#2020 word of the year#

####2019 reflection####

Before we get to 2020, let’s take a breath and look at 2019. The word of the year was “steady”, and mostly, I think I kept to that.

If you don’t go back and look at that post, steady was about doing things because of some intrinsic joy, in something like moderation, on a regular basis, and most importantly, without obsessing over it.

The analogy to a nice, easy, jog is apt. If you’re not running too hard, you often end up going farther and faster than you intended when you set out.

And indeed, looking back at 2019, I did and my family did go farther and faster than I think I bargained for. I knew, for instance, that the work on my career was going to lead me to a new role this past year. But what I didn’t think would happen would be to land what is essentially a dream job.

With reading, my goal was a modest 12 books, at a pace of around 25 pages a day. I largely kept to that pace, accumulating over 9000 pages in total and doubling the book count (24). This was enjoyable, and straining in a good way.

Likewise with academics - My idea of the timeline was largely adhered to, but it seemed to move by more quickly than intended.

Spiritually, dipping my toes back into Judaism as more than an idea of a religion has opened up a yearning for more Jewish ness. More Jewish spaces, more Jewish thought, more Jewish language. If, counterfactually, I hadn’t gone slow and steady to start, I likely would’ve belly flopped, sore and disappointed, out of that pool.

Physically, I’ve already surpassed the amount of meters rowed in the 2018-2019 season (seasons run May 1 to April 30) in the current season. I’ve also lost ~12 pounds in the last year, something I wasn’t specifically aiming for but does make certain things easier.

Even personally, allowing time to be a tactic has yielded results that I couldn’t force in my relationships. Like stalagmites forming in a cave, the steady drip of condensation is doing what sculptors can not. Steady, unshakeable, patience; learning to live in that has helped all of my relationships.

2019 was the year of the snowball. These might have started small, but have quickly gained momentum and arrived screaming down the hill with mass behind them.

###The word of 2020 is Important.###

Recall the Eisenhower Matrix: a two by two grid of urgency on the X axis and importance on the Y axis.

Things that are not important and not urgent you should not do.

Things that are important and urgent, well, you sort of have to do them.

The trick is in the other two quadrants.

There are two traps in this way of looking at things. The first trap is to fall in to doing things in the Not Important but Urgent quadrant. Ideally these are delegated away. But for people who like to feel busy, or conflate their personal worth with their productivity, this is a dangerous comfort zone. You end up spending all of your time putting out fires and none of your time on things that are, by definition, important.

Relatedly, the other trap is to put off what’s Important but Not Urgent for “Someday.” We all understand that tomorrow isn’t promised, and yet we do this to ourselves all of the time.

Instead, the right way to interpret and apply the Eisenhower matrix is to make as much space and as much energy available for the Important but not Urgent quadrant.

And that’s the focus of this year. With this massive avalanche of life barreling down the mountain, I’ve got to become very selective about what we do with it. Because it could destroy that thriving village at the bottom of the hill, or it could help feed into the river and the reservoirs. The aim is to not squander all of this advantage I’ve built, but to double down on the things that are actually important.

  • Spending lots of time with Felix.
  • Making lots of time for one on one connection with Meg.
  • Calling family and friends instead of messaging them through an app.
  • Making space for practicing Judaism - in worship, in service, and in community.
  • And of course, not just going through the motions with work or grad school.

In his book Digital Minimalism Cal Newport writes that one of the principles he things is part of digital minimalism is “Intention > Convenience”. When you think about it for a second, that is really just a reformulation of “Do the right thing, not the easy thing.” Not because the harder thing is always better, but because doing the right thing always makes things better for you in the long run. Even if you go to your deathbed with a few fewer regrets than the average person, that’s better. And that makes choosing worthwhile.

It means pruning away that which is not important, or more accurately, is a tradeoff I’m not willing to make right now.

For example, with health and well being, regular exercise is important. Adults should get between 75-150 minutes a week of vigorous activity a week, including 2 resistance training sessions, as a bare minimum.

But how that happens - how much it costs in time in particular - is really wide open.

For the first time in my adult life, I’m not financially constrained (I mean, with in reason here). I could afford a fancy gym membership. But when you factor in commute and changing time, and even the fog that comes from too fatiguing/difficult a workout, you quickly realize that the time cost becomes too great. So instead I have to prioritize more frequent, shorter sessions.

To make matters even more efficient, I can spend some of that money on some home equipment, which is part of the plan. Every minute I don’t have to spend walking, riding, driving, parking, waiting, changing, and swapping plates is a minute gained for the stuff I want to focus on this year. It helps that I’m not attached to any performance goals in that department either.

The key thing is I’m not stopping anything - but I do have to put it in to a box and be disciplined enough to stay inside those constraints.

It’s not permanent, it’s just what I need to have happen this year. It’s what needs to happen in order to spend the resources on the important things I listed above.

####The Intensity Spectrum Paradox####

One thing I want to underscore is that my approach is not really goal oriented. When Meg and I wanted to get out of debt, a key part of Dave Ramsey’s advice is to get “Gazelle Intense.” As in, to the exclusion of everything else, like a Gazelle running for its life from a Lion. There’s benefits to that; it worked to get us out of a lot of debt really quickly.

But there are drawbacks too; maniacal mono-focus is obsession, and when you’re done with one goal, your option is to… find a new goal. Think of people who run a marathon and then… stop running. You begin to feel like a hamster on a wheel less than a human being after a while.

It really is a case of the tortoise always beating the hare; slow and steady wins the race. But what if you’ve decided that this year is not about a race?

You need a different paradigm.

Instead, what I seek to gain - and how I seek to obtain it - is not through gazelle intensity. It’s not even through a steady, easy, jog. Ironically, it’s stillness that I seek and stillness that I’ll employ.

I also recently finished Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday. It’s his best book for a variety of reasons, but not the least of which is differentiating stillness from inaction. Stillness is cultivating the attention span needed to know when to act and when not to act. Stillness allows us to see what’s clearly important and to discern what is not clear. And stillness allows us to be ready, focused and present, when it is time to move.

The amount of activity I do (or don’t) in this coming year - books read, meters rowed, calls made, classes finished, etc. - doesn’t really matter. What will matter is the impact and meaning of those activities. Putting the word important at the center of my thoughts to return to will help keep me from confusing activity for progress and to help me from confusing progress with meaning.

It’s a paradox, but just because something is more efficient doesn’t automatically make it better. And just because something can be measured, doesn’t make it important. Not less is more; not more is more; but how do I see this thing in front of me for what it is. How do I find the inherent value and meaning in it, and how do I honor that? How do I express the immense gratitude for this body, this life, this day, and these people? And how do I do that even when it’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day?

####This is Water####

One of the ideas of Judaism that is both underrated and more nuanced than I’ll do it justice here, is the idea that you should be grateful to god for every. single. thing.

What the idea behind a blessing for everything is is that you can choose how you go through your day. You can choose very little, in my estimation, but most of the time you can choose this.

As David Wallace wrote in his famous Kenyon Commencement address,

“But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.”

That’s what we’re going for this year. I don’t want to go through every day of my life thinking about how much of a grind it is, or how annoying someone is, or so wrapped up in my selfishness and self-centeredness that I miss the extraordinary in the ordinary. When I’m talking about important, I mean capital I important.

#####Auld Lang Syne

What’s it all about? I don’t know. I don’t even really want to find out. It’s about old friends, and new friends, and that’s all that really matters.