This evening I had a small altercation with my eight year old. It was nothing major. He refused to do his chores when it was clear that he wouldn’t get his turn on the Nintendo Switch since it was already bed time. He slammed the door and ran downstairs.
A few minutes later, I heard an object striking the door. Then another. I opened the door and saw him scurry away from the bottom of the stairs. Riled up, I marched down to his room and demanded that he clean up the toys he had thrown.
“There will be no turn at all tomorrow for you if you don’t clean up those toys!”
“I don’t care! I will never clean them up. I never want another turn ever!”
Thankfully, at that point I closed his door and went upstairs. A few minutes later, I heard something on the stairs again. I moved to the door and found it locked. As I unlocked it and went back down to his room, I was ready to law down the law. I planned to speak harshly and let him know what he had done was wrong.
As I entered his room, and looked at him, a distinct thought came to my mind. I realized that the tone of voice I was about to use would strike him as clearly as if I had hit him. I saw, not a disobedient troublemaker, but a young boy angry and disappointed.
Luckily, I caught myself in time. I spoke calmly to him, and told him that going up and down the stairs would keep his baby brother awake and I needed him to not do that.
I felt a great sense of relief. Hopefully next time I can remember the first time to avoid verbal violence.
📖 🎧 The War of Art
By Steven Pressfield
📖 🎧 The Dichotomy of Leadership
By Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
📖 First Meetings: In the Enderverse
By Orson Scott Card
📖 Ender’s Game
By Orson Scott Card
📖 A World Without Email
By Cal Newport
📖 James Herriot’s Dog Stories
By James Herriot
📖 Cat stories
By James Harriet
📖 🎧 Extreme Ownership
By Jocko Wilinks and Leif Babin
📚 The Tuttle Twins (all)
By Connor Boyack
Leather menu covers
My wife and I had lunch today at Maria Bonita, a delightful Mexican restaurant in a strip mall. We were on the way home from my therapy appointment and stopped to eat and chat.
The food was great, but that wasn’t my favorite part. The ambiance was charming and welcoming, but that wasn’t my favorite either.
I loved the menu. With all my heart.
More precisely, I loved the menu covers. They were thick, genuine, hand-sewn leather. They were soft and worn in with a beautiful patina.
When the server took our order, I asked if I could keep my menu. I set it on the table beside me so I could look at it and run my fingers over it throughout the meal. As Ferris Bueller would say, “It was so choice.”
I almost wish that I would have thought to take a picture of it. But I’m also happy that it didn’t even occur to me. I was so captivated that I was completely in the moment enjoying it.
When I turned to the back, I saw that it was made by Rustico, a small company specializing in fine leather products.
My wife got me a nice journal a while ago from them that I have recently rediscovered and have been loving:
At the restaurant, my wife told me it would not be appropriate to ask the server if I could buy the menu. At first she thought I was joking, but then realized I was seriously planning on it. Luckily she talked some sense into me.
I was struck by the joy a quality product brought me. That lunch was made so much more enjoyable by the presence of the menu.
My hope is to find and savor those moments more often. It is a happy way to live.
Holding fewer meetings
People at my work know that I am not a fan of meetings. I put together a presentation about communication principles and how we could have fewer meetings and be more productive.
Essentially, less of this:
And more of this:
We need to move away from group gatherings that often waste many people’s time, and embrace individual conversations and relationships.
Everyone maintains regular office hours: set times each week during which they’re always available via video conference, chat, and phone. During these times you can digitally stop by and chat without a prior appointment. (For more on office hours, see this excerpt from A World Without Email on the topic.)
If you have a topic you want to discuss with a group of your colleagues, instead of gathering them all together in a new meeting, you instead visit each of their office hours one-by-one to talk it through.
In many cases, these one-on-one conversations should be sufficient for you to reach a resolution on the issue, or at the very least, reduce it down to a very targeted set of questions that can be much more efficiently addressed.
There are so many things that we can and need to do in order to reduce the overwhelming number of meetings many of us participate in. This is a fantastic option.
📖 Star Wars: Darth Plagueis
By James Luceno
Looking for distraction
I have taken off my phone most of the apps that are endless scrolling, mind-numbing distraction apps. However, I still find myself getting out my phone and looking for distraction.
This time, when I caught myself, I decided I would write something instead. This is still a distraction of a sort, but a productive one. I always feel better after creating something, and often feel empty after mindlessly consuming.
It won’t always work to do a judo move on my brain and convert the distraction-seeking energy into motivation to produce, but I’m glad it did this time.
7yo: “The best tasting foods in the world are pizza, and watermelon, and broccoli. I love broccoli. Oh, and, um, shrimp. I really love shrimp.”
😂
One of the most helpful things I have been doing lately is to try to start the day with some unstructured writing in an actual notebook with an actual pen.
My one-year-old continues to teach me some of life’s most important lessons. Toddler tantrums
