Halfway through the year I switched New Years Resolutions. I didn’t meet either–the original or the replacement–but I gained a ton by pursuing both.
I started with the goal of playing guitar publicly somewhere, anywhere, even a rec room basement. Force myself to get good enough to not be embarrassing. I came close when I was on a work call and someone spotted my guitar in the background during a break. Unfortunately, we all moved on to favorite Thanksgiving food before I could break out “American Pie.”
But I can do a decent “American Pie” now. The song that is guitar to me. I’ll take it. [And I’ll take any opportunity to plug the most wonderful video of all time.]
Then I switched my resolution to writing an average of once a week. I was feeling frustrated at not seeing a path to my big life goals, and I needed a mechanism to be on the path. No shame in switching goals. That’s part of the point. The goal captures what you want, but if what you want legitimately changes or becomes impossible, the goal has become a zombie.
Given when I started, that would be 24 posts in 2022. With this post, I’m at 13. I’m frustrated because I like to nail my goals. But I’m also okay with the choices that made it 13. I knew going in writing was my fourth priority (after my job and family tied at one, and health/climbing next). And also I really like what I made. I regret nothing!
So what did I get from this year of making it only halfway down the path?
- I learned a lot about a lot:
- I have a pretty good starting sense of Da Vinci now: the rooting in observation and reciprocal nature of creation and learning, and an awesome mission of learning the measure of man.
- I gained a new word for an overarching goal of life: harmony. I’ve been living with it for a few months, and many people I think have things figured out think similarly. And I have good words for approaches I think are off in important ways: follow your gut and work the plan.
- I learned a ton about performance from chess/Tai Chi master Josh Waitzkin, especially his concept of investment in loss about growth coming from strategies where you fail.
- I gained an overview of song writing from Song Exploder, and the pattern of tentative emotion, vulnerable synthesis, refinement, emotion captured.
- I learned about the science of high achiever motivation through a textbook on sports psychology that I’m eager to get back to. Motivation by achievement not by avoiding failure, a view of success as in your control, and a focus on incremental improvement not a static (“entity”) self-perception as a smart person.
- I confirmed that I do really love writing. I loved the way it focused my life and the sense of discovery. And of building. These thirteen posts are legitimately thirteen steps forward in my thinking, and I can look at them and see a year of progress spread before me.
- I discovered how much I love being “in the game.” I loved when someone would comment on something I had written, regardless of whether they agreed. The more I can be part of the big dialogue in the world about work and add to it, the happier I will be.
- I accepted just how obsessive I am about my top values. That can crowd out everything else. My productivity on the blog decreased dramatically as I understood better the problems to solve at my work. The problems started to wake me up at night until I had solutions and next steps to implementing them. And then I’m equally ambitious about my family, trying to soak up every second of joy I can from them and go on crazy adventures. Even now, I am well aware that I am loving writing and needed to put these thoughts into words, but I am eager to get back to the family and make crafts on this New Years Eve. I need to fully accept that I am a man of few but intense goals. I’m decreasing my blog goals accordingly to once every other week in 2023 instead of once a week.
- I learned my audience is on LinkedIn, not Twitter. Like at a ten to one rate by how many people click on my posts. I guess that shouldn’t have been surprising, but it was. That’s where all of my connections are from work and talks and such. And it’s full of people who care about what I care about–being great at what you do. I just never got LinkedIn like I got Twitter. But time for me to get it and figure out better what that audience wants.
- And I gained a lot of questions I desperately want to explore (aka fuel!):
- Is procrastination important for creativity, as Leonardo’s life possibly indicates? Or is that, as I suspect, a woozy way of describing a critical process that could be optimized and brought under self-control?
- Was Da Vinci happy? I get mixed signals on that. What is the role of happiness in achievement? Are they at odds? Again, I don’t see why they would be, and I’m inclined to think that you can have it all. IF you understand “it” better. Which is my project!
- There is an established sports psychology practice called Psychological Skills Training. What is it?!? And a lot of science about arousal regulation and concentration. What are these?!? Tell me your secrets, science!
- There are people who think that goals are bad. What are they actually saying? Should I reevaluate my entire way of thinking? Or if not, is there anything to be gained from them? If they are wrong, what deeper errors are they making?
Six big things. Thirteen if I could figure out how to have the sub-bullets continue the numbering. Pretty good for a technical failure of a resolution! This speaks to a pattern in a post I haven’t published yet about Da Vinci–that setting off in a direction is critical and very fruitful even if you don’t end up exactly where you’d intended. Just get moving.
2023 Resolution: 26 posts and 100 interactions on LinkedIn. Feels doable, especially the second. But that will absolutely focus me, and if this year is any indication, I’ll feel great next year at this time.
Happy New Year! Off to make crafts with family!
Pursuit of Areté 