Awareness, purpose, intention.
Some time ago, I shared my purpose to write about cognition as it appears in the wild. There's the academic study of cognition, but I want to bring forward how it shows up in how we engage it day to day. So these posts have the purpose to share my metacognition, that is, watching my own mind, and the minds of others at work and to offer those observations to you.
My intention for actualizing that purpose is to write a weekly post, with a small piece of metacognitive awareness. Included in that intention is to get some clear space every week inside my life that includes my spouse, my children and grandchildren, my roles as leader of two consulting organizations, and my having taken on responsibility for an antique house and 30 acres of Vermont land. The clear space has most consistently emerged early on Sunday mornings. Most mornings first thing, I head out to a local pool to swim laps. This results from the awareness two decades ago that if I were to maintain health and fitness in my elder years, it would only happen on purpose with intentional disciplines driving that purpose. Sunday mornings, the pool opens at 9am, three hours later than customary. Most weekends, that's a productive clear space for this thinking and writing.
Since it's also my intention to get advice and counsel in the development of these from Connor, Robert, and Susan, as well as an illustration from Robert, awareness dictates that waiting until Sunday to start a post to be delivered to your inbox on Tuesday is too precarious. My intention therefore, is that I will stay at least a week ahead so that the post you read would have been started the Sunday nine days before delivery with one already prepared and waiting for the day after tomorrow.
As good an intention as this is, I've struggled to find the two clear spaces necessary to get a week ahead. It has been effortful enough to make clear space for one post a week. To get a week ahead, there needs to be space in one week to write two.
Here you go. I wrote last week's and today's post the morning of May 11th. That required the force of attention and energy: the topic of next week's post.
At the same time, force wasn't enough. We often tell ourselves, we need to work harder. We need more discipline. Martin Seligman did research to dispel this notion that working harder, working smarter, being more disciplined -- whatever we think those things mean -- actually show up as making a difference in our performance. In fact, he observed, focusing on those things is demonstrably detrimental to our performance.
This post didn't get done with more work, more smarts, or more discipline. This happened without working harder, smarter, or with more discipline. Maybe it happened with less. I often slack, do stupid things, flake on responsibilities. In truth, all three showed up this weekend.
What I needed was clear space. It took the awareness that week after week, the intended clear space wasn't emerging naturally. It was the awareness that I had to allow clear space to emerge. That clear space happened when I allowed myself to be lazy, to flake on some responsibilities, and to redefine my stupidity as goofs, and forgive myself for them.
This post is the result of my lazy, flaky, and goofy weekend.
As was last week's post.
Life is full of paradox.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper