Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #7
1 Simple Way To Get Better At Anything
QUICK HITTERS:
Heavens to Murgatroyd….we passed the 75 subscriber threshold! Thanks so much and it’s been a lot of fun connecting and re-connecting with folks. Shout-out to Scott D from San Diego for being the first reader to successfully discern what I named this newsletter after. Subscribe below if you haven’t already 👍🏼
A few folks in our SilentPunt community are having a rough go of it currently. So I’m hopeful that this week’s newsletter can lift everyone’s spirits. That being said, if you wanna hear me gripe about the state of fatherhood in America check out the first edition of EXTRA POINT.
The book I’m recommending this week is about one of my favorite shows when I was a boy: Gilligan’s Island. It is Here On Gilligan’s Isle, by Russell Johnson….who played the professor on the show. I bought it used (as you can see below) and I’m recommending it because I loved Gilligan’s Island and loved reading this book. I typically read a ton of serious and/or deep stuff but sometimes it’s great to read something that is just fun.
Darla & Maverick were a little sleepy for this week's photoshoot. SilentPunt Podcast #3 was posted the other day, check it out here if you’re interested. We discuss the history of the two-party system, why it tends to suck, and what we can do about it.
OVERTIME: Each week we do a short segment on our podcast where we discuss serious matters to be posted in Friday’s newsletter. This week we discuss men’s cologne.….
Tell us what to talk about next!!!
GOING DEEP:
1 Simple Way To Get Better At Anything
The past few weeks we’ve all been inundated with the typical New Year's resolution junk. Live longer, eat healthier, build bigger muscles, be more present…it can be exhausting. All the corporations are doing is repackaging the same information in an effort to get you to purchase more stuff.
The real answer is simple: If you want to make a big change in your life you must begin small. This may sound counterintuitive but it absolutely works. Think about it, how many times have you gotten all gung-ho about a new habit you are going to start…only to bite off more than you can chew and wind up ditching the entire enterprise?
You need to start with a tiny change and then go from there. A change so small it will feel as though virtually nothing in your life has changed.
Even Napoleon has seen that one before….
Recently I got into a slightly heated discussion online with a PhD. Don’t get me started on PhDs that aren’t medical doctors. I have a master’s degree, which I know is not a PhD, but I’m pretty sure I could’ve trained a chimpanzee to do the work I needed to do in order to complete it.
Anyway, this discussion was about discipline. This PhD is a writer who apparently struggles with the discipline of working out. I know many people struggle with that but it was her rationale that struck me as unique. She said that writing was easy because it was work you do with your brain but that working out was hard because it was physical.
Immediately I thought no, writing is physical. Yes, the words might come from your brain but you literally need to sit down and physically write them. Many people have great thoughts and/or ideas but lack the discipline to actually carve out the time to write them down.
So I pointed out to PhD that I thought writing and working out were indeed similar because to do either you need discipline. She did not like this. “You can’t just tell people to have discipline,” was her reply. In trying to clarify I replied back, “The point I was trying to make is that if you have discipline in one area of your life, you have the ability to be disciplined in others.”
It was crickets after that, but the entire back and forth got me thinking: Is it really that simple?
The longer I think about it the answer is most definitely yes.
What is it that you need to get better at but that you dislike doing? Working out? Eating healthier? Limiting your screen time? The answer is simple: commit to doing it for a tiny amount of time, every day, no questions asked, for an undetermined amount of time. Add nothing else new during this time. This is the only commitment you are making to creating a change in your life.
Hate working out? Find something, anything, that doesn’t make you nauseous at the prospect of doing it. Maybe it is as simple as taking the stairs at work in the mornings. Or getting out of bed and doing one push-up every morning.
One of the big objections people make when presented with a new workout routine is time (i.e. “I don’t have the time”). Well, I don’t care how busy you are - you have time for one push-up. I made a list of other things that maybe some of you might be working to be better at…..
(Bonus points if you can name the movie that inspired the name of that file.)
Do you remember what Chris Rock said about life? No, not that crack is bad - although I’m sure he said that as well. He said, life is not short like the saying goes. Life is long, especially if you make the wrong decisions.
Decisions are essentially choices. And the thing about choices is that they are catching. The more good choices you make the more apt you are to make even better choices. This compounding effect is how you can change your life.
You can absolutely do these things. Or whatever else you put your mind to. The caveat however is that the more you dislike something, the harder it is to be disciplined with it. If your dislike of something reaches a tipping point there is no amount of discipline that will combat it. I dislike black licorice. I could commit to eating one small piece of black licorice every day for a year and at the end of the year all I would have was a sore throat from all of the vomiting.
If you commit to this strategy for an undetermined amount of time…it will work. Eventually it just becomes routine, like brushing your teeth. One time up the stairs becomes two. One push-up becomes two. That’s how true progress works. Not with flashy gimmicks.
Consistency is key.
Myself (and maybe some others in the SilentPunt community) would absolutely be willing to be your accountability partner. What is something that you are trying to get better at? Drop it in the comments and we can give each other some encouragement.
I’ll start…I’m down to Diet Coke four days a week. Let’s see if I can make it three.
Late to the party here. But some of the best advice I ever received changed my approach to writing: We should take pride in our writing because it's a visual representation of how we think. Maintaining the discipline to write well and often is a great form of self-respect in several ways. It helps develop and maintain cognitive ability. And at the very least... it stops some of us from broadcasting to the world that we're idiots! Writing is certainly hard work. It only gets harder when done with the requisite focus and intent.
More importantly, PhDs who demand others call them doctor should be required to update one document/I.D. at the DMV for each offense, or an equally inhumane sentence.
Good stuff here. Your article makes me think about how we underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year but over estimate what we can do in a session.