Sunday night. Once again I had more ambition than I had weekend. I've gotten used to it. Every day I have more ambition than I have day -- even starting and ending in darkness. Twenty-five years ago I realized I had more ambitions than I had lifetime. I still do. I find it energizing.
What makes it energizing, and not discouraging or anxiety making, is that my job every day isn't to get things done. It's to use my life's force to its optimum. Last week's post talked about ambition mediated by metacognition. To use our life's force to its optimum, what we actually do all day every day is to explore and learn our life's force and aim it at the things that our soul cares most about.
For now, I'm going to define, soul, as that state of feeling most alive.
Metacognition allows us to explore and learn our life's force and uncover what our souls care most about.
Train your metacognition to identify your place of optimum meaning and discipline your cognitive processes to get you there. It's a rigorous and relentless process of wrestling your highest values into day-to-day action.
Every day, become more aware of how you spend your time. Look at an upcoming day this week. Fill the day's calendar with your best intentions for the day. We call this anticipation. Then, on the day, keep a running log of what you actually did. We call this activation. The following day, compare what actually happened to what you thought would happen. This is reflection.
The goal isn't to make your activation a perfect match to your anticipation. The goal is to learn from how life actually showed up, against what you thought would show up.
Often it's useful to narrow the focus to a single period of time, say, Thursday 10 to 11. Pick an important task you want to engage. Identify some specific actions you will take at that time to move that task forward. Imagine doing the task. Imagine what will compete for your attention, Thursday between 10 and 11.
When Thursday at 10 arrives, log what actually happens between 10 and 11.
On Friday, compare the difference.
What are you learning about your life's force? What are you learning about the work necessary to get your highest values into day-to-day action?
What are your highest values?
I'm a soft touch for an old song, Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Written in the middle of WWII when uncertainty was no less real than ever, but harder to deny, the poignant lyric, "until then we'll have to muddle through somehow," always gets me. Recently, Lauren Wilmore's version is my annual favorite.
As sweet as that is, I didn't get out of bed this now Monday morning to muddle through. I'm wrestling my highest values into this action to produce this post. I hope it's meaningful to you.
The rest of the day, I plan to take on the energizing work of engaging the things that make me feel most alive. I'll get wrestled to the mat a few times. And I'm aware someday -- someday soon? -- I won't get back up.
Until then, I have no plan to muddle through.
Next week:
What it could look like to apply close metacognition, that is, thinking about your own thinking, to what shows up, from the highly specific sampling of task periods, to incremental increases in time horizon: task period, day, week, and three-weeks, forty days, one quarter, one year, one life.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
Have yourself a merry little Christmas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Yourself_a_Merry_Little_Christmas
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