I get frustrated when it becomes apparent that my hard-won knowledge had a limited lifespan. I’m left trying to pound square pegs into round holes.

Take goal-setting for example; in the beginning of my journey I had no knowledge about how to set goals, later I learned how to set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timebound) goals—although I didn’t learn it in one tidy session—and these days I really struggle with the fact that SMART goals no longer work for me.

So in general then that’s: start with an unknown-unknown, learn (the hard way) through direct experience, master some new skill, and then grow to no longer need that skill. That’s four separate phases, each requiring actual effort to transition. In recent years I’ve been really frustrated that all my goal setting knowledge was no longer working to move me forward. I’ve been stuck in that fourth phase.

When you already know how to perform a given task, your goals should be challenging, not ‘achievable’ or ‘realistic’

~ Christian Swann, from So-called ‘SMART goals’ are a case of style over substance

I’d never seen that distinction before. But yes, why should I think that one style of goal setting should work in all situations?

While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have. […] Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality. There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.

~ Robert Greene

Slow down, Craig! Better wisdom for myself I cannot distill. Because I’m convinced that there isn’t anything left that I should be trying to “fix” about myself.

Which is why executive dysfunction or “akrasia” should not be treated by default as a difficulty that needs to be overcome. Instead it can also be a signal from one or more of your parts that the path you’re on is not the right one for you, and that you might benefit from searching for other, better roads, or even goals.

~ “DaystarEld,” from Executive Dysfunction 101

That sequence of posts is an exceptionally analytic way of thinking about executive function. I much prefer a softer, just-slow-down, simply-be, way of thinking about that material. But, sometimes it’s useful to walk all the way around the table to look at something from a wholly different perspective.

Gnosce teipsum—know yourself. Know yourself in relation to your overt intentions and your hidden motives, in relation to your thinking, your physical functioning and to those greater not-selves, who see to it that, despite all the ego’s attempts at sabotage, the thinking shall be tolerably relevant and the functioning not too abnormal.

~ Aldous Huxley

I know myself pretty well. There are things which trigger me. There are situations which rile me up. There are also the opposite: Things and situations and activities and people who calm me down and allow the color to come into the world. When I’m on the wrong side of that balance, it’s always my fault for staying in the wrong balance.

But few of us will be so lucky. Most of us will have to build our cottage from scraps, and a good bit of it will need to be virtual. When I sit down in a chair with a book in my lap, a notebook at my side, and no screens within reach or sight, I am dwelling in my attention cottage. Sometimes even these resources can be hard to come by: In The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction I wrote about scholarly children from big noisy families who developed the skill of surrounding themselves with a “cone of silence.” You do what ya gotta do.

~ Alan Jacobs, from The Attention Cottage

Sometime I really do daydream about building a literal, tiny cottage in the backyard into which I could retreat. But always instead I form some conceptual cottage around me. I hadn’t realized that’s what I was doing until I read Jacobs’s description. But that’s what I’ve long been doing.

A chair set just so in a room. Fingerless gloves and writing in the chill air of a drizzle-grey day. Sat in the sun with a book balanced on my knee. A chair on a beach with toes in the sand.

That I matter, that my life demands the ceaseless attention I give it, is exactly what those genes would have any organism believing, if that organism was evolved enough for belief. The will to survive evolves, in a higher creature like us, into the will to matter.

~ Rebecca Goldstein

I definitely agree about Goldstein’s “will to matter.” But alas, I must question whether it’s true that we are unequivocally the higher creatures. Sure, sometimes it’s clear, but there are times when some comparatively simple creatures also seems to have it all figured out.

Take this little tree for example:

The beau­ti­ful bon­sai tree pic­tured above–let’s call it the Yama­ki Pine Bonsai–began its jour­ney through the world back in 1625. That’s when the Yama­ki fam­i­ly first began to train the tree, work­ing patient­ly, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion, to prune the tree into the majes­tic thing it is today.

~ From This 392-Year-Old Bonsai Tree Survived the Hiroshima Atomic Blast

All through the writing of this issue, I’ve had the Pascal quote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” bouncing around in my head. Because, sitting quietly in a room alone sounds just about like heaven to me. I love to engage and quest and be curious, but my happy place is quiet and peaceful.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

(And I hope you had a quiet spot for your reading this week.)

ɕ