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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
John Fitch
Read between
August 5 - August 17, 2020
Think of your work ethic as the inhale
This exhale is your rest ethic, and it is just as essential.
A rest ethic and a work ethic – we need both. They are two sides of the same coin. But today, it seems like too many of us are running around holding our breath for way too long.
“As I must repeat once again, the first principle of all action is leisure.”
“To be at leisure is to be free to pursue studies and activities aimed at the cultivation of virtue (such as music, poetry, and philosophy). These are properly the ends of noble leisure.”
While chronos involves the quantity of time an activity takes, kairos looks at the quality of that time.”
Worrying is a by-product of paying too much attention to Chronos.
The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.”
This is productivity in the ancient sense, which puts a focus on culture and the simple joy of life just as much as, if not more than, it does on sheer economy.
“Thrive Time, or intentional recovery, is about looking both backward and forward – renewing what was depleted by what had to be done to meet a deadline and giving yourself the resources to meet upcoming deadlines.
“To create
a new habit, you must first simplify the behavior. Make it tiny, even ridiculous. A good tiny behavior is easy to do – and fast.”
“You feel burnout when you’ve exhausted all your
internal resources, yet cannot free yourself of the nervous compulsion to go on regardless.”
This is noble leisure in action: a creative breakthrough, reached in a moment of time off, achieved solely in search of meaning rather than purpose, but eventually advancing civilization in previously unimaginable ways.
Preparation, or sitting down and doing the hard work. Incubation, or allowing our conscious mind to rest (or focus on other tasks). Illumination, or the much sought-after aha moment. Verification, or doing more work to see if your revelation has merit.
Creativity is a constant interplay of time on (preparation, verification) and time off (incubation, illumination).
I’ve realized is the conflict itself is the art. The lines have blurred, and I refuse to live two separate lives.
In true workaholic fashion, we often give too much weight and credit to the active preparation and verification stages of the creative process, simply because they are active and “difficult,” so we think they must be virtuous and good and we downplay or ignore the importance of the passive incubation and illumination phases.
Charles Darwin worked for only three 90-minute periods a day and otherwise spent his time on long walks, taking naps, or lost in thought.
Four hours a day, if they are genuinely focused, spent on the right things, and supported by good rest, are really all we need to achieve great things. It’s an idea that flies in the face of our busyness culture.
Relaxation, or allowing our mind and body to wind down. Control, or deciding how to spend our time and attention. Mastery, or being challenged enough to get into a flow state. Detachment, or being so absorbed that we forget about work.
True rest is active and involves mastery experiences – experiences that are challenging and mentally absorbing enough to get us into a flow state (without being so difficult that we just quit in frustration).
“Humans are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason.”
“For me, living a healthy life is about balance, energy, and awareness. By balance, I mean moderation and making sure different aspects of your life don’t disproportionately affect others. Energy involves thinking about what gives me more capacity, like working out, boot camps, running, biking, stretching, and strength training. Energy is also about nutrition.”
“Stress plus recovery equals adaptation.
The “flow channel” is the Goldilocks zone, just right, in between anxiety and boredom.
Having a full day with nothing scheduled in his calendar allows him to enter a completely different mode of thinking.
“Surrounded by silence, I’ve uncovered the truth. The calmness around me has answered my youth.”
every hour you spend with other human beings you need X number of hours alone.
How much do I want to do this? If it’s not at least an 8 out of 10, it should be a no.
Sivers spends up to three hours a day writing in his journal:
“The alternative to solitude is loneliness.”
Our society and culture have so many systems in place, constructed by a handful of people, often a long time ago, which we are now just perpetuating instead of questioning whether they make sense.
Is this working? Am I creating something of value? What am I missing?
a micro-habit using a technique he calls “interstitial journaling.” He recommends that “during your day, journal every time you transition from one work project to another.
The aim is control and domestication of emotion, not its absence.
“Ask yourself this, often: Is what I’m doing connected to the kind of life that will spark joy for me?
Keeping your hands busy, doing something physical rather than just interacting with a screen, is an immensely powerful form of active time off.
he believed that reason was one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity,
Aquinas saw love as the most fundamental human emotion
We should get clear on what we are really after (not the delusional story we tell ourselves, which leaves us even more dissatisfied) and then try to satisfy this yearning.
Where do you think the most innovation is happening within a 20-mile radius of you?
“There is indeed such a thing as ‘timing’ – the art of mastering rhythm –
“The future,” Watts writes, “is made up of purely abstract and logical elements – inferences, guesses, deductions – it cannot be eaten, felt, smelled, seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a constantly retreating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahead.”
asserting that our brains can only do their job “when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.”
“lantern consciousness”
“spotlight consciousness.”
Enjoying food at this slow pace has been the core of her life’s work.
The consequences of an adult not getting enough play, according to Dr. Brown, include a “lack of vital life engagement; diminished optimism; stuck-in-a-rut feeling about life with little curiosity or exploratory imagination to alter their situation; [and] predilection to escapist temporary fixes.”
