Guiding Questions
What do I hope to achieve, here?
Whether I’m traveling or holding still for a while, asking myself why I’m where I am and what ambitions I have for my time in that place helps ground me and reminds me to establish some foundational tenets and rough routines for my time there: however much time that might be.
Thus, if I’m living in Prague for four months, I may make explicit my desire to see the local architecture, eat the local food, and finish writing the book I’ve been working on.
Such elucidations help me develop daily rhythms and routines, but also create guideposts and waypoints I can use as milestones and destinations.
I can then calibrate my compass appropriately from the beginning and, if warranted, recalibrate it along the way. I may discover some new, vital thing while in the area, and can incorporate it into my lifestyle by re-asking this same question periodically.
What’s the point of what I’m doing right now?
This question scales up to the size of a multi-year ambition and down to the scale of a momentary lark.
Sometimes I’ll become so embroiled in my plans and processes that I lose sight of the underlying purpose of that thing. As a result, I’ll deviate from the intended path, going with a flow that is not my own, and if I’m not careful, ending up someplace I didn’t intend to be.
This isn’t always a bad thing: sometimes allowing the current to take you where it will can land you someplace new and interesting that you wouldn’t have thought to go on your own, if you even knew it existed in the first place.
But this question can account for that, too, as it’s possible to answer, “I’m seeing where this leads and enjoying the journey,” which is a perfectly acceptable response.
Most often, though, I find this question helps me check in to make sure I’m spending my time, energy, and resources appropriately, gives me a periodic reason to assess the bigger picture beyond the trenches in which I’m toiling, and reminds me of the overarching purpose behind whatever it is that’s currently occupying my time and attention—shows me where my labor of the moment fits into the grander cultivation-schema.
Is this productive or unproductive?
The most common application of this question, for me, is in determining how I engage with other people; perhaps most especially how I respond to things other people say and do.
When someone says something hurtful, or ignorant, or wrong, there are times and places in which it makes sense to challenge them on those things.
There are other times, though, in which such a challenge would be personally satisfying, but otherwise unproductive: it might make me feel superior or like I’d achieved some kind of vengeance, but the person on the other end might then trust me less, desire vengeance in return, or feel diminished in a way that is punitive rather than productive.
Far better, in some cases, to do the productive thing, even if that productive thing isn’t as viscerally satisfying.
You have a better chance of maintaining a relationship and sharing information with someone if they don’t see you as a spiteful, hurtful person who only wants to tear them down, and you’ll be more likely to achieve productive ends—helping someone see things from another perspective, for instance—if you can sacrifice some reflexes in favor of achieving larger ambitions.
And that’s true whether we’re talking about interactions with other people, the way we do our work, or how we think our thoughts.
Productivity is defined by each of us, individually, and will mean very different things in every context we might assess. But pausing to remind ourselves of our intended outcomes can help us make better choices in the moment, making it more likely that such choices will bring us closer to our goals, rather than pushing those goals further out of reach.
I find myself asking these guiding questions a lot, as they consistently help me align my actions with my values, grow as a person, and shuffle ever-so-closer to a more ideal—based on my definition of the word “ideal”—state of affairs.
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If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.
This week back in 2016 I took a random trip to NYC from where I was holed-up (Memphis) working on then-new projects (like my podcast). It was nice having the chance to amble around without any real purpose; I miss that type of travel most of all, right now.
Projects
This week on Brain Lenses I published an essay about Choice-Induced Preference and a podcast episode about Insatiability.
This week’s episode of Let’s Know Things is about Workplace Politics, and tomorrow LKT patrons will receive a bonus episode about ISO 20022.
Interesting & Useful
Some neat things:
List of Physical Visualizations(a timeline of artifacts)
Make Someone(these people and the information about them are computer-generated)
Tiny Algae and the Political Theater of Planting One Trillion Trees(I like the outlook for algae for this purpose)
1960s Pepsi Commercial(food for thought: 16 oz used to be considered very big)
RMS’s 2020 “Weather Photographer of the Year” Award Winners(gorgeous, at times alarming photography)
Beautiful Paintings by Lisa Ericson(nature-inspired acrylics-on-wood)
Uplifting Stories(my friend Ione recently published this book and it is very uplifting)
Love People Use Things(The Minimalists have a new book up for pre-order)
For more interesting things of this kind, pop over to Curiosity Gadget.
While on that NYC trip, I gave an Instagram Stories tour of local museums—which is something I love doing wherever I find myself, and I cannot wait to start doing so again when travel is less risky for everyone involved.
Outro
Some things to keep in mind as we enter the Frantic, Sale-Laden, Buying-All-The-Things Holiday Season portion of the year:
You’re probably already good with what you’ve got, but companies/stores will do their best to convince you otherwise (because then you’ll give them your money).
If you see something that seems like it would add some value to your life, give yourself the opportunity to pause and coldly assess whether that’s actually the case. It may be that you’re just caught up in a heated, consumption frenzy—which happens to everyone, because the folks trying to sell us stuff are very adept at sparking that feeling. Stepping away from the situation for ten minutes or so should help the buying-adrenaline settle down a bit.
I personally find that giving myself that cool-down period almost always provides me with enough clarity to realize that I could be spending my resources on other, more important things that actually matter to me.
Remember that you are not your things, you quite possibly already have more stuff than you could ever use/need, and anything new you bring into your life is just one more thing you’ll need to store/clean/protect/psychologically carry. And all the money you spend on the things you buy is money you earned with your time and energy; the former of which is a finite resource you cannot get more of, no matter how much you pay.
Also: there’s nothing inherently wrong with stuff, and there are many things that could truly make your life a little bit better. But those things will be different for everyone, and chances are good that your resources would be more optimally applied to some other, you-specific thing (or experience), rather than whatever retailers are frantically peddling during this sale-cycle.
I bring this up because even folks who have lived out of a bag for more than a decade at a time sometimes struggle with consumption-based triggers, and I find that the above thoughts help me refocus my attention on things that will actually add value to my life, rather than those that will merely add bulk to my existing collection of possessions.
I can’t believe it’s already late-October—I feel like this month, and many of the previous ones, just blazed by when I wasn’t paying attention.
How’s your month been going? Working on anything interesting? Learn anything valuable? Make it through anything taxing, even if it isn’t obviously difficult or impressive from the outside?
How’re things looking from your perspective, right now?
I respond to every email I receive, so please feel free to drop me a line and tell me about yourself, what you’ve been up to, and how life feels at the moment.
Also: if you’re not doing so great, or not as great as you might prefer, that’s okay and normal and you’re not alone.
Everything’s weird and uncertain and things are scary and a lot of variables have been nudged out of whack—so you’re doing great just making it through the day. Keep doing the best that you can with what you’ve got: I’m rooting for you.
You can send me a message, if you care to, by responding directly to this newsletter or via colin@exilelifestyle.com.
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I’m also available via the usual social mechanisms: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and injected memories.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work by becoming a patron of my writing or Let’s Know Things, buying one of my books, or subscribing to Brain Lenses. You can also keep it simple and buy me a coffee.