Mitchell Joe

We went to the snow this week and my 2-year-old was too scared to go sledding. 

It didn’t matter that the slope wasn’t even as steep as playground slides that she likes to go down at home. 

It didn’t matter that her 5-year-old brother wasn’t afraid of it. 

It didn’t matter that her mother and I knew that she wouldn’t get hurt. 

Her perception was that it was dangerous. 

You can’t argue with that.

One of my New Year’s resolutions for this year is to keep my living and work spaces cleaner and tidier and to declutter. I have seen the benefits of it and have wanted to do it for a long time but it conflicts with my inner packrat that knows that almost everything could be just what I need someday in a certain situation. But today I’m taking the first step of committing to neatness. I think that must be the first step in every successful journey—knowing your destination. Neatness, here I come!

This year (2020) one of my New Year’s resolutions was to write a blog post daily for a year. I did it. Today’s the last day. I’m glad I did it and I’m glad I’m done. Just like a marathon. 

It’s been fun and rewarding but I’ve decided not to do it again next year. There were too many times when it felt forced and like I didn’t have anything worthwhile to say. And too many times when I thought my 10-15 minutes could be better spent doing something else. 

Here’s what I took away from the experience. 

• Commitment to act is important – Part of the reason I chose writing daily blog posts as a resolution was that it was measurable. It would be very clear if I reached the goal or not. There were many, many days this year that I would not have written a post if I hadn’t agreed to it at the beginning of the year. 
• Reflecting brings reflections – I did enjoy reflecting on my days and my life and found that I had new, helpful thoughts when I sat down to reflect for a minute. Blogging daily made me have thoughts that I otherwise would not have had. And I’m a fan of the idea that we should all go to bed a little smarter than when we woke up. 
• I enjoy writing – I was reminded how much I enjoy writing, and I do plan to keep writing. 
• I enjoy writing in larger chunks as part of bigger projects – I found that the parts of the blog that I enjoyed writing the most felt more like short books than one-off blog posts. Writing short pieces with a larger theme is more rewarding than writing short pieces without a larger theme. 
• Work is more effective and less stressful when planned and done in advance – The times I enjoyed writing the blog the most was when I had it planned out and written in advance. I felt the quality was higher and it was definitely less stressful not writing it the day of. That said, I did sometimes enjoy the real-time improvisation of writing about something that came into my head only earlier that day. 
• You are affecting people in ways that you might not realize – I have some evidence throughout the year that the number of people reading and enjoying the blog posts was larger than the number of people liking and commenting on the Facebook posts. I think this is just a nice way to realize that whatever you do—whether it’s write a blog post, hold the door open, offer a compliment, or forgive and forget quickly—your actions are likely having a larger effect than you realize. 

If you are looking for a blog to read daily in 2021, I highly recommend Seth Godin’s blog. (https://seths.blog/)

I recently had some back pain and bought a new chair that looks more like a pogo stick than a chair. It has just one main leg and intentionally wobbles easily with your movement to keep you moving. It works pretty well and one other factor is that it’s a little uncomfortable. This is actually a good thing because I’m trying to sit for only 10-15 minutes at a time and a sore butt is a very effective reminder to stand up.  

If you want to keep moving, keep having new thoughts, keep being reminded of your comfort zone and your discomfort zone, then get an uncomfortable chair.

There’s conventional wisdom, and there’s unconventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is given to you. Unconventional wisdom is discovered—by you. Or people like you. Question conventional wisdom. That’s what leads to better wisdom. It will feel uncomfortable, because how could everyone before you be wrong? But it’s worth doing. It’s the only way forward. You’re in the position to know all of the conventional wisdom and then add some of your own wisdom. Go make things better.

I still remember verbatim a comment from my tutor in my first college philosophy course: “I would encourage you to explore what I suspect might be a talent for philosophy.” It was followed by a disappointing “B+”. Never mind. I held on to that little bit of encouragement and ended up majoring in philosophy, getting a Masters with distinction, and a scholarship to do a Ph.D. in philosophy, where I met other people who thought I had a talent for philosophy. It all started with just a little bit of encouragement. I still remember the first and last name of that tutor and I am pretty sure that if you told him my first and last name right now, he would say, “Who?”.

Seth Godin, a man whom I have never met, writes a popular daily blog and encourages everyone else to do so too. He wrote that in one of his blog posts. I ended up taking him up on that this year. He just put it out there, encouraging everyone on planet Earth to do it, and I thought, “Yeah, that does sound like an interesting idea. I’ll do it.” Thanks for the encouragement, Seth. 

A little encouragement goes a long way. 

Encourage someone who might need courage. Who can you encourage? 

What will they do? And what will what they do do?

I had always thought of the domino effect as a chain of linear cause and effect events. And I think that is what it means. But when I saw this gif below, it occurred to me that there is another type of domino effect, the domino snowball effect, the exponential domino effect. 

Now you have even more reason to tip over some of those first small dominoes. 

Think of what it could lead to.