Contemplating the Next Adventure, Part VI

I had a few people reach out to me over the last few months asking if there was anything practical I had picked up in my year of self reflection and self examination.

I am not sure if any of this is practical, but all of it was very useful to me. (your mileage may vary)

I am going to try to link these thematically, and provide some books I have read and other things I have consumed that I have found useful. Apologies in advance if this ends up being essentially a book report, as much of what I did over the last year, besides meeting with people and drinking too much coffee, was read.

To start off, while I did a lot of deep reading and reflection, the real ‘meat’ of the work was getting into a rhythm that made it easier to undertake all the self reflection.

This is the ‘training’ that helps to retrain the mind and increase focus. The mind is a curious thing, and it can be reprogrammed. If you want some background on the brain, I suggest watching The Mind Explained on Netflix. This entire series is a bunch of 20 minute videos that are like bites of candy. The ones that are most relevant are the ones on Mindfulness and Anxiety. The brain can be reprogrammed, and there is a way to do it.

First and foremost, I have been trying to be more ‘in the moment’ and intentionally practicing mindfulness. This is at the core of what I have been doing, and the work here influenced everything else (in a good way). For those that have been trying (and struggling) to start or maintain this practice, here are some of the things I have found that have worked.

I set up a meditation space. The way I did this was to use method described in the book Atomic Habits. The book is good, a short read, and makes sense.

There is a great breakdown of the book and it’s concepts in this excellent book summary by Sam Thomas Davies.

I was already doing most of the things in the book, but the framework he proposes is a really good one and makes it easier to have intention behind what you are trying to accomplish. The framework is —

Any habit can be broken down into a feedback loop that involves four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward.” “The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (1) make it obvious, (2) make it attractive, (3) make it easy, and (4) make it satisfying.”

So I -

1. set up a meditation space in my bedroom (made it obvious)
2. I made it nice to look at (make it attractive)
3. it is at the foot of my bed (make it easy)
4. Added a beeswax candle that I light when I meditate (make it satisfying)

Here is a picture of it.

On mediation itself, I tried Headspace but after the first week I actually found the voice distracting. I ended up settling on this iPhone app, called Box Breathing. There is a more complex one available in the app store, but this simple one does one thing.. which is display this —

Let your breath follow the inflation and deflation of the ball — after a few minutes you can close your eyes and just do it naturally.

I no longer need the meditation space. I can just open the app and do it anywhere (and now I don’t really need the app).

I have included the practice of mindfulness into my everyday life, so that it is integrated into all that I do, and not just a thing I do at a certain time everyday (though the focused sitting down part does help in the beginning to really get you started right).

To guide myself in how to do this, I read the excellent book Work: How to Find Joy and Meaning in Each Hour of the Day — by Thich Nhat Hanh. There are too many ‘goodies’ in this book to list, but it guides you through how to sit, walk, get dressed, etc. Sounds goofy at first, but it is actually really cool once you start doing some of the small things he suggests.

I have found myself more centered, more peaceful, and more resilient. I recover from stress much more easily than I used to. (a good thing)

On finding where I fit in the world.

Getting centered is allowing me to get into the headspace to explore where I fit in the world. I started this off in my first post with the concept of Ikagai

I have spent a better part of the last year pondering this question, and will probably spend the rest of my life pondering it. I found that reading Jerry Collanna’s book Reboot helped a lot. (note, if you get the book, get the audible, Jerry read it himself and it is one of the best audible readings I have had the pleasure to listen to).

After reading Reboot, I found myself asking questions and questioning my own bias. I (like everyone else is probably) was (and maybe still am) trapped in a mental model of having whatever the ‘next thing’ becomes be ‘bigger, better, more impact, etc..’

It pointed out to me that my model of what success is has been defined by others, that the social pressures and expectations I have put upon myself are a choice I have (unwittingly) made.

Reading it gave me the opportunity to accept that maybe my old Operating System needed an update and that my own definitions needed a rethink. I have been working on this. (I consider myself rebooted).

Getting Smarter

I had a lot of meetings and calls in the last year (over 400). I would break this down into about 2/3rds people I know, and 1/3 ‘new’ contacts made through intros from my network. I got a great deal of good feedback on what I do well, and what my strengths are.

Many commented on my mental agility and my ability to synthesize a lot of information and then reflect it back with unique insight or additional possible avenues of exploration.

My favorite piece of feedback was from my friend Adam DeGrandis, as he captured this ability in a supremely eloquent linked in recommendation -

“If creativity or imagination was a physical space, Joe’s would encompass an entire solar system instead of the normal 10 square miles. That’s not entirely rare. There are certainly other ultra-creative people in the world. What sets Joe apart from the rest is clarity; His ability to tap into any part of that space at will with laser-like precision. It makes him a force of nature during brainstorming. Solutions for any problem, rattled off like a machine gun, conveyed clearly and with a few bullet points included as if he had more time to prepare than everyone else.”

It is humbling to get such praise, and important because I don’t see it. To me, this is ‘normal’, it is the way I always have been, and do not recognize it as being ‘special’, but I have had many people that I have spoken to mention this quality as unique and that I stand out because of it, so I am taking note.

I am recognizing this aspect of myself and being intentional about cultivating it a bit more.

I have always been an avid reader, often reading 2–3 books a week (and also sometimes not reading for months at a time).

I like to read several books on one topic at once, so I get a full 360 degree view of a topic or concept. I am not finished with all of the books below, but I have taken the project to the extreme.

I am in the process of reading these three books, and I read a chapter of each and cycle from one book to the next. I was reading these in order to get out of the ‘reading rut’ I had been in, which had become very tactical, reading on marketing, business, fundraising, startups, etc, to the point where I was feeling like I was reading the same thing over and over.

I needed to get ‘meta’ and I really enjoy the larger concept of innovation and how it happens. If you want a high level primer, I would watch this BBC documentary on the Industrial Revolution .

there are three books, which are:

The Mysteries of Capital, How the West Grew Rich, and The Most Powerful Idea in the World. All three of these books unpack the Industrial Revolution in a different way, and reading them all gives you a very comprehensive view of ALL the different aspects of what made the industrial revolution happen, and it involved everything from the cost of shipping coal to the creation of strong intellectual property law.

I then read, How We Got to Now — which takes the meta concept of innovation and goes even more meta, and walks through several examples that really drive home the concept of the adjacent possible as it relates to innovation.

Reading all of those made my reading of Walter Issacson’s The Innovators all the more enjoyable, and in combination with my exploration into electronics, added layers of depth and history to this particular journey.

It was a full integration deep dive into innovation and every part of it informed the other, from the reading of the history of electronics to the making circuits with the chips designed by the people I was reading about.

I did not go so far as to make a steam engine in my garage (though I did contemplate it) — for safety reasons, I stopped short of going so far down the rabbit hole I would never find my way out (and perhaps turn into the weird bearded steam engine dude).

Tweaking my routine using life hacks

I have used the atomic habits framework to tweak my daily life quite a bit. Using simple methods, I have streamlined my daily life to where most of what I do is on cruise control — and for this I mean things like getting dressed, waking up, getting ready for work, shopping, etc.

I have created a system where most of that stuff just happens without me thinking about it, freeing me up to think about HOW I am doing it (the mindfulness practice). I feel like I have recaptured large amounts of time now that I am not spending very much mental energy on the simple things. I am not going to go into the minutiae (unless there is interest), but I have done a bunch of tiny ‘life hacks’ in many area of my life that have helped me to be more free, and given me the gift of allowing myself to be more present and thoughtful about just about everything.

Not sure where else to put this

I read Andrew Yang’s The War on Normal People , and then re-read The Lessons of History by Durant, and the two together painted a pretty dystopian image of where we are headed. I then read Factfulness, which rekindled my hope that we are not headed for certain doom.

It is clear it will take some work for us to chart a path forward, but I am feeling lucky to be alive at what appears to be a pretty important moment it human history.