#52: Habits, Projects, Practices 🔧
focused on finding the balance between focus and non-focus
I’m currently living in Lake Tahoe in a cozy cabin with six other people. We coordinate the shuffling of our four cars in our active group chat. When we first moved in, with all of our ski gear and our respective grocery hauls, fitting all the perishable goods into the fridge was like a game of 3D Tetris. It’s nice that non-perishables can go anywhere, but that also means they end up literally anywhere. I stashed three boxes of La Croix next to my ski boots inside the under-the-staircase Harry Potter closet. Fortunately, we haven’t had any lines (yet) for the bathroom.
A certain amount of chaos is to be expected when sharing a home. Ski and snowboard boots line the wall. Leaving them in the mudroom would render them too cold and stiff to put on. After a big powder day, gloves, goggles, and balaclavas are strewn by the fireplace. For over a week, we had a mountain of cardboard boxes piling up in in the living room until I finally got fed up and took them to the dumpster. By day, the dining room table serves as an open office and by night, it gets converted back to a place of gathering. But sometimes the transition isn’t so smooth and I end up eating dinner with the back of a monitor next to my face.
Chaos aside, co-living comes with its benefits. Last night, we played an intense round of Monopoly Deal. One of the housemates doubles as our resident DJ. I borrowed a wrench to fix the armrest of my tattered chair that I brought from home. On weekends, we carpool to the ski resort. We have our own cars, but sharing a ride makes the drive feel less like a commute and more like an adventure. The possible culinary creations are endless from everyone bringing their favorite 3-5 sauces and seasonings.
Beyond my living situation, I’ve been trying to find the optimal amount of chaos vs. structure. After a full year on sabbatical, I’m at the start of what feels less like a sabbatical and more like a transition. Transition to what? I’m not sure. Change is on the horizon, so I’m taking the time to reevaluate the way that I do things. When it comes to allocating attention, I’m focusing more and exploring less. Since my work is inherently open-ended, I’m shifting an emphasis on performing actions over achieving objectives. I’m also updating my habits and projects and working on knowing the difference between the two. Both are useful tools, but address different problems. Most importantly, I’m cultivating a set of practices. Instead of directly fixating on tangible results, I’m trying to create the conditions for great work to emerge.
Explore vs. Exploit
Henrik Karlsson’s latest blog Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on, offers his own take on the explore vs. exploit problem.
I would divide the next 30 months into three parts. For the first ten months, I would allow myself to explore freely. After that, I’d switch to exploring 2/3 of the time and using 1/3 to double down on the most interesting opportunity I had found, then I’d do 1/3 exploring and 2/3 exploiting, and so on.
For my sabbatical, I certainly did not set an arbitrary amount of time like 30 months. I didn’t have the desire to follow an algorithmic, tops-down approach. But I also lacked the foresight to even begin thinking in this way. Which is why it’s fascinating that our timelines match so closely. From January to October last year, I was exploring. I experimented with new projects and literally traveled a lot too. Then at the ten month mark, after a flurry of clarity, I decided to double down on my climate newsletter. I’m now in the second ten month period and find myself wanting to explore less. I’m no longer as interested in taking on new projects, traveling to new places, or experimenting with new routines.
Three ten month chunks is nice and simple, but I assume Henrik did not intend for people to follow it as doctrine. The answer to whether you should be exploring or exploiting, like many things, is it depends.
The amount of exploration that is optimal depends on the complexity of the problem and the time horizon.
The variable of complexity explains why being on sabbatical often means exploring openly and wandering aimlessly. What could be more complex (and important) than the questions that emerge while on sabbatical? Questions like “What type of work do I feel called to?” “How do I want to spend my days?” “What kind of life do I want to live?”
I spent a lot of 2023 exploring these questions. While I’m still exploring more than exploiting, the flavor of exploration has changed. I used to be primarily curious about ideas. I wanted to know everything and that meant consuming vast amounts of information. By no means am I claiming to have exhausted the list, but I do think there is some truth to the idea that there are only so many good ideas. Instead of roving the universe of ideas, I’m exploring the world of people. I want to meet people who are curious about the same questions and view the world with the same color tinted lens.
I’ve started to shift more of my time to existing projects, but it still feels like I don’t have enough time. Since the start of my sabbatical, I’ve always had multiple projects going on at once. The plural nature has never felt like a limiting factor, but I sense that it may not hold for much longer. To the untrained eye, my calendar can accommodate everything. However, all the context switching makes my mind is riding a unicycle across a tightrope while juggling bowling pins.
Rather, it seems like our achievement budget is a function of the number of priorities we have. Interestingly, it seems to be a nonlinear function. Meaning that if you go from 4 priorities to 3, you can get, say, 10 percent more done; but if you go from 4 to 1, you get 400 percent more done.
My biggest fear is that I will achieve everything that I want, but only at the surface level. With any craft, there is a certain depth that I’m aware exists, that I don’t yet have. It’s apparent in how elite performers who have achieved mastery carry themselves. This shift from effortful, conscious competence to effortless, unconscious competence demands focus.
So cutting priorities means you work even when it looks like you’re not working. These days, I’ll spend the afternoon playing with the kids, doing the dishes, repairing the houses—being busy in a mind-clearing way. Then, when I sit down to write the next morning, I can type 700 words without thinking. The ideas have been churning in my head, just below the surface of conscious thought, and come fully formed.
Actions vs. Achievements
I’ve written before about progress without plans. By living one good day at a time, you’ll make continuous progress even in the absence of tangible goals. By focusing less on outcomes and more on process, you’ll not only focus on what’s actually controllable, but also avoid achieving the wrong goals.
Since then, I’ve refined my beliefs after reading Satisfaction and progress in open-ended work by Andy Matuschak. When I was exploring freely, I avoided setting goals and coming up with milestones. But now I think there is a place for achievements to serve as guideposts. With how much self-assessment there is in open-ended work, having some medium-term waypoints to aim at could serve us well.
For more open-ended problems, much of the challenge lies in figuring out what to do next. These rich questions offer deep satisfaction on longer time scales, but without a clear sense of progress, each day ends ambiguously. Was today good? Will these tinkerings add up to anything? In what timeframe? Who knows. Ultimately: what structures around progress, self-correction, and operations can help us in open-ended mode?
There’s a nonlinear timeline of effort when it comes to my open-ended work (and maybe all creative work). I’m not a factory worker looking for defective product or a salesman trying to hit a quota. I have to sit down, try to start writing, actually start writing, and see what emerges. On some days, nothing happens. On other days, everything appears at once. Because of the unpredictable nature, I end up frustrating myself when I set short-term goals like writing an entire blog in a day or trying to meet any self-imposed deadline.
In open-ended work, goals around a single day’s outputs are misleading or ambiguous, but goals over weeks and months are more concrete. A graduate student may not know exactly what to do on a given day, but they know that their thesis is due in six months. An artist may not know what to do on a given day, but they might know they’d like to have a gallery show by the end of the year.
Like the graduate student or the artist, I have no idea what to do on a given day, but I do have a sense of where I want to be in a year. My goals aren’t as concrete as delivering a thesis or putting on a gallery show, so I treat them as approximate goals. Rather than framing my desired achievements as targets, I see them as buoys.
Targets, or goals, are clearly accomplished or not. They’re either achieved on time or not. Buoys, on the other hand, are gentler future anchors. They serve as waypoints, not as finish lines. It matters less how close I am to the buoy, as long as I’m heading in the right direction.
I like framing achievements as buoys because it fits closer to the reality of my work. I often don’t know where a project is headed. Therefore I can’t pinpoint a precise date that it’ll get completed. Admittedly, this approach works because being independent doesn’t come with strict timelines, unlike driving a school bus, consulting, or cleaning toilets in a busy office building.
Even with these new anchor points that I’m steering towards, I’m still mostly input driven. I still stand by what I wrote in Chainsmoking Good Days. A good life is the sum of many good days. A good day consists of utilizing my mind, moving my body, and listening to my soul, with the people that I love. Whether you want to call it a daily set of practices, the non-negotiables, or the invariants, I’m still just building a foundation with my set of good day building blocks.
Habits vs. Projects
To complement my new no-deadlines mantra and ensure the work gets done, I’ve been trying to build new habits. I even got this habit tracking app called Streaks. It’s the first paid app ($5) that I’ve downloaded in years, and it’s kicking my ass. It’s incredibly simple and gamifies the entire experience with animations, sounds, and a little number that tracks the number of days in a row that you’ve done a habit. Out of the five habits I’m trying to form, there’s only one habit (daily exercise) with 17 under it. The others have 1, 2, or 3 under them. I’m trying to go to bed around 10pm and wake up around 6am. I’m also trying to read a book and stretch everyday and it has been a struggle.
Still, trying to instill these new habits feels less overwhelming than taking on new projects. Habits don’t require complex thinking or planning and also don’t have the same time requirements as projects. There’s less capacity for projects because they demand a different type of time. We must devote active, high performance time to our projects, for example during morning deep work sessions. But we also have a finite amount of time for non-conscious, mind-clearing work like doing the dishes which allows Henrik to crank out 700 words in the morning.
As I navigate this next transition, I’m trying to discern whether something is better suited as a habit or a project. According to Scott Young, author of Ultralearning, the answer is to employ both.
As tools, habits and projects coexist nicely. If you have a goal to write a book, the daily rituals involved in writing can be routinized. But you must recognize that the deep thinking and planning needed to write well can’t be automated. Good authors learn to combine both. They regularly set aside time to write. And they don’t kid themselves that writing a book is effortless, something they can churn out without much thought.
Every blog can be thought of as a project, but it’s also a manifestation of my prior days’ habits. For example, this blog mentions three essays I read in the past week from Henrik, Andy, and Scott. Without my existing daily habit of reading other people’s blogs, this blog wouldn’t have been written.
Habits are plenty for some goals, but others will need projects. I might set a goal of exercising daily—if I stick to it for long enough, it can eventually become an automatic behavior. But if I decide to run a marathon for the first time, it will likely require more than just my daily jog. If I want to win the marathon, I will need a lot more than just a habit.
The dichotomy of daily exercise and running marathons shows when a habit is sufficient or when a project is needed, but what about things that are as hard as marathons that we also want to do everyday? They’re too complex for habits, but also too vital to start and stop like projects.
Habits, Projects, Practices
I do things that I can’t characterize as a habit or a project. Writing, for example, is a core part of me. Writing is an extension of myself that I do often enough without wanting to stop that I can’t it a project. It’s rewarding, but too difficult to call a habit. It’s more like a practice. In Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield makes the distinction:
What is a practice anyway? To “have a practice” in yoga, say, or tai chi, or calligraphy, is to follow a rigorous, prescribed regiment with the intention of elevating the mind and the spirit to a high level. A practice implies engagement in a ritual. A practice may be defined as the dedicated, daily exercise of commitment, will, and focused intention aimed, on one level, at the achievement of mastery in a field but, on a loftier level, intended to produce a communion with a power greater than ourselves — call it whatever you like God, mind, soul, Self, the Muse, the superconscious.
A practice is not a habit because of its rigor, will, intention. It’s also not a project because the ritualistic, spiritual element implies that a practice is for life. No one practices yoga, tai chi, or writing to achieve the metaphorical black belt and then quit.
Tying It All Together
I’m shifting from unfettered exploration to existing projects while still holding space for the unknown. Like with any change, there will be growing pains. I intend to take on fewer projects and build more habits and hone in on a core set of practices. I will focus on finding the right balance of focus. I’d like to finally see what Steve Jobs1, Warren Buffet2, and Sam Altman3 have been saying all along.
“This sounds really simplistic but it still shocks me how few people actually practice this. It’s a struggle to practice this. Steve was the most remarkably focused person I ever met in my life. Focus is not something you aspire to. You don’t decide on Monday “I’m going to be focused.” It’s an every minute “Why are we talking about that?” This is what we are working on. You can achieve so much when you truly focus. One of the things Steve would say [to me] because he was worried I wasn’t focused — he would say how many things have you said no to? I would tell him I said no to this. And I said no to that. But he knew I wasn’t interested in doing those things. There was no sacrifice in saying no. What focus means is saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea, you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you are focusing on something else.” - Jony Ive
Buffett's 25/5 Rule: Step 1. Write down a list of your top 25 career goals. Step 2. Circle the five most important goals that truly speak to you. These are your most urgent goals and highest priorities to focus on. Step 3. Cross off the other 20 goals you have listed that hold less importance.
“There's a Charlie Rose quote on this that I've always loved and I've since added one more element to it, but the quote is that, "The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection." And the additional point I would make, after having thought about it for a while, is that the third factor is self-belief. You really have to have a deep-seated personal conviction that this thing you're going to do, that a lot of people say is really stupid, is going to work and going to be important. I think those three things, focus, personal connections, and self-belief, in my experience are how things get done in the world.”
”Focus is a force multiplier on work. Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter. Once you have figured out what to do, be unstoppable about getting your small handful of priorities accomplished quickly. I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful.” - Sam Altman