Colin Wright's Blog, page 13

Taking A Moment

I forced myself to take ten minutes to think about difficult things, this morning.

On a typical day, I set aside twenty minutes for quiet, undistracted thinking. I let my mind wander and do nothing at all, usually staring at a wall or closing my eyes, occasionally turning on some kind of white noise or natural soundscape, but generally just working with whatever’s already in the aural environment.

The point of this habit, generally, is to allow my mind to untangle itself, to give underlying worrie...

Filter Failure

Distorted, mistaken, or outright false information is as common as oxygen in our modern, interconnected communication ecosystem.

It should be no surprise, then, that we inhale so much of it.

This is true no matter who you are, what your level of education or social status, how intelligent you seem to be, or how deep your knowledge-reserves. Misinformation experts succumb to misinformation, and in-the-know people do ignorant things under the influence of seeming facts that, upon closer inspection, ...

Next

Many ambitions require periods of soil-tilling and seed-planting if we want to make them a reality.

Consistent habits can help us realize outcomes that outweigh the total aggregated inputs: our small, daily efforts transmogrify into more than the sum of their components so that 1 + 1 = 3 (or 4, or 5).

In some cases, though, the goal and the practices that help us pursue that goal may be very different in shape, focus, and function.

Learning about business fundamentals, for instance, may require a d...

Plague-Adjusted

When catching up with friends and family, of late, I’ve found myself asking how they’re doing in plague-adjusted terms, rather than in an absolute sense.

I think this is only fair because, for many of us, this has not been a spectacular year—for many reasons—and the wild, disruptive variables associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have been at the core of many wellness-barometer adjustments downward.

I also think this is a healthy way of perceiving things because although I have certain default exp...

Weird Stuff Only

As you learn about a topic or achieve proficiency with a skill, it can become intimidating to utilize that skill or learn more about that topic.

I was an art student when I arrived at university, and spent my first year doing typical arty-things: drawing, painting, sculpting, photographing.

I segued into a dual-emphasis degree in graphic design and illustration my second year, which required some different focuses, but still necessitated quite a lot of drawing, composing, color theory, and the lik...

Irritate & Inspire

I’m a big believer in the value of maintaining a beginner’s mindset.

This concept can mean different things to different people, but to me, being a beginner means the unabashed embrace of the unknown, the frustration of things you can see but not grasp, the ability to ask questions without social penalty, and a general sense of unlimited potential.

As we learn and grow, and in some cases achieve some kind of credibility or even prestige as knowledgable, capable people, we become less inclined to s...

Mental Real Estate

There’s a decent amount of evidence that geolocation—where we are any any given moment, physically—influences our state of mind.

Our location in space can also stimulate our capacity to remember things. This effect is so potent that many champion memorizers utilize some variation of the “memory palace” technique, which typically involves walking through an imaginary version of a familiar space, placing the things they need to remember within that explorable context as if they were physical object...

Categorization

For just about any industry you can imagine, there exist semi-formal trend cycles that seem to be sort of accurate at least part of the time.

Fashion is probably the most visual and well-known of these cycles, with garment-professionals planning their releases based on how long it takes for styles to arise, go out of vogue, and then eventually come back into style with some new monicker: the original edgy or sexy replaced with nostalgic or quaint.

Whatever the contemporary trend-defining...

Self-Knowledge

Perfect self-knowledge is a dot on the horizon thats always in view but seldom seems to get any closer, no matter how rapid or ardent our pace.

Unusual moments in time tend to amplify our propensity for navel-gazing, but for many of us the desire to know more about ourselves, why we do what we do, how we measure upor fail toand how we might improve according to various metrics is a constant background impulse.

Its part of why we buy fitness trackers and thermometer-rings.

Its part of why we...

Cultivation

Growth is a process, not an act.

Cultivation, too, is defined not by what we accomplish in any given moment, but how we iterate over time.

Reminding myself of this, I find, helps me progress past the countless imperfections in everything I do and make: this attempt wasn’t ideal, but I know I’ll do better next time, and better still the time after that.

Including that “next time” in our assessment of what we’re doing today can be helpful, as it allows us to view a project, purpose, or aspiration, as...