Intermittent Connectivity

My reflections on visiting the temple of the subway made me think about the value of intermittent connectivity.

Discussions focusing on intentional living are replete with tips on how to embrace intermittent disconnectivity. Don't check your phone when you wake up. Leave the house with your phone in it. Experiment with digital sabbaths.

Here's an idea: Maybe we should bounce between small periods of connectivity as opposed to finding the times to disconnect. If we change the defaults from connectivity to fruitful solitude, perhaps we will be mindful of and find more value in the moments where we plug into the network. For example, I greatly enjoy those times when I can disconnect, read, reflect, and write. However, like Thoreau, I ought to return from Walden, rejoin my communities, share what I'm thinking about, and get inspiration from others.

A default of disconnectivity might play out in interesting ways on the scale of days, weeks, and months and could potentially alleviate the tension between creating and sharing. At the same time, we can dive deeper into presence, both personally and professionally, when things are switched off knowing that connectivity will, like on the subway, come at the next stop (if we need it).

Now, excuse me for a little bit. I'll see you at the next stop.

See also Disconnect; "Don’t Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus" in Cal Newport's book Deep Work (beginning at p. 159).

Simple Advice

Most of the time, sticky advice is simple.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Now. Here. This.

Stop. Look. Go.

I am not so busy

Just like that, the summer skated by. When friends and family have checked in with me to see how things are going, I've told them a similar story:

I'm busy! Lots of projects in my queue at the internship and I'm constantly working on fellowship applications. You know how it is.

There's some truth to this story. I did, in fact, work on a bunch of different projects this summer at the Brennan Center. I did, in fact, log a number of hours in the pursuit of job opportunities after I graduate law school.

But the story is bullshit. I am not so busy. I've spent many hours in a state of fractured focus getting an astonishing nothing done. I've passed evenings lazily in Central Park. I've gone to shows. I've strategically visited different pizzerias to determine which has the best slice.

I say I'm busy because I think that busyness means business, that it's some badge of honor. It's not.

I am not so busy.

But I'm scared. I am in the state of flux, where the future is unknown. I don't know where I'll be next year or what I'll be doing. Often, that not knowing can be exciting: you can slip into a hopeful place of possibility. Other times, it's debilitating. And when the fear sets it, it's easier for me to talk about being "busy" than about being afraid.

When we say we're busy, it doesn't always have to be about fear. It could be a mask for our lack of prioritization. We say we're busy so that it's understandable when we drop the ball on some things, or if we don't offer the world the best we have. But instead of confronting those deeper tensions, we present ourselves as sympathetic hard workers.

If you ask me, "How's it going?" and I reply, "Busy!", I give you a free pass to call me out. I invite you to join me and think:

I am not so busy.

See also The 'Busy' Trap, The Busy Person's Lies

Holiness is a Choice

This summer, I rode the subway to and from work every day. I had a short, 20 minute commute on the C train. Though I often spent the commute with a podcast in my ear, occasionally I punctured my routine with some music or some silence. As the subway travels underneath the city, the intermittent, forced unplugging gave me the chance to reconnect with myself and my thoughts.

In those moments, the subway morphs into a pop-up temple of reflection as I join a fleeting, ever-changing community. Standing in the pews over the summer, one of the most important things that I came to realize that holiness is a choice.

Trains are often delayed and crowded and the swelter of a summer day can try even the most resolute. Echoing DFW, therein lies the holiness. But that holiness -- or, if you prefer, that sacredness, that tranquility, that transcendence -- is only accessible by choice. The temple doors don't open from the inside: there is no one beckoning you in.

The inferno of the subway can either be the breeding ground for the sacred or just another annoyance. On the subway and beyond, holiness is a choice.

See also This is Water

Our Young Teachers

I've had the pleasure of spending time with lots of newborns in the last year. Between Asha's and my family, four boys came into the world in a short three-month period. Two of the boys — Anderson and Kai — have young older sisters in Lexi and Maya respectively. All together, they're a heartwarming handful.

I'm not entirely comfortable around the littlest ones just yet. I'm still learning how to hold them naturally. I don't have the finely-honed intuitions to know what they need; veterans often come to my rescue cooing and swooping in with deft hands. I will get there, though probably too late to be of any help to the exhausted parents.

One thing, however, I'm learning quickly. The young — both the littlest ones and the toddlers — are great teachers of presence. A fantastic moment in Tim Ferriss's podcast with Josh Waitzkin, which I've linked to before, describes the real-life classroom better than I can:

Parenting has been the most fantastic learning experience I've ever gone through. So from when [Jack] was born, I tried very hard to not go into it with a lot of preconceived ideas and to be attuned to him, to listen to him. From when he was just days, weeks old, he was teaching me. You know, you talk about teaching presence. Our eyes would be connected and if I would think about something else, his eyes would pull me back. If there was any distraction that set in, he would pull me back. And as he got a little older, he would just take your face and pull it back in the sweetest way. So the depth of connection, you know, being deeply attuned to a young spirit that hasn't become blocked, that is in that state of unobstructed self-expression, that is just this unbelievably game learner, unblocked learner. . .

When not in the throes of inevitable growing pains, the young are a paradigm of wonder and awe. Rather than see them as students that we must shepherd through life, we can flip the script and open ourselves to their role as teachers. When I've become the student of the young in my life, I've been rewarded with the incredible gift of presence. No gift is greater. There is always — and only — now. We spend our lives clawing back to it, but it is all the young know until we teach them otherwise. Though they don't even know of their generosity, I'm grateful for the moments of learning they've shared with me in the past year.

Knowledge Work

I'm always trying to think about how to improve the signal to noise ratio for myself and for others. That's the important work of the 21st century, where everything is at our fingertips. My efforts in creating a commonplace book are a good example of a that. In some important ways, I think that I've found value in the process. For example, a recent commonplace links post created a nice web of ideas around the topic of questions and framing our interactions with others.

At the same time, I'm restless about the endeavor. Something about it isn't quite enough: I'm still just loosely collecting things, occasionally finding the links between them. I'm not fully appreciating things for their context and relationship with other things; I turn my attention to them and then move on. One potential remedy is an idea that I've been toying with: going a little deeper and beginning the creation of a zettlekasten, something like a personal knowledge wiki.

Why even bother? At my very core, I’m a learner. I love getting lost down rabbit holes. I care about building a diverse foundation of ideas. I want to know something about everything and everything about something (the latter is still undecided). But I’ve been turning over an idea lately. Knowledge — true knowledge — takes work. It takes process. We can’t just expect to handle the unending stream of information, consume it all, end up with wisdom. Wisdom requires applied knowledge and knowledge requires force applied to information. Something like a zettlekasten would be an opportunity to work with information and then network the resulting knowledge in a way that offers up new insights.

What would it look like? I'm not entirely sure. I have a collection of text files, notes from about 20 books I read in the last year or so, and an enormous Pinboard archive. One approach could be to be more forward focused and establish a process for dealing with incoming ideas while slowly working through the backlog, separating wheat from chaff, and connecting the ideas that rise to the top. I'm intrigued by the potential of using nvALT, a tremendous little plain text editor. More important than the tools, though, is the intention here to really dive into knowledge work.

I'm trying to figure out how to carefully and sustainably build upon my current understanding in ways that help me do what I do better and live a more meaningful life. At the same time, I want to run into the thicket of all the interesting ideas swirling around me and try to make sense of it all. Knowledge work in this sense is a lifelong balancing project of action and reflection and one that I hope keeps me sharp, curious, and excited.

Always We Begin Again

Much of living is just connecting ideas, knitting a patchwork of thoughts into something coherent so that we can navigate the day-to-day. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the fruitful tension between agnostic acceptance and active hope.

The idea of agnostic acceptance is best explored through an old fable. Go ahead and read it. It’ll just take a minute; I’ll wait.

Powerful stuff, right? The farmer carved out a space for tranquility: he decides what the world’s comings and goings mean and he decided that he doesn’t know what they mean just yet; he’ll reserve his opinion for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. In doing so, he created a bulwark against the changing tides.

The tranquility on offer in the throes of agnostic acceptance is a powerful tool to wield in a culture that constantly signals us to want more and to want better. From that space that we create by saying "I don't know yet what this means" we can view the promises of happiness if we just get the thing we are chasing with some skepticism.

At the same time, I want to be relentlessly open to the changing tide — and I want to be part of that change. It’s in my DNA to inquire into the nature of things and ask how we might do better. It’s a constant impulse, at times a noble and naive one, that has driven me to where I am today. I cannot simply say “We shall see” for I fear that in doing so I might lose the edge that pushes me to take part.

Some semblance of a resolution might lie in a benedictine phrase that I have kept close for many years: Always we begin again. Those words host the ideas of hopeful gratitude and fierce openness. Today, we begin again. Always, we begin again. There is an infinite possibility in now if you have opened yourself to it.

So I can work my way to the tranquility of the farmer, with his careful agnostic acceptance yet still unfurl my awareness in the present to what can be and take what action I can. We shall see yet always we begin again.

Commonplace Links #5

As there's no real theme to this collection, let's just dive in.

Walt Whitman on a playbook for life:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Says about all you need to hear, right?

Relatedly, check out Jedidiah Jenkins on awe:

The first and truest spiritual practice is awe.

Let awe be my religion.

On how to push progress in a city:

Baltimore has plenty of problems with many potential answers, but all of them start, Harris says, with talent — the brightest and the best, the kind of people cities like New York and San Francisco take for granted. As the CEO of Baltimore Corps, his budding operation of about a dozen full-timers, Harris plays matchmaker between civic-minded idealists and the local groups who could use their brilliance. They are a mix of homegrown Baltimoreans and those attracted to the fellowship’s aspirational pitch of “The best place in the world to change the world.” In two years, he’s placed 45 “fellows” in leadership roles. Roughly 75 percent of the fellows’ have their salaries paid by their employers, while the other 25 percent are paid by Baltimore Corps.

I love this approach. It's smart and inspiring.

Frank Chimero on the pencil:

The pencil is the great equalizer.

I'm a big believer in the analog amongst the digital.

James Shelley on writing as a way of life:

You should be gathering, organizing, and developing your knowledge on the topics you care about most, as if you are conducting the research for your magnum opus. Build your archives and give definitive (albeit tentative) shape to the schematics of your understanding: then, as you move through the world, you will be able to bring everything you come across into the ‘mental laboratory’ of your mind for analysis and investigation.

I'm working on this myself.

Seth Godin on projects vs. jobs:

Projects are open-ended, chosen and ours. Working on a project opens the door to possibility. Projects are about better, about new frontiers, about making change happen. When in doubt, dare.

It's so hard to break out of the job mindset, but when you do, the potential of projects can be refreshing.

Finally, can we ever get enough of Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese"? I don't think so. The first line:

You do not have to be good

The Post Game Debrief

Writing is often really just a way to get something to stop bugging me. It doesn't always work: even after writing a post, whatever led me to write can still linger and demand attention. Recently, I wrote about the importance of a growth mindset and that idea stuck around my mind and recalled some memories.

When I was younger, I played a lot of competitive soccer. My sister and brother did, too. We played different roles on the field during a match, but the scene afterwards looked the same for all of us: we would get into the passenger side of the car and immediately debrief the game we had just played. I know my mom took me to a lot of games, but in my mind's eye the scenes play out mostly with my dad in the driver's seat.

The self-critique was often just a move of self-preservation. We had learned that it was a lot easier to work through our mistakes ourselves than to suffer through a brutally honest analysis from our dad. He was never angry about results; he was exclusively obsessed with process. He only cared about whether we had tried and gave it our all. These debriefs, with their focus on the potential to improve, made us all growth-oriented as players. At the same time, they provided a space for recognition of effort and progress.

By the end of my soccer career, it wasn't uncommon for my dad to reply to my self-criticism with an "Ok", signaling that I had properly deconstructed the game. Sometimes he would interject and tell me that no, I gave it my all on a particular play and that I shouldn't beat myself up over it. Whether those conversations involved praise or criticism, the post game debrief became part of my ritual as a player.

Some of my proudest moments came not on the field but in the passenger side of the car. I wasn't the best player out there, but I fought some good battles during my time. Afterwards, I would hop in the car and not say a word because I knew I had nailed it and given it my all. In those moments, my dad's matching silence meant more than words ever could. The post game debrief had taught us all about effort, about growth, and about recognition of a job well done.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Rediscovering Grit and Growth

When I arrived at law school, I didn't quite know what to expect. There are no lawyers in my family; anything I thought I knew about the experiences ahead were things that I had read online and digested with a healthy dose of salt.

I quickly found out that I was drowning. This wasn't like undergrad where I studied the humanities. If you love reading and are willing to put the time into writing (that is, revising) then you do okay. I love reading and writing; as a result, I did okay.

Law school is different. It plays to some of my strengths as a reader and writer, but I often felt like I was being told to use a muscle that I had just learned I had. So much of the curriculum and the pedagogy that delivered it felt unintuitive and foreign.

Part of the feeling of drowning undoubtedly had to do with the quality of my peers. Graduate school is a filter and I've found myself among some interesting and sharp folks in law school. At times, I felt like an imposter, drowning in the shallow end. More than once I was the definitive dumb kid in the room, a surreal experience for someone who prides himself on being in the know.

I've completed two years of law school now. I've found that there is a surprising pleasure in drowning, but the reward of that pleasure requires a renewed focus on grit and growth.

By grit, I don't mean white-knuckling it. I mean persistence and resilience. Grit is the willingness to use deep work to push the mind to new and exciting places. Law is an epic story that rewards careful and interwoven thinking fueled by grit.

But grit has to be paired with a growth-mindset. The mindset is a commitment to the idea you are always in the radical process of becoming intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Imposter syndrome at its root has to do with a fixed-mindset: your perceived inadequacy in a particular moment is who you think you are. Embrace a growth-mindset and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Mistakes are just milestones.

We have to -- we get to -- make choices about who we want to be every day. Grit and growth. That's what I'm about these days. How about you?