Clearing out your attic, DND and a 100 pages of clutter

Intellectual Banter: Episode #8

If you’re new or missed the last edition, catch up here. Also, hello! Thank you for giving me your time, I appreciate it.

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What’s up folks!

You blink an eye and 30 days have passed.

It’s time for a (quick) monthly review again. Intellectual Banter is now two months old. Wow - I’m perpetually amused at keeping this “writing thing” going for over 5 months now.

Obviously, the biggest element here is YOU. Because without you, there is no banter - it’s just me ranting to myself (which I already do enough, just ask my wife).

And welcome to the 10 (!) new members of our little tribe. If I may suggest a welcome post, consider checking out why stubbing your toe is a significant life event.

Continuing from our last monthly review, I want to again touch on the aspect of focus, commitment and include a dash of deep work.

Let’s dig in.

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Clearing out your (mental) attic

May flew by in a flash. But also crawled at an excruciating pace. Time is an odd illusion.

It was quick because I didn’t get much done the first three weeks - I was in a bad rut. Time seems to fly by during such phases. Overthinking the crap out of everything. “What should I do?! I need to plan every single thing, make a system, and schedule my tasks. Damn, I also need to clean my table! Aarrrgh, fuck it, let’s order a pepperoni pizza…”

Humans are unique in that they’ll spend 3 weeks planning a task that takes only 30 minutes, lol.

My typical reaction to such a rut has always been to distract myself. TV, video games, booze, pizza (can you tell I love it?). But this time, I tried a different approach. I spent the entire time journaling.

One hundred pages of clutter

The mind is a vacuum cleaner without a power button. 

It sucks up everything in its path, including all manners of unwanted crap. So you’ve got to clear it out regularly. Otherwise it starts reeking and you wonder what’s that smell?

Writing is the most effective (and only) way I know of clearing out the trash.

Simply sitting down to write about the chaotic swarm of thoughts in your head forces your mind to make connections. It forces articulation, which attempts to turn the chaos into order. No more “it’s the END of the world!!!”.

So I journaled till I ran out of pages. 

Not literally, but I wrote for two and half weeks straight. I repeated myself often, to the point of annoyance - “why TF am I repeating myself so much!?”

A disturbing realization I had while doing this - now that I’m self-employed, I don’t know how to set a direction for myself. 

All my life, it’s been set for me.

First it was school, then college, then my job. The recurring theme being - “here’s what you need to do, now go do it”. Being the diligent donkey that I am, I complied with all of it. Never stopping to think - wait, WTF am I doing?

That’s why I needed the one hundred pages.

My new boss (me) and I are getting the hang of figuring things out together. He’s got high standards, but is also fun to spend time with. That makes it easier and means I don’t have to pretend I’m busy when he passes by.

The smartest feature on your phone: DND

We all love “multi-tasking”, but it’s a fucking sham.

All it does is shatter your concentration, make you neurotic and give you the warm fuzzy feeling of the world being on FIRE!

So, I’m unlearning 30 years of my life and retraining my mind to do deep work instead.

While there are books written on the topic, here’s the “tweet” version of it:

1. Focus on ONLY one task at a time

2. Work without distractions (DND + internet blocker)

3. Have a pre-planned agenda for each deep work session

If there’s one thing you take from these 1,500 words, it should be this (credits: JK Molina)

I’m up to 90 minutes (from a humble start of 15). My goal is to be able to sit for 120 minutes at a stretch. And do 2-3 such sessions during a day.

Five days in, there are two interesting (and one obvious) observations:

1. I get fidgety - the urge to check my phone is physical (WTF?!). My mind wants to distract itself at the slightest hint of discomfort. All the more reason not to indulge.

2. I feel drained after two 90 minute sessions. That’s amusing - concentration is a muscle.

3. But I get 10x more crap done in 50% of the time - win!

Coming from corporate life, I know it isn’t possible all the time. There’s a lot of “firefighting” going on there. 

I’d still recommend trying it out. 

Start with your most important task and ignore everything else. Put your phone on silent - if there’s a “fire”, trust me, people will find you. Otherwise, it’s not urgent enough to be distracted for 30-60 minutes.

Planning like a maniac

Which brings me to the last bit - setting the agenda for such sessions (and overall direction).

If you leave this crucial decision till the start of your session, you’ll end up using the session for “planning” instead. And we both know what that means. You “plan”, feel great and then go check your notifications again.

Instead, pre-planning makes all the difference. Do it the night before. Zero decision fatigue when it’s time to work.

To get that done, I’ve been experimenting with this planner. Makes sense to leverage it since I’m not the best at doing this myself, yet.

It’s fucking intense!

I won’t fault you for thinking - “that’s nuts! Shooo”. But remember that I’m in charge of all my time now. 

So I plan to spend it judiciously. I’d rather plan once. Then execute it, review and repeat.

Five days in, it’s been working well. I feel less stressed (“WTF am I doing!?”) and I’m getting more done (tick, tick, tick!). I know the hit rate won’t be 100% (never is). And that’s alright - I’m going for >90%.

We’ll see how many ticks get done by the end of June ✅

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Something David wrote

David Perell has a network of 320k people on Twitter and runs a writing school priced at $7000 per person! Let’s assume the man knows what he’s doing.

He’s also one of my writing mentors. I did “Write of Passage” in March. It was intense! And is the reason you’re reading this lovely email. The intensity with which he does things is intimidating (and inspiring). Writing, gym, reading, even vacations (lol). He can do this because he’s committed to them.

The 100 “options” you have open in your mind about things to do? Yeah, they’re not helping you. While it’s good to have “options”, it should never be an end in itself - real results only come from commitment.

“People think they’ll be happy if they don’t have any obligations. In actuality, total optionality is a recipe for emptiness — and hugging the X-axis — because opportunity and optionality are often inversely correlated. The challenge is that the greatest rewards generally go to people who are tied down in certain ways. A real lifelong marriage is the deepest relationship you’ll ever have because you’ve committed to a lifetime of faithfulness… The challenge is that people who treat their lives like a game of hot potato, always moving from thing to thing, can’t take advantage of exponential curves — and climb the Y-axis.”

So, if you want to climb up the Y axis of life, you’ve got to commit to something.

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See you soon…

Ufff, there’s so much to do in life!

We both know the feeling - the angst that there isn’t enough time. But time is never the problem, focus is. Because, let’s face it - you can (nearly) do anything, but you can’t do everything.

So why not spend time thinking about what it is you want to do?

And then go do that.

Till next time,

Adi

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PS: I’m currently exploring an alternate platform for this newsletter. I feel comfortable procrastinating a bit on logistics now, after 8 issues (🤯, btw). It seems “better”, without going into boring technicalities (for those curious, reach out!).

But it removes the aspect of “liking” and commenting on posts directly. I’ll miss it, but it can be a distraction as well (“did anyone like it yet?”). My focus is on sharing value with you. Period.

So, I’d request you to please continue sharing your thoughts (over email). I’ll respond to every comment, because I cherish every one of them! As always, suggestions are welcome. I love banter (duh), so ‌hit that reply button, comment on the website or book a call if you want to chat! I’d love to hear from you.