Date Posted: July 9th, 2010
This week the format of the check-in is “The Hard” followed by “The Good” followed by “The Learning”. “The Hard” is stuff I struggled with this week. It’s complaining except hopefully not as annoying. “The Good” is what went well this week. “The Learning” is what I realized this week. Learning could be related to The Hard or The Good but it might not be. The format is similar to the one FluentSelf’s Havi uses in her Friday Chickens.
The Hard
The Heat
The weather’s been in the 90s this week, so it’s been a bit unpleasant. On Monday, I had very little energy, and I’m pretty sure the heat was the main cause. Alas. A day off from work and I didn’t have the energy to use it productively. I even went for a walk to try to get more energy, but that didn’t work.
Also, Aaron and I have been snippy at each other because of the weather. Luckily neither of us takes it too seriously.
So much to do
And so little discipline. On Wednesday I came home from work and instead of doing the things I said I’d do (make food for the cat, calculate fabric amounts for Pennsic clothes, and do some cleaning) I read World Without End, practiced music, and read some more. It was fun, and I did get the music practiced, but I felt guilty about the time spent on the book.
Working 9 – 9.5 hour days.
We’re leaving early today for a wedding this weekend in Ohio, so I had to flex out those hours over the week. While I’m at work I don’t feel the extra hour. It’s when I come home and there’s not much time left that I start to feel resentful. Yeah I know people have it worse… that still doesn’t make me feel better. 
The Good
Sno-cone Maker!
Last summer we bought a sno-cone maker and it’s turned out to be a great purchase. Yeah, we have an ice-crusher built into the fridge, but this thing does a much better job. Very refreshing. 
Exercise!
Biked to work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week. Took a walk on Monday. Friday we’ll be leaving for Ohio, so no biking. Yay!
Got writing done.
Just about finished a post for the future. Started a few more.
Singing
We’re singing and playing music at the wedding this weekend, so we did some practicing on Wednesday. A lot of the music I already knew, and it’s in a good range for my voice.
Enjoyed Reading about Underground Houses
A goal Aaron and I have is to one day build our own hobbit hole. I got a book from the library called $50 & Up Underground House Book on just that topic. It’s dated (published in 1978 dated), but the information is still good, and it’s very entertaining. Well, entertaining for me since the author’s a back-to-the-land hippie…
The Learning
Exercise makes me happy… but only up to a certain point.
Last Friday I biked to work and felt ecstatic for the first few hours of my workday. This week I’ve been biking daily and my mood hasn’t been lifted nearly as much. As I mentioned, on Monday I went for a walk in the hope that it would wake me up and it didn’t. I didn’t feel worse afterward, I just didn’t feel much better either.
I’ll keep on exercising regularly, but I’ll try not to be disappointed on the days I don’t get a euphoric boost.
Pleasant rituals are hard to break
I start my day reading my personal email and checking feeds. This feels good and comfy, but I know I’m not as productive when I do start my day this way. The obvious thing to do is to replace my morning “check email and feeds” ritual with some other pleasant ritual, but I haven’t come up with one that’s sufficiently pleasant and sufficiently motivating. Apparently going through my to-do list isn’t that motivating to me. I will think about it.
Fun is as important as other stuff
I have this ongoing fear that if I do the things that need to be done I won’t have time for fun. Take Thursday. After choir we packed for Ohio and made kitty food. By the time we were done with that it was 10:40pm. Our bed-time is 11pm. Instead of dropping everything and reading for the last 20 minutes I wanted to make an icy drink and turn off some of the lights upstairs. If I had done that it would have been 10:50pm and at that point I might as well go to bed, fulfilling the “I can’t do work and have time for fun” prophecy. Luckily Aaron insisted I just go and read. 
I don’t want to binge on fun stuff and feel guilty about it later, so I’m going to start including fun stuff in my “things to get done” list. I’ll keep it at the end of the list so I don’t procrastinate on less fun stuff, but I’ll make time to do it. I have a feeling this will work. That’s it for this week.
Tags:
Character-Development, Recommended Stuff, Self-Discipline, Stuff-Management.
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Date Posted: July 3rd, 2010
No “Weekly Check-in” this week because it turned into this.
On Friday I finished the book, Mastery, by George Leonard. Very good book, especially considering how short it is. There’s a lot of stuff from it I could write about, but for this post I’m going to discuss only one thing: the mindsets people have when they learn a new skill. After reading about these mindsets I realized that I haven’t had the master’s mindset for several activities I’d like to master.
Hackers and Obsessers
A person with the hacker mindset gets to some level of proficiency in a skill and then stops doing the work to improve. As an example, someone who goes out dancing every week, but has only taken a beginner class and has no intention of increasing his skill beyond that has the hacker mindset. He’s developed a certain level of competence and is either content to stay at that level indefinitely or would like to improve but doesn’t feel compelled to do the work to get there.
A person with the obsessive mindset will try to force himself to improve faster than is naturally feasible. Let’s say our dancer finished taking the beginning dance class and jumped straight into an intermediate class. He’s struggling with intermediate stuff because he hasn’t mastered the beginner techniques. If his reaction is to force his way through it, he’s obsessive. He’s probably going to injure himself.
I alternated between the hacker mindset and the obsessive mindset in school. Most of the time I’d do the minimum amount of work to get the maximum grade… or if not maximum, at least a grade I could live with. I resented being asked to go above and beyond. I’d try to coast for as long as I could. What was the point in mastering anything when I’d get an A if I did less? If I minimized the amount of time I spent on school stuff I could spend more time doing fun things, right?
For exams I’d jump into obsessive mode in a valiant attempt to pass the tests. I’d pull all-nighters studying, or spend a week or two before the test attempting to learn everything I was supposed to learn until then. By senior year of college this often meant years of material I’d never figured out. Not fun. And not very effective. :/
I’ve, regrettably, been a bit of a hacker (and sometimes obsessive) with music too. When I had piano lessons I never got into the “regular daily practice” habit. With recorder I spent a few months learning what I needed to learn and then happily hacked my way along. I’ve gotten as good as I have just by showing up to dance practice and playing for dancers. Conscious practicing? What’s that? The thing is I’d like to master some instrument, so realizing I’ve been a hacker all these years was a bit of a shock. If I continue this I’ll never master anything. 
Dabblers
A person with the dabbler mindset tries something, encounters some difficulty, and then quits. The dabbling dancer is one that takes the beginner lesson, and soon after quits because “it’s not his thing” or “it takes too long to get any good”. Often he’s too ashamed of looking like the inept beginner that he is. He doesn’t realize that in order to gain competence he has to go through the beginner phase.
I’ve dabbled in SO MANY things, but four things in particular come to mind because I keep dabbling, quitting, and going back a few years later. They are languages, stringed instruments, jazz, and drawing. With languages and drawing I quit because I’m afraid to look stupid and they take a really long time to master. With Jazz, I can’t see the path for getting where I want to go. With string instruments… they’re really hard? I’m actually making some progress on the second two right now. I’ve picked up the ukulele, and have made quite a bit of progress on it alright. The goal is to use it as a stepping stone to guitar and to jazz.
Masters
The master mindset is a lot of things, but most importantly it means that when you’re on a learning plateau (i.e. you working hard but aren’t making on progress) you keep practicing, keep trying to make progress. What’s more you enjoy the practicing. Goals aren’t your primary focus, although you do still have goals. If our obsessive dancer had the master mindset his reaction to not doing well in the intermediate class would be to quit the intermediate class and work on the foundation material he still needed to master. Maybe he’d repeat the beginner class or maybe he’d go to open dancing and practice with some of the more experienced dancers. He’d accept where he was and do what he had to do. He’d also enjoy dancing where he’s at now, or at least consider the end goal worth the temporary awkwardness he’s going through.
I’ve had the master’s mindset in a few things. Three that come to mind are swing dancing, sewing, and intimate relationships.
When I started swing dancing I had the master’s mindset. I loved every bit of it. I learned a lot in the classes. I went to open dancing and wasn’t afraid to practice with the advanced dancers even though I was an awkward beginner. I practiced a lot and I loved the practicing. I’d still be dancing now if Aaron had the same interest.*
I love the process of sewing. I love sewing a straight seam on the machine. I love sewing cuffs on by hand. I also enjoy completing ambitious projects. The combination of these two things, liking the process and being ambitious, are the reasons I keep sewing and keep improving at sewing. I suffer through the visualization and fitting and refitting and refitting and refitting of a sleeve because ultimately I like sewing and the end is worth it. If I only cared about the end garment and felt ambivalent the sewing part, I wouldn’t sew. I’d just buy all my reenactment garb or have someone make it for me.
I had only one boyfriend prior to Aaron. We dated for two years in high school. I took the relationship very seriously. I was willing to work through whatever problems we had (assuming they were workable**), and all in all tried to be the best partner I could be. Not surprisingly I wasn’t the one to end the relationship. With Aaron, I feel the same way. I enjoy the process of being in a relationship. I like having date nights, I’m willing to have awkward intimate conversations that need to happen, I’m willing to admit I need to work on my issues with housework, etc. I want us to thrive. I love the practice and I have goals. I’m on the master’s path.
There’s More to Say, but…
…this post is already pretty long. Even though I just finished the book yesterday, assigning names to the different mindsets has already been useful. I’ve realized that in some areas I don’t have the master’s mindset and I wish I did. *cough*Music*cough*
I can also see it being useful for interacting with other people. There are a lot of hackers and dabblers in the SCA, and having a name for them will make it easier for me to deal with them positively. It’s OK to be a hacker or a dabbler. I just need to not expect everyone to be on the master’s path.
So, yeah, really good book. Highly recommend it. May write more about it in the future.
* We met through swing dancing, so it’s not that Aaron doesn’t know how to dance, he’s just has more of a hacker attitude than I do. As in he’d go to workshops if I was interested, but wouldn’t be pro-active about it. It was really important to me to be able to share the same level of passion about dancing with my significant other, so rather than give up Aaron I gave up dancing and replaced it with music.
** I learned later that my first boyfriend is gay, and had just been figuring that out around the time he broke up with me. Gay is not a workable problem. I stopped talking to him for reasons independent of him being gay, but that’s another story…
Tags:
Career, Relationships, Self-Discipline.
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