☕ saturday mornings - June 18, 2022
new doors, dangerous routine & generating great ideas
Happy Saturday morning!
I hope you’re having a great start to your weekend.
What I’ve been up to:
I went to a Lumineers concert last weekend in Toronto. I'm not a huge concert guy but they put on quite a show.
I'm in the process of rebuilding my website. Once it's good to go, I want to begin sharing more from my website with you all. It's where I'll publish my longer-form essays (which take 20x more time than writing the newsletter) and summary notes for the books I've read. I want my essays to be "evergreen". Not relying on news or hype to get views, but rather focused on valuable ideas and deep-seated truths that are as relevant today as they will be in 10 years.
Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of the coolest things I’ve been pondering and exploring this week.
Thanks for being here.
✍️ Quote I’m pondering:
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
― Helen Keller
💡 Idea from me: The Danger of Routine
"Change breaks the brittle." – Jan Houtema
In 2017 Russell Westbrook was one of the best basketball players on the planet. He won the NBA MVP Award for the 2016–17 season and broke franchise records.
Every game day Russell would begin his warm-up routine exactly three hours before tipoff.
First, he warms up. Then, one hour before the game, Westbrook visits the arena chapel. He eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (always buttered wheat bread, toasted, strawberry jelly, Skippy peanut butter, cut diagonally). Exactly six minutes and seventeen seconds before the game starts, he begins the team’s final warm-up drill.
At the team's practice facility, Westbrook has a specific parking space, and he likes to shoot on Practice Court 3.
Westbrook played for the same team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, for 10 years. But, in the last three years, he's been traded three times.
All new cities. All new teams.
Since being traded, his performance has deteriorated. And with each consecutive trade, he’s gotten worse.
Last season, Westbrook averaged the fewest points since he entered the league at 20 years old. Criticism rained down. Fans thought he showed “little willingness to adapt”. Sports analysts hypothesized he had one of the 10 worst offensive seasons in the NBA. Ever.
A far cry from being the most valuable player in the league.
Dangerous Routines
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” – Charles Darwin
Nearly everyone has a routine. They provide structure and consistency to our day and reduce the need to make a million decisions. Routines can help us foster good habits and break bad habits.
The danger of routines lies in our dependency on them.
We don’t want our routines to create self-imposed punishments. If everything has to be a specific way or we’re completely thrown off track. If nothing can interrupt our routine or the day is ruined.
The reality is, like Russell Westbrook can tell you, life will throw you curveballs.
✍️My essay to check out:
Brilliance is a product of persistence. You have to work at something long enough to churn through your mediocre ideas before your best ideas appear.
📸Photo of the week:
On Sunday morning, I went to Metropolis Mercantile + Café in Newmarket, ON to get some weekend reading in.
It has to be one of the coolest coffee shops I've visited.
In the back, there are a few local artisan shops as well as a small bookstore. The owner created a "Philosopher’s Corner" - a table with a collection of high-quality philosophy books.
The vibes were immaculate.
That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.
If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you.
Reply to this email, leave a comment, or find me on Twitter @tommy_dixon_
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Have a fantastic weekend.
Much love to you and yours,
Tommy
A valuable lesson in developing anti-fragility. Routines aren’t inherently bad, but they shouldn’t consume you.
Just like we should endure periods without our vices, caffeine for example, we should experience periods with less structure to ensure we can adapt and perform.