Less is More
About 2 years ago, I finally got back to writing regularly. Writing has made a huge difference in my life. It has helped me to think a bit more about half-baked notions and make them cohesive. It has helped me battle overthinking. It has helped me be consistent.
For the first few weeks, it was daily. And then, it became 3 days a week.
I am now leaning towards writing longer, better (researched) articles fewer times than using it as a dumping ground. Or maybe there's room for both.
It makes me uncomfortable, as it means more structure, more editing, and more work. And that's probably why it is the path to take.
Two anecdotes
Read this article by Derek Sivers, where he talks about the crucial moment when he got rich. In case you get lazy and don't read it, here's an excerpt. But this will make a lot more sense if you read it.
Once I had $12,000 I could quit my job and become a full-time musician. I knew I could get a few gigs per month to pay my cost of living. So I was free. I quit my job a month later, and never had a job again.
When I finished telling my friend this story, he asked for more. I said no, that was it. He said, “No, what about when you sold your company?”
I said no, that didn’t make a big difference in my life.
And then, there's this wonderful anecdote from Coach Dan John's freely available book, A Contrarian Approach to the Discus Throw.
Back in 1985, Olympic Medalist and World Champion Bill Koch came to Salt Lake City. A local ski rental store provided a work shop for the public. I was certainly the only “strength” athlete there, but I found Koch’s discussion riveting. Why? Nobody there, save me, could listen to what he was saying. What? Oh, they could hear him, but they couldn’t listen to him.
I was with a student of mine who later skied for the University of Utah. He kept asking the same questions of Koch: “How many hours do you train? What periodization do you use?”
Koch, an Olympic medalist and World Champ, kept answering: “I take my girls three times a week to the bunny hill at the resort…I race them to the top of the lift while they take the chairs, then we ski down as a family. I do this over and over again. It gives me the “biggest bang for the buck.””
What the other skiers wanted to hear was…well, something else.
In both these anecdotes, the outsiders do not get the import of what the protagonist is saying. Because it does not match the climactic moment. Or it does not match the pattern they are looking for. The answer that they think that they've been missing.
I found that interesting. I hope you did too.