twice, and failed twice, to produce a blog post that I was happy with.
I was about to go with my backup plan and just shove a TED talk or something up here, when I decided that instead I’d quickly share why I failed this week.

Mistake 1: The Corpse of Memory

Last week, I wrote a post on seeing productivity through the lens of software.
I’m not thrilled with it, but at least it’s original content. Towards the end, I realized I had bit off more than I could chew, and cut it short, “promising” to continue this week.

Well, a few days later when I started writing the sequel, I realized that my ideas had still not solidified. For many days I kept trying to write the followup post, and it just wasn’t going anywhere. As my Tuesday blog post deadline drew closer, I asked myself, “Why do I have to write about this?” and the only answer I could come up with was “I said I would.”

Ok, fair enough. Consistency is important. But the next question was “If I don’t feel it’s valuable yet, wouldn’t it be better for my readers as well if I write something else?”

Then I remembered the following line from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance:

Why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place?

Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

So that was my first mistake: continuing a thread for the sake of a foolish consistency.

Mistake 2: Epic Scope

With a few days left, I started writing about something I do care about, and something I feel is important. (I won’t make Mistake 1 again and tell you what it is, or when I’ll publish it).

My wife and son were out of town this weekend, visiting in-laws, so I had a lot of quiet time to think and work and write. And what I was thinking about was itching to get out of me.

Ah, but as I typed frantically, the minutes counting down to when I have to pick them up at the train station, the post I was writing grew to epic scope. Literally.

I quote both Steve Jobs and Marcus Aurelius. I have images of the vastness of the cosmos, and of tomb stones. I considered recounting in detail the chilling experience I had when facing the sarcophagus of a Pharaoh who’s name is lost in memory. I talk about famous physicists and the vastness of time.

I found myself thrashing about, trying to make an epic subject fit into my less than epic skills, and rapidly diminishing time. In short, I forgot my own advice to focus on Quality and Frequency, and keep the Scope in check.

I need to learn to trust the only barometer for my work that matters to me: “Am I happy in creating it?” For those posts, the answer was “no”.

This post is short, not very deep, but I enjoyed writing it. I laughed out loud when I decided I would scrap the other two.

And as a bonus, I hope that an honest admission of failure is of more value than a half-hearted attempt at rehashing a previous idea, or an incoherent attempt at tackling something grand and cosmic.

Till next week!
Adriano