Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of the TOA
newsletter. The year's almost over, the month's posting schedule is more
or less set, and I (literally) don't have anything to add to the blog
schedule by virtue of it being completely full seven days a week!
Last month was, by all accounts, a good month. It was the tenth straight month I did what I said I would do
and I consider this an accomplishment, of sorts, because I consider
keeping my word an often overlooked but vital attribute for leading
successfully. In fact, I don't think people who break their word are
capable of leading, in any sense of the word. Practicing the skill here
in my own small way has been one of the great gifts of this blog over
the past two years.
My idea (some would say threat)
to post every day of the week led to some interesting changes in how I
write. About a year ago, my process started with an idea for a longer
post to publish ('publish') on a Wednesday. Sometimes, I would sketch an
outline before getting started. I rarely kept writing until the post
was done because I would usually hit a wall and pause. At this point, I
would consider trimming the post into a shorter post to publish
('publish') on a Friday or just shelve it for later.
The
completely logical result was a few really good long essays, a few
painfully trimmed pieces, and some gimmicks like 'proper admin' to
organize a few half-essays and disorganized thoughts per month. The least
surprising result was the huge (digital) pile of partially finished
posts sitting around in my drafts folder.
I decided to go for a daily concept in May after reading Epitaph Of A Small Winner,
a book recommended to me by a great reader who said it reminded him of
the blog. I read the book and agreed, somewhat, with the thought. I
definitely saw where the comparison came from.
But it was more crystal ball than polished mirror. When I read Epitaph Of A Small Winner,
I saw ways of organizing thoughts and presenting stories that I'd never
considered for TOA. I spent a few weeks looking through my half-baked
drafts and pondered different ways to write, edit, and schedule posts.
The
key moment came when I started working on the spring edition of proper
admin. The draft was full of good ideas but the structure no longer
served to organize these ideas into a coherent post. What to do?
In the past, my approach had been to remove sections and use them later
as stand alone posts. In some cases, these led to establishing new
recurring concepts like the reading reviews or the newsletter. It was, I
think, a good way to approach the problem in the early days of TOA.
But for whatever reason, this time I just decided to scrap the whole thing. There was just too much useless rubbish
in the post. How was it possible to write so much yet have so little?
'Proper admin' was just dressing for the wound and its ongoing existence symbolized how
spending so much time on symptom management had led me to forget about
addressing the source of the problem: unfocused writing.
The end of proper
admin forced immediate changes to my writing process because I no
longer had a place to publish my lazy products. Each idea would now
require the ability to stand alone in its own post. Since trying to
write longer posts often led me into dark cul-de-sacs, I went the other
way and started trying to finish posts in the most concise possible
form: a single sentence. If the sentence was not clear enough I would
add a few more. If I approached the three hundred word mark, I asked
myself: is there any way to wrap this up in the next two sentences? If
the answer was yes, I did. If not, I saved the draft and went to my next
small idea. It was a gimmicky way to write, for sure, but as a
short-term tactic it worked well until I got the hang of these shorter
posts.
Why not finish the piece in progress instead of
saving it as a draft? Well, sometimes I did finish up. But often, I
found the incubation period important in clarifying my thoughts on a
topic. The process of initially trying to limit it to a short post
really helped me with this step. With any draft, I knew I was working on
something worth more than three hundred words. This was almost never
the case in year one. I think I wasted a lot of 2016 writing at length
about ideas I should have distilled into three paragraphs instead of
expanding into three thousand words.
I share this story
today because I think the general lesson of getting started before
applying a framework applies in a lot of different ways. Parkinson's law,
I suppose, is a decent example and easy enough for anyone who has ever
procrastinated to relate to. Those who think they have plenty of time to
get something done will probably take plenty of time to do it (just ask
the tortoise or, if he's awake, the hare). From experience, I know
whenever I plan on writing three thousand words, I write three thousand
words. When I plan to write until I've made my point, the number of
syllables I generate is a much more appropriate number.
Thanks for reading this past year.
-Tim
Books I'm excited to (re) read this month...
I've
mentioned recently my intention to use December strictly for
re-reading. Who knows, right? Could be a good little tradition for me as
I hit old age...
I've written something on TOA for each of the books on this list so I'll skip the monthly mini-preview.
Here is the list I've come up with for December 2017:
*Bluets by Maggie Nelson
*The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
*Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson
*M Train by Patti Smith
*High Output Management by Andy Grove
*The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
*Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
*Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
In the next month of...True On Average...
1) The Seahawks and the Patriots try to eat each other...
2) I deliver some coal for Christmas morning...
3) Still looking for that missing color...
See you in December!
