Tag: reading

You Need A Reread List

Reading is beneficial . The best books are full of lessons that improve your life. Some books are so good, that you can’t get everything out of them the first time you read it. That is why it is best to have a reread list, a list of books that were so good on the first pass, you need to read them again.They simply have too much information to offer, and with each book you read, your perspective changes. With the reread list, you’ve documented a list of books that you plan on reading again.

Great books are teeming with information. They have references, graphs, charts etc. that can swallow you up or they have a lot of questions for you to ponder. Some books, like Prometheus Rising, are chocked full of both. Even with serious note taking, sometimes we are just going to miss something that is worth our time down the road. By putting the book on the reread list, you are noting that there is more to this than what you have on first n.

The human brain is great at taking information and sorting what is important. We wouldn’t be here if your brain, especially in the days before agriculture, knew how to discern friend from foe, an orange from a omnivore. Each time you read a book, your brain is going through this process, taking all the things that are happening in your life and scanning what you are reading to see what is important. Philosophy books are extremely important in this case, so if you read Zen & The Art of Archery or Meditations by Marcus Aurelius there are more lessons than the first reading will allow you to grasp. With each passing moment our perspective changes, so by keeping a reread list, we are acknowledging that there is something in this book that is important on the next glance.

By building your own library of reread titles, you give yourself the best chance of getting the most out of your investment. Its better to just give the book a second pass when your perspective changes and retaking the notes so you pick up all the great information it holds. When I do this, I tend to get that much more out of what I read, and I notice that my retention goes up. Each time I give a book a read, especially the great ones, I find something else that will help me get through my next issue in life.

Note: My reread list is public above with the book list link. I add to it often.

Tags Habits, lists, reading

Blog Post

Reading For Ideas

Reading is the idea machine. People have written many things, from life’s secrets to how to cook the perfect scrambled eggs, and usually for the price of 10 dollars, you could have access to that very idea.

For the last 3 months, I have spent time at night reading before bed. At the start of the year, it was 10 minutes, but the practice has grown and I have recently moved it to an hour. An hour gives me about 6 books read a month. It hasn’t been a heavy investment, just an hour before I go to sleep I turn off everything that can ever bother me and just read.

These books are a cross-section of disciplines, ranging from the cognitive sciences, philosophy, business development, language etc. Sometimes the subject is heady – I can’t devour this all at once, only a few pages at a time. It can also be lighthearted and fun, and I can’t wait to devour every single page.

Either way I try to limit myself to spare my energy. These ideas are heavy, connecting thoughts from each discipline together. It is exhausting, especially after a full days schedule. My willpower takes tests, but I do feel it grow stronger with week, and without struggle there is no progress.

Even after 3 months, the advantage is clear. The result;my ideas get better, gaining more insight into my daily actions, how I act, respond, and what I do.

Tags ideas, reading, Routine

Blog Post

Habit and Training

Trying to reach zen, from all that I have read, is an arduous process. It requires tireless practice, supreme dedication, and drive.

My latest read – Zen in the Art of Archery left an impression. The subject of the book, the author, is tirelessly working on finding zen in archery, and generally has to throw everything he knew about mastery away to unlock something greater.

While reading, it made me think of two things that are outlined in the book.

1) The main purpose of training is to get back to your own intuition.

This seems to be counter intuitive, but the goal is to get back to yourself. You ultimately have the secrets that work for you. No one else can engage you for your best work.Ultimately the goal of any practice is to reduce latency between you and the action so far that even the tool you use is an extension of your brain.

Ex. The legend of the blind swordsman, where a person, even with no sight, can feel the danger and knowing his faults, mitigate his weakness and concentrate on his strengths.

2) Ritual is important.

One of the things that the master stresses to the author is that you cannot cheat process. The author does once after years of failure(his version of failure was not hitting the target) and is almost expelled. The masters point is that he was thinking of the wrong thing. Mastering the ritual, the habit, will make the target inconsequential.

The ritual, the keys to unlock the best work, gets you where you need to be.

Ex. In the book, the master is blindfolded and hits a target in the dark twice, in the center, splitting the first arrow. His ritual and habits connected him with his weapon and art, and he felt his target. His consciousness led him where he needed to go.

Tags reading, ritual, Training

Blog Post

Purposeful

I have to find purpose in my twenties.

At least that is what I think when I sit alone in my room, staring at the corners and dry paint. This is the time in life where you have the ability to screw up completely, and not have it ruin your life.

I am 26 now, and I feel like I am working on making my twenties worth something, both by forging connections, and by creating rituals that will serve me better through life. I don’t know where these things will lead, which is odd considering the reason behind them is to give me purpose, but I do know that I will be a better person for it. It will make my path clear and give me the opportunity to see what I can achieve.

I want that freedom later in life to be able to look back on this and laugh, say I struggled, say it was for a good cause, and say I didn’t have any regrets. I am getting better at making this work, but who knows where the rest of this leads.

I will say this, doing this has opened up a lot of questions about me as a human being. One being do I hate competition. Phil says that I don’t quite make the effort of showing my cards, that I quit. When he says that, it gives me a pain in my stomach, and for me, that usually means that it is rooted in truth.

I think I have to look at myself and really sit with this one for a while. Whatever truth I find out, I am going to tackle it, with both routine and habit, along with whatever knowledge I pick up along the way. I never knew through meeting people and facing fears, that a lot of flaws come to the surface. This makes me happy actually, and it goes back to what I was saying earlier. It helps me find purpose, and helps me become a better person overall.

To that end, I was reading a post by Seth Godin today (http://www.sethgodin.com) about your perfect self. I am not a religious man by any means, but sometimes, it does feel like the fates come together and push knowledge onto you.

The post described exactly what I was talking about above. It starts off talking about setting the bar too high. I know I do that mentally all the time. I have to be amazing, I have to be spectacular, or it was a waste of time. This goes back to my growth mindset post of yesterday. I am at a fixed point, taking every no as concrete evidence in the hypothetical trial of should I do said thing.

I look at this and I begin to hide behind the nos, use that as fuel to help me quit whatever I was doing, and move back to a life where i can say i didn’t get hurt. It allows me to keep my ego intact, look at the world and say, i was better than that, and they just didn’t give me a chance.

I do that a lot in life, so maybe what Phil was saying is right. I must say, when typing this, my stomach did start to hurt a little bit, so I think mentally it is right as well. With that said, I am discovering this now, even as I type, so its interesting to see where me bringing this up to the surface will do, how will this work out.

The growth mindset is the thing that allows you to build yourself into that spectacular being. I read in 99u that you have to use ignorance to fuel you, and that is true. Ignorance plus the growth mindset equals something spectacular in my head. I think hat allows you o learn, get all the no’s out of the way, and then build on turning them into yes, by allowing yourself to receive feedback and show you are determined.

With that said, there is still a part of me that knows my best shot of making all of this work is to give myself some time to learn, and not to face those challenges without the tool kit to slay it. Even so, I have been working on a lot of this for years. I need to work on cashing in, so even failure becomes a step forward.

Manage your Day to Day is fantastic for anyone who wants to become a creative. The short posts by each thought leader is just enough for you to get the gist of what they are talking about, and fo you to want to learn more.

I have become a big fan of Gretchen Rubin lately, based on the book and the stuff on twitter and 99u I have read. I am constantly looking to expand my mind, and hopefully that book can help.

Farnam Street also submitted the summer reading list, making me get 4 more books I should read to expand my mind. They have been on point so far, since i have been following the site, so I don’t need much push to get me on board with following it.

The hard part is reading it, and for that, I still need to get into the habit of reading a bunch of pages a day. I am thinking if it should be something I add to the habit list, and keep track of. I may o it starting in June, especially as the May habits start taking shape, and I get to see where they stand.

I take the CPAP off in my sleep. This worries me, because I would like to use it for it’s intended purpose. I remember putting it on, but i wake up, and it is sitting net to me, properly put off to the side, on the counter, on top of my notebooks.

It is a very odd thing, and I wonder if I can fix it so I keep it on my head throughout the night.

1000 words. We have done it!!!! First time!!!!

Tags fears, flaws, Habits, purpose, reading

Blog Post

Ritual and Perception

After reading the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, I have been really interested in finding more about the subject. There seems to be a real power behind it. Because of that, I have been reading Daily Rituals by Mason Currey.

This book on routine is really interesting. I am currently reading about the routines of great creatives, whether they are writers, painters, philosophers etc. and it seems like the great ones always had a routine to create output. A recurring theme is inspiration is for amateurs. James Joyce, who wrote Ulysses, says it took 20,000 hours to get it done.

Would you sacrifice 20,000 hours to write something that would last 1,000 times that in terms of enjoyment for the rest of the world? It was all based in habit, to get it done. And that is the discipline that I need.

It is the reason this blog has been going on everyday since I finished The Power of Habit. I need to create that output, to have something to show if I am asked for it. All this work in the dark leads nowhere if I have nothing when I have a light shown on me.

600+ words a day help. I am starting to see that I have to keep this pace, because by establishing the habit, and making myself used to pushing out something, I build muscles. These muscles will allow me to do some of the heavy lifting it takes to become more cerebral, and get more creative.

Learning how to build these muscles is why I want to diversify myself out here in Comedy. I have been looking for other ways of output other than stand-up. I think this will sharpen my skills with a pen, doing things like writing jokes, penning sketches, or shooting and directing videos. Stand-up is my love, but trying to make a living at it becomes a lot easier when I can create.

For the sake of that, it is imperative that I have something going. I think it can be really simple, something like 30 minutes a day to keep me growing as an artist. It is surprising how much a little everyday can do to build your skill. I’ve read stories of someone learning how to improve their violin skills with just 6 minutes a day.

With that said, I have figured that each sentence down means something. After reading Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, I got a little insight into that way of thinking. As she wrote about, at length, you need shitty first drafts. Getting that out the way allows me to learn.

In short, I am looking at the rest of my twenties as a way to build, taking as many hits as I can along the way. The hope is,by the time I am 30, I would like to be able to be ready to unfurl some stuff to the world as a creative.

I hate that I get so defensive. I sometimes get myself in a mood, where everything touches my skin with the intensity of a sharp stick. When I feel this coming, everything becomes a little more meaningful, for better or for worse. I get hyper perceptive. My mind becomes a net for all communication, from body language down to tone, and I receive it.

Last night I found myself in that mood, hanging around people I work with as comedians. I felt the showbiz thing – that phoniness, that I feel from people. It doesn’t really bother me when I am around other people. Honestly, people are people, I do not expect much from a stranger. He doesn’t know me and I do not know him.

I really hate it though, when it comes from someone I know. There is a look, body language, and a tone shift, if someone finds out I am not on this show or that show. Now, it has become apparent that I don’t work hard enough at this skill, in the sense that I don’t put myself out there enough.

But I have an understanding that people don’t change because of one thing. That is to say, if I know you yesterday, and then tomorrow I end up auditioning at some club you want to be at, I haven’t changed, you haven’t changed, our relationship should be the same.

Sometimes people don’t do that. And it bugs me. Maybe the trick is to level off expectation? I really don’t know.

Done: Wrap-up Water 3Things 16/8
Undone: Todo

Tags comedy, Depression, Habit, reading, ritual