☕ saturday mornings - March 26, 2022
questioning beliefs, work-life seasons & no man's land
Good morning all!
Happy Saturday. I hope you’re having an excellent start to your weekend.
Below is your edition of “saturday mornings”, a weekly recap of the coolest things I’ve been pondering and exploring this week.
Heads up, I think this is my favourite newsletter I’ve ever written. Let me know if you think the same.
Thanks for being here.
Total read time (bolded sections) = 2 minutes
Total read time (all) = 6 minutes
✍️ Quote I’m pondering:
"We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”
― Orson Scott Card
💡 Idea from me: Work-Life Seasons
"Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved 'work-life balance.'"
― Oliver Burkeman
Work-life balance is a myth. We were all lied to.
Have you ever felt balanced?
In our attempt to balance the unbalanceable, we create unnecessary stress in our lives.
Even when I’ve gotten close to achieving work-life balance, I become restless. Balance is boring. The most meaningful periods of my life came from being fully immersed in a challenging project.
Evolving technology has placed a premium on learning challenging, specific skills. Climbing steep learning curves, Robert Greene explains, “is dependent on the intensity of our focus".
Yet work-life balance promotes the opposite of focus. Focusing on everything at once means focusing on nothing.
Fear not. There's a better path.
Work-Life Seasons
"Life is a series of seasons, and what works in one season may not work in the next. What season are you in right now?"
― James Clear
What if, instead of viewing life as an exercise in balancing everything, we looked at our lives as a series of seasons?
Work-Life Seasons is a new approach. Instead of trying to balance work and life equally, you alternate focus between your different roles.
Some seasons may entail working heads down on a creative project to meet a deadline, while others may revolve around connecting with family and rekindling relationships with friends.
In "Four Thousand Weeks" Oliver Burkeman explains that because balancing everything is impossible, you should allow yourself to "fail on a cyclical basis".
Instead of seeking the elusive work-life balance, you are "consciously imbalanced."
What does this allow you to do? Focus.
Focus is a force multiplier. Instead of trying to progress on everything all the time, which often results in progressing on nothing, you prioritize certain goals based on the season you’re in.
When your focus in one area is linear, the results are exponential.
You can make rapid progress on a project, but when you take your foot off the gas the results don't disappear.
If I spend six months lifting weights like Arnold Schwarzenegger and eating 500g of protein, I don't lose all my muscle when I transition to working out 2x a week. I can now do the bare minimum and maintain my results.
Work-Life Seasons allow you to make leaps and bounds in work while taking the required time to relax and unplug.
"Learning how to engage work-rest cycles,” Andrew Huberman writes “creates an outsized effect on productivity and health. Learn to toggle between focus and rest."
Tim Ferriss frequently engages in "mini-retirements" where he strategically takes his foot off the gas, and "alternates between intense periods of work with extended periods of — for lack of poetic description — unplugging and fucking around."
He's found periods of intense work followed by serious relaxation to free up bandwidth and be restorative. Whether you're working or relaxing, you're able to be fully present, as you know what season you are in.
By approaching life with a Work-Life Seasons mentality, you can 10x productivity while carving out time to recharge.
A seasonal approach to life is how you discover balance between work and play, reaping the rewards of alternating your focus between productivity and rest. Paradoxically, from consciously being unbalanced.
💡 Idea from me: Avoiding No Man’s Land
No Man’s Land was a term coined in World War 1.
It was the narrow, muddy, treeless stretch of land between German and Allied trenches. No Man’s Land, said poet Wilfred Owen, was “like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.”
It was the single most dangerous place to be on the battlefront. You were neither behind the safety of your own trenches nor attacking the enemy in their trenches.
No Man’s Land was the last place you wanted to be.
That was over 100 years ago. Yet, many of us get caught in our own version of No Man’s Land.
Facing the inevitable
We all have conflicting wants. Different parts of us want different things.
Tim Urban categorized and illustrated this concept with his ‘Yearnings Octopus’. We all have our own ‘Yearnings Octopus’ in our heads.
Each yearning (on each tentacle) is completely distinct from the others and often in conflict with the other yearnings.
Often, we believe we can meet all our wants. Thus saving us from having to make difficult decisions about what is important and what isn’t.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Our conflicting wants can create pain if we’re not aware of them.
Simple example. In the morning, I enjoy time to read and write, but also don’t want to get less schoolwork done.
But, I can’t do both at the same time. I can take 3 hours to read and write. Cool. But by making that decision, I’m consciously choosing not to do school work and will therefore have less time for school.
What do I want more? Why do I think I should be able to do both?
It sounds silly. But before becoming aware of this trade-off, I felt like I was psychologically stubbing my toe. Every day.
Different parts of me wanted each thing.
The Danger of No Man’s Lan
For years, I tried to do everything, to avoid prioritizing my wants and making difficult decisions.
Here’s the problem. You can’t satisfy conflicting wants at the same time. When you try to do both, you do neither.
I remember taking my laptop to my living room and trying to study for a midterm while hanging out with friends. I didn’t consciously decide which was more important: quality friend time or a good grade.
The result? Half studying, half talking to friends. I was distracted enough by friends to not get any good studying done but was focused on studying enough to not enjoy the company of my friends.
By trying to do both, I failed at both.
The Niche-Slapping Fallacy is used in entrepreneurship for the belief that "if I pursue all of them one of them will work out”. It’s a fallacy. In reality, all of them could work out but none of them will work out if you pursue them all.
This point hurt but also blew my mind.
These decisions show up all the time. On a daily basis. Our conflicting wants don’t sleep.
Do you want to save money or enjoy the convenience of take-out?
Do you want to make a good investment or buy your dream home?
Do you want to be a responsive partner or be 100% focused at work?
Do you want to get promoted or have all weekend off to relax?
Humans are incredibly powerful. When you set your mind to something, you can have it. But you can’t do everything. You have to pick.
You want really good grades? Cool. You can certainly do it. But you can’t beat yourself up for not having as much time with friends. You decided that good grades are more important than social time.
When you accept decisions have trade-offs it removes the pain from the decisions we make. We’re consciously aware of what we’re choosing and we understand what that entails.
This change of scope has been the single biggest positive change in my thinking this year.
Avoiding No-Man’s Land
Through untangling our wants, like the tentacles of an octopus, we can find clarity with the decisions we make.
Define your priorities. Become aware of the trade-offs in each decision you make. Then own your choices.
It’s part of life.
When faced with conflicting wants I ask myself “what is the ultimate thing I’m trying to achieve?”
Once I define what is more important I’m able to accept the inevitable tradeoffs of my actions with clear eyes. I know I value reading and writing more than schoolwork … so I wasn’t as frustrated with falling behind on schoolwork. It was part of the deal.
The trade-offs become less painful. It becomes part of getting what you want.
You’ll avoid the dangerous place of indecision, where you try to do two things and end up doing neither.
You’ll avoid the bombshells and carnage of No-Man’s Land.
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That’s all for this week’s edition of “saturday mornings”.
As always, if you have any feedback or thoughts, I’d love to hear from you.
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Have a fantastic weekend.
Much love to you and yours,
Tommy
Interesting to me as a 56 year old father of 3, professional job, owner of houses and coach and athlete and friend, son, brother is that real life is the octopus, with its many tentacles. As you choose big things (job, marriage, kids) you must be willing to shrink your personal self / ego for the well being of those things that you choose that are bigger than you. There are few to no opportunities for this optimal work/rest paradigm. Duty to others trumps all, especially if you choose to honour your big choices, the long term ones, the ones that really matter. You certainly don’t want to find yourself in no man’s land. So choose wisely, young Jedi.
Super relatable! Have definitely thought about this problem myself, and love how you're taking the problem on from different angles. Another James Clear concept I loved was the embracing constraints - e.g. if I gave myself only 30 minutes each day to get an 80/20 outcome in health or relationships, what actions would be most impactful