Though sometimes, I wish I didn’t have it.

Some days it all feels too hard; I want to give up.

Yet I can’t, I have to push through.

To get to the end, the next part, wherever.

Having grit means enduring the hard stuff.

Even when it sucks, keep going.

When desperately lost, looking for the path.

Yet why?

What is the point in it all?

We’re all going to die anyway.

But in that comes the point.

Life is for living.

According to the Buddha, life is suffering.

He called it dukkha, and this is the nature of life.

Life isn’t meant to be easy.

Accepting this brings mental freedom.

This makes the grit-needing-stuff endurable, even enjoyable.

In summary: Life sucks, enjoy gritting it out

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Cover image: Generated on ChatGPT using prompt “Create an image representing both grit and enlightenment”

Fear is often thought of as an overwhelming emotion, like being sh*t scared of spiders. Yet I’ve spent more of my life debilitated by its more subtle form: worry.

Sadness is synonymous with depression, but again, a more subtle form is equally debilitating: listlessness. I.e., a lack of energy to get things done.

Bigger emotions are easier to deal with; they demand attention. The subtle ones sit there, getting in the way almost undetected.

It’s like having a mouse compared to an elephant in a room. Despite the cliche, you can’t actually ignore a physical elephant entering the room, but you can be completely unaware of a mouse.

The elephant bashes a door down on the way in, commanding instant attention. The mouse gnaws away until one day you notice the furniture has been destroyed from beneath you (and there are little sh*ts under all of it).

Just like the mouse lurking between the floorboards and the couch, these subtle emotions seem to lurk somewhere between the conscious and subconscious mind.

It takes deliberate attention to notice and tease them out.

Recently I’ve been thinking about what drives my tendency to be a master procrastinator.

Firstly, I can be stalled for action because I’m worried about making a mistake, which tends to result in me getting stuck in perfectionist paralysis1, or making a fool of myself — aka being overly concerned about what other people think.

Then when it’s not worry, it’s listlessness. Despite intention and deep desire to acheive something, I lack the energy and enthusiasm to start.

It’s taken me years to realise this is actually what’s going on. The next step is working through overcoming them. On one hand, stop people pleasing, and on the other, start to just start.

Bias to action and not giving a f*ck about what other people think. That’s the stuff millionairres are made of…

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Cover/insert image: Generated on Substack using prompt “elephant on a couch with a mouse hiding under the couch”

Jimmy is my favourite comedian; in large part due to the unique laughs (from and by him!) but also as his perspectives on life have been life-changing for me.

People pleasing cost me some of the most important relationships in my life, stifled my own progress in stand-up comedy, and pushed me into deep depression.

Albeit in a different way, his article says what I wanted to say this week, so I suggest you read it to — especially if you’re a people pleaser.

As a ‘recovering people pleaser’, I can testify: People pleasing isn’t pleasing!

Jimmy Carr

Be Yourself – Everyone Else Is Already Taken

Don’t try and sell yourself, be yourself and wait for demand…

Read more

6 months ago · 219 likes · 37 comments · Jimmy Carr

In summary: you do you.

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Cover image: Photo by Ben Robbins on Unsplash

Because the mind can be a really annoying piece of expletive, and it doesn’t currently want to stay focused on the task at hand, I’m trying to trick it into having a great idea for how to structure the keynote by not focusing on it.

Like what happened this afternoon, I took my daughter for a bike ride. We have a great time on our rides, she loves it and I get some time with her plus exercise. Yet halfway around the lake we were riding around my mind spat out this nugget:

‘To embrace the future, focus on now’

So the mind randomly spits out intriguing philosophical quips about being in the moment. Yet in the moments it’s meant to focus, it does everything it can to avoid being in the moment!

Alas, one of life’s great ironies.

I am yet to get a brain spark for the keynote.

So tricking your own mind isn’t actually possible. Of course not, it designed the trick so it already knows!

Then again, perhaps my mind tricked itself into writing an article??

Fortunately, either way, I now have an article. So this attempt to ‘trick myself’ is a successful failure. I’ll take that.

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Cover/insert image: Generated using ChatGPT

You’re it.

If you don’t do it yourself, no one’s coming to help you.

Especially if you’re past 30 years old.

That thing you’ve been putting off.

The thing you really want to do but have been holding back.

Don’t do it… yet.

First, ask yourself: do you really want it?

Is the reason you haven’t done it because, actually, you don’t want to?

Perhaps you like the idea of it.

Perhaps you want the outcome but not the process.

If you don’t love the process to the outcome, you won’t cherish the outcome.

Eh? Surely that’s not right.

How about being forever glad to have persevered adversity to achieve the outcome?

Sure, that happens, unless the adversity is coupled with animosity.

You’ll remember the torture of getting there far more than the joy of being there.

You’ll likely spend years getting there, then be there for moments.

The joy will come, then quickly fade to black.

To get to the next moment, or even hold the position: more process, more torture.

So ask yourself, are you actually interested in the process?

If not, time to stop.

Trash that idea and move on.

[Unless you’re putting off a holiday, in which case - just go!]

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Cover/insert image: Image by Freepik on Freepik (cropped)

I woke up one day, went to write… nothing… I tried, oh how I tried, but it ended up a donut day.

“That’s ok”, I told myself, “it’s just one day.”

Fine, until one became two, and two became three hundred and fifty-four.

I came back from time to time to try again, but nothing. My writing had gone into an involuntary hiatus.

I started writing a few weeks before my daughter was born. Today she is 18 months old. So I wrote for about a third of her life, then life got in the way. That makes sense somehow. Babies will do that.

It wasn’t just life getting in the way though. I started to make excuses:

1. “I don’t have time”

2. “I’m too distracted”

3. “The cover image takes too long”

4. “I have no ideas to write about”

So on, so forth, ya-di ya-di, ya…

In reality, I got in my own way as I:

1. Didn’t make time

2. Didn’t set up my environment to minimise distractions

3. Worried about things that didn’t really matter

4. Didn’t note down ideas when they came randomly during the day

Adding it all up, I was procrastinating.

But why?

Well, here’s the real reason: I started to worry about what readers would think.

All 42 of you (actually, it was more like 35 at the time… somehow I’ve gained subscribers without doing anything — nice!).

Does it really matter what 35 people think? No. No it does not.

Worrying about it stifled me.

That’s not to say I don’t care about those 35 (or 42) people, I do.

You can care about someone and not be worried about what they think about something.

What I think and write is for me. No one has to like it, I don’t even have to like it!

Fortunately, some of you do like it and have told me so. Thankyou!!

Worrying too much about what others will think is a thing for me; it’s plagued my whole life. People pleasing. What Jordan Peterson, love him or hate him, calls being ‘too agreeable’. It leads to burnout, depression, anxiety… mental breakdown (been there too, don’t recommend it).

It’s kept me in jobs I didn’t want to be in anymore, ‘friendships’ I didn’t enjoy, caused countless hangovers, and even stifled my progress in stand-up comedy.

So there I was, sacrificing writing because I worried too much about what others would think. If they ‘agree’ with me or not.

But what’s more important is to express one’s self. Fully, honestly, freely… and to make no excuses for doing so.

So today, on this 354th day of involuntary hiatus, I’m stopping it.

I’m publishing this raw and unpolished POS.

Or maybe it’s a masterpiece... who knows, who cares!

In summary: People pleasing isn’t pleasing, and excuses will ruin you. Stop it.

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Cover image: Generated on Substack using prompt “Procrastinating with a doughnut”

Not long after arriving, I sat on the decking, relaxing in the ambience of birds chirping and leaves swishing in the breeze. Then, I looked over a map of the property.

The map marked out a ‘lake walk’ trail, that true to its name, went around the lake. So I decided to go for a walk and follow it.

As I got to the far side of the lake from my bungalow, looking right and back across to the bungalow was the lake. To my left, I was looking down a rather unnatural 30-metre-high hillside.

Things were not as they appeared to be from the decking. This lake was a dam.

Technically, it's still a lake, but calling a lake a dam doesn’t sound very eco-retreat-esque, so it was called a lake.

The thing is, we employ these sorts of techniques on ourselves all the time.

For instance, just as the lake was a dam in reality, thoughts of the past and future are only reality in our minds.

As much as your thoughts are your current reality, that does not make them reality. The past is a malleable memory, and we cannot know the future.

Whilst it’s (kind of) OK to label a dam as a lake in an eco-retreat, as that gives a better perception, it’s important to see your thoughts for what they are. Reviewing the past or projecting the future is fine done mindfully with intent (i.e. for learning or planning) but if you find yourself distracted by thoughts on the past or future, recognise and label this for what it is, then return to being present in the moment.

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Cover image: Photo by me in Coweramup, Western Australia

A weekly routine shared by adults, and their children wherever possible, the world over.

Much of what we do in life is repetitive. Some repetitive things, like taking the bins out, we do out of responsibility. Others, such as prayer, we do for ritual. Then there are things like exercise, that fit somewhere in the middle.

Finding joy in such repetition can be a challenge.  

A holiday helps to mix it up, but it doesn't take long after returning home for the reality of routine to return. Back into life as usual. Back into adulting.

That is life.

Taking the bins out reminded me of the Zen proverb:

The novice says to the master, “What does one do before enlightenment?”

“Chop wood. Carry water” replies the master.

“What, then, does one do after enlightenment?”

“Chop wood. Carry water.”

Something similar can be said of what it takes to have a successful career.

I mean career in the broadest sense of the word. It could be as an investor, a business owner or employee, a professional athlete or musician. It doesn’t matter.

Success requires putting in the laps, the reps, the scales, or whatever your profession’s equivalent is, and doing so with such attention to detail in making refinements, your skill level gradually yet inevitably improves towards perfection. Practice makes perfect.

As a friend of mine, Thomas Murrell, recently put it, “there is no shortcut to success”.

Couple this with Mark Manson’s complementary view, that being successful is “consistently doing the boring, mundane things everyone knows about but is too unfocused/undisciplined to do”, and we can conclude:

It’s been argued that having meaningful goals enables you to not feel bored, doing the so-called boring things. I call bullshit. A sense of meaning attached to a task enables you to forge ahead despite the boredom. To feel the discomfort of boredom and keep going. To “feel the fear and do it anyway”, so to speak.

Be that to avoid a smelly house by taking the bins out, chop the wood and carry the water to serve the community, or regularly analyse your social media stats to improve your reach. Whatever boring thing/s you need to do, you’ve just gotta do it.

So, the real ticket to success: Be boring.

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Cover image: Image by pch.vector on Freepik

The ‘memo’ about this opportunity did not reach my mind. I could reply to (basic) emails, make some phone calls, send an invoice; the kind of work Cal Newport would call shallow work, no problem. Anything requiring concentration: nope. Brain did not want to go anywhere near that.

Every attempt to cajole it into focusing on something deep was met with fierce opposition. Some random thought, some sudden urgency to check out an (un)important fact. Argh!

It’s a pretty common problem. On a given day or time, you can’t concentrate.

As a one-off, it’s likely just your emotions in the moment, and it will pass. However, if sustained there’s surely an underlying cause. To help remove some distractions, I recently turned off notifications on my Apple Watch. It helps, but is not the solution on its own.

I started thinking about why my concentration was lacking. Apart from a natural tendency to get distracted being completely human, is there something else going on?

Do I have ADHD, just without the hyperactivity? (I’m definitely not the hyperactive type). Unlikely, my distractibility seems a somewhat recent phenomenon and I don’t feel the need to psychoanalyse myself and childhood to confirm it!

Have I just got too much going on in my life, that easily concentrating is a struggle? Probably. I am balancing a lot, both professionally and personally.

While contemplating I jumped into the Waking Up app for a meditation and, serendipitously, this came up as the daily reflection ‘moment’:

“How busy do you feel right now? How much is all that you need to do, weighing on you? And how is it weighing on you?

There’s a difference between feeling busy and simply doing the next thing that needs to be done. And you can do that, whatever it is. Even if it requires significant effort, without feeling overwhelmed.

Think of what it’s like to play a game like tennis. Do you feel overwhelmed when the ball comes back across the net. Is that really a problem? No, it’s the whole point of the game.

It’s pretty simple, really. All you can do is what you can do, in each moment. So simply do that, with your full attention.”

Just like feeling overwhelmingly busy, distraction has much to do with mindset. Choosing to return focus to what you’re meant to be doing can make a huge difference.

If you’re getting frustrated continuously refocusing, rather than fighting it, take a few minutes to acknowledge it, reflect, and answer the question: 'What is really going on in my mind right now?’ See what happens.

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1. Mickey Mouse

2. Snoopy

3. a silly ghost

4. a breath timer.

Mickey, Snoopy and the silly ghost were installed because they’re fun, to help me remember to approach life with a sense of play. The breath timer was installed, for when I’m winding down in the evening or need to regain my focus.

I also disabled many notifications. With exception to a few ‘acceptable’ apps, like the ‘time to stand’ reminder, I no longer get frequent buzzing sensations on my wrist. I hadn’t realised just how distracting this had become.

On Sunday morning, for example, I was enjoying a beautiful spring day outdoors at the park. While there, 72 messages were circulated in a WhatsApp group I’m part of. Previously I would have been notified of each and every one of them. This time, I didn’t know about any of them until hours later. I didn’t need to.

In our lives, we face disruptions and distractions. I find it helpful to think of disruptions as unavoidable interruptions we have to deal with, and distractions as avoidable interruptions we choose to allow.

A disruption could be minor such as a call from an important client or the need to tend to nature’s call, or something significant such as a major illness. You don’t get a choice, lest you face undesirable consequences.

A distraction is most activities involving your smartphone, and many other trivial matters your mind may be attracted to. So long as you notice it happening, you have a choice and there is little consequence of ignoring the distraction.

In the last sentence lies the key: Noticing. Some distractions can be avoided by physically preventing them, such as disabling notifications. However, it’s important to understand in many instances you can’t choose if a distraction occurs, your mind will just serve them up on its own, but you do get to choose your response.

Once you notice you’re (getting) distracted, you have a choice to allow it or not. It’s ok to consciously allow some distractions, especially if you’re due a break and need to stand up, but ultimately being aware of what’s going on in your mind makes all the difference.

That takes practice. One technique I find helpful in honing this skill is deliberately turning my attention to my breath for a minute, several times an hour, and observing what my mind does during that time. Whenever it wanders, I bring attention back to my breath.

With a technique like this, eventually you’ll start to quickly notice when your attention is moving to a distraction throughout the rest of the day. Then in those moments, you choose to consciously allow the distraction, or stay focussed on your task.

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Cover image: Mashup from images found on Buddywatch, Reddit and Pinterest posts

It seems ‘forcing’ myself to write on-topic, or anything at all, requires accepting a level of irony that I’m not going with my flow. Or does it?

Going with the flow doesn’t have to mean allowing yourself to get smashed into any rock the river tries to push you into, such as writer’s block. I’m confident that in Dao De Jing, Laozi was not implying we go with the flow to the point of smashing into avoidable rocks and sustaining avoidable injury. The point is to respect the flow and, without forcibly going against it, steer a safe route.

Getting smashed into rocks is inevitable, you’re never truly in control in any case, but responding to flow and steering a course towards your goals with intention (i.e. by applying force mindfully), is essential to achieving them. So perhaps ‘go with the flow’ is better stated as ‘steer with the flow’.

In a writing sense, this means despite not having a specific inspiration to write about, I open Word, write a title, write a first sentence and see what flows from there. And that is exactly how this article ended up written!

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Cover image: Image generated by Substack’s image generator

Habits are our default behaviours, and bad habits can be tough to break without external stimuli. We like to tell ourselves we have the intrinsic motivation to break a bad habit, and when we do that’s great – in practice it’s rare.

One of life’s greatest ironies is whilst ‘bad’ habits are easy to form and hard to break, ‘good’ habits are the opposite.

It’s hard to argue for evolution when shit like this beleaguers us, seems more like someone is playing a grand ol’ cosmic joke.

One good habit that is hard to form is the habit of productive meditation. In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport describes this as taking “a period of time in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally – walking, jogging, driving, showering – and focus your attention on a single, well-defined professional problem”.

Like any meditation, doing it well requires practice. Distraction is inevitable, the mind will wander relentlessly to begin with. When you notice your thoughts are off task, reset your attention on the problem you set out to think about. This gets easier after a dozen or so sessions, and the results start to show.

Back to the opening story. Outside my house was a rosebush, which I rarely noticed until a day I’d got up 30 minutes early. Admittedly by mistake, thinking I had an early meeting, but I remembered just as I was leaving, that the meeting was cancelled late the day before. So, I stopped and admired the roses for a few minutes. When I did get to the office, I felt calmer and more ready to start the day. In hindsight, no surprise there!

Based on this external stimulus, I started habitually getting out of bed 10 minutes earlier every day (getting up 30 minutes earlier every day took more willpower than it was worth). With the extra time, I’d smell the roses on the way out the door, and with the less frantic commute, I could productively meditate to prepare for the day mentally. This combination of a little nature and productive meditation improved my mood and productivity throughout the day.

Maintaining the practice takes discipline, and I fall from it more often than I care to admit. Yet, there is a definite increase in productivity and the ability to work deeply from practising consistently.

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Cover image: Image by luis_molinerov on Freepik

We got to the park around 10am. Birds chirping, the cheers of children playing, weather so perfect it felt surreal. Most of the families we were with left around 12:30pm. My wife, 4-month-old daughter and I, along with a friend plus her daughter and mother, couldn’t resist staying in the park on such a beautiful day.

Leaving such a lovely setting, on such a gorgeous day, to do some household chores, seemed like wasting an opportunity. Sitting around chatting, eating snacks, drinking iced tea (making jokes about it being whiskey), and doing nothing in particular while enjoying the sunshine was a much better idea. So, going with the flow of Mother Nature, we stayed until a late afternoon chill set in.

My life is by no means perfect. I have plenty of shit that needs to be dealt with and lived with, but in this moment none of that mattered. This was a moment where life was lived.

This was a non-productive day1, yet by no means a time-wasting day. It was a donut day, in that I got zero chores done (and because I had a salted caramel doughnut2). Some days, if not every day, are best left to ‘life’ to decide what should happen. This was a day I did that, and this day seemed to pan out just the way I needed: refreshing and rejuvenating.

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Cover image: Photo by me in Hyde Park, Perth, Western Australia.

I wasn’t able to focus. I was meant to build a project plan, but I didn’t want to do it. I considered the project boring, and building plans for boring projects is doubly boring. The importance of the task, in that it was part of my job so I had to do it, was playing second fiddle to (a lack of) motivation.

We humans are very good at distracting ourselves from things we don’t want to do. It’s often hard enough getting yourself to do something you want to do. But regardless of desire or otherwise, remove self-discipline and you’ll soon be behind. Add an inability to say no to other people’s requests and you’ll be overwhelmed. Include a smartphone in the mix, and you’re screwed.

A former manager of mine would often say:

I think we all feel a bit like this some of the time. Scrap that.

I think we all feel a lot like this a lot of the time.

There’s something in the “do it all badly” part though. How much of what we do, needs to be perfect or anything near it? In reality, not much. Many of the tasks we complete are just fine at 80% good enough, sometimes less!

It’s quite usual for the thing that’s stopping us moving forward, to be the hypothetical ‘picture’ of the finished product that is too hard to achieve. We get concerned we’ll fall short (i.e. fail), so we do nothing whilst we muster up the motivation to do it to “properly”.

You can’t force motivation, but you can coax it. How? Just start.

Accept you need to do everything badly, at least to start with. Often, no one else will know there’s something incomplete in the ‘final report’. So just produce a good enough version, send it out, seek feedback, and refine. You’ll be fine.

I’m happy to report, I did end up ‘just starting’ on that project plan. It was done a few hours later. I did it to about 60% of the perfection I envisaged, then realised that’s all it ever needed to be. Job well done, even with a strong dose of boredom.

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Three minutes later, looking at the café counter, her eyes opened wide as she exclaimed “Look! Matcha cake! Let’s have some!”.

Standing 4 inches tall, made of 4 layers each divided by matcha-cream, and covered in matcha-icing, it looked delicious. Cake was ordered.

So much for “full”, but she is partial to cake.

Two minutes later, the waiter placed a large slice of matcha cake in front of my smiling, happy wife (bringing with it, at least for that time being, a happy life).

15 minutes later we left the café, she was now really full (with cake) and delighted to have some left to take home to eat later.

Regardless of how full she claims to be, she can always find room for cake.

In life, we often go around saying how busy we are. Busy, busy, busy. So busy. Then something new and interesting comes along. An opportunity too good to pass by. Somehow, we find room for it.

Busy is often a façade for avoiding things we should be doing. Including important things we put off, such as seeing people we care about yet can’t ‘find the time’ for.

The question then pertains, if you can find room for ‘cake’ doesn’t it mean you had time all along?

At the very best, you made a choice to reprioritise. If you’ve got your priorities right and you’re truly too busy to fit more in, then something legitimately gives way to the new thing. That’s fine, but I think that’s rarely how things are.

The more likely story: getting so caught up in day-to-day life, fascinating over things that don’t truly matter. What’s more, we’ll make room for exciting new things (“cake”), at the expense of important things (“vegetables”).

The thing is, it’s OK to squeeze more in, even when you’re already ‘too busy’. So long as you maintain balance and continue dedicating enough space to the important things. I won’t spell them out, you know what the important things to you are.

Plus, let’s not forget cake helps you feel good and that’s important too. So, it’s worthwhile trying to find room for cake! Just sometimes, you must wait a bit and enjoy it later.

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In reality, unless you’ve chosen a monastic life, you’ll spend most of your life tumbling around in whitewater, getting smashed into and bouncing off rocks.

Sometimes the river breaks its banks. Then you have no idea where you’re going, and the rocks are replaced with all kinds of painful man-made objects.

Even if you have chosen a monastic life, you’ll still “chop wood, carry water”1. Every. Single. Day. The tediousness of that would become torturous until you learn to surrender to the reality of life.

Smashing into rocks is inevitable. All you can do to help the situation is surrender. At least it’s less painful when you’re limp.

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Cover image: Photo by Mateus Andre on Freepik

Such was the curse of Hades1.

I sat meditating on my mat. My mind going through why I was justified in an argument I had two years ago. I figured ‘to hell with it’, let the thought go and returned to observing my breath.

Such is the curse of ego.

Many people start meditating, expecting to reach a state of bliss and soon discover it’s the mental equivalent of pushing a boulder uphill only to have it roll back down again and again and again.

Instead of a boulder, it’s your thoughts.

A colleague once shared with me they had tried meditating but found they couldn’t stop thinking, and gave up. Their mind was too busy for them to meditate. This means they missed the point!

The point of meditation is not to stop your thoughts. Trying to do that sends your ego into overdrive: you think more! If anything, when it comes to thought, the point of meditation is to accept your thoughts.

They’ll roll in, let them go. I don’t necessarily mean refocus on your breath or refix your attention, although both are valid in meditation practice. I mean, let thought run its course. Just observe what it does. Thoughts will disappear as quickly as they come.

When you can accept your thoughts, and observe them roll by during meditation, meditation starts to get interesting.

I’d just finished my morning coffee. I checked my email and found a client I really needed to win, had a last-minute change of mind. I figured ‘to hell with it’, picked up the phone and started looking for another client.

Such is the curse of life.

Every day is filled with challenges, every day is pushing boulders up a hill. Being able to let your thoughts roll by as you meditate, is practice for accepting life as it comes at you again and again and again.

Sam Harris puts it this way2:

“It’s only natural to view meditation practice as separate from the rest of your life. But this is a mistake. The truth is, there’s nothing happening in meditation, that can’t happen out in the world. All you have is your mind… There is no boundary between a formal session of meditation and the rest of life”

When you can accept life as it is, no matter what it throws at you, life starts feeling truly worthwhile. The inner peace synonymous with meditation starts to follow you everywhere.

So what are you waiting for? Hurry up and meditate.

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Since taking action on learning the language 5 years ago, progress has been slow. My main learning sources have been following Mandarin teachers on YouTube, who regularly post quite detailed teaching videos, and phone apps. Initially Duolingo (I’m not a fan) and now one I find quite good, called ChineseSkill (I’m not sponsored!), plus a flash card app called Chinese Words.

For a native English speaker learning Mandarin is…. HARD! On a difficulty scale of 1 to 4 , one being easy and four being hardest to learn, learning Mandarin is up at 41. There are just four other languages that sit at the ‘hardest’ level, and they won’t surprise you: Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic. Getting to “General Professional Proficiency” in these takes, on average, 88 weeks full time study, or 2,200 hours in class.

So needless to say, with a tendency to procrastinate my self-taught efforts are going to take a long time. My wife is Chinese, this helps. She watches a lot of Chinese TV, and we attend a Chinese church together.

Being around the language helps. But, unlike my four-month-old daughter who is learning Mandarin (although she doesn’t realise this yet!) with the benefit of a child’s sponge-like brain, the osmosis only helps me with tiny increments of learning over time. I have a goal to be conversational in Mandarin by the time my daughter is, but even with my massive head start, it seems like a massive undertaking.

I don’t know how many ‘hours’ I’ve put into it, it feels like more than I should have for my level of proficiency. My progress is like building a newsletter subscriber list. Painstakingly slow! But with consistency, progress is inevitable.

Ultimately discipline is required, so my wife is helping with that. To spice up our love… I mean, language life, we’ve turned to Peppa Pig. It turns out the family of four pink piggies that like to jump in muddy puddles speak fluent Mandarin (and at least 20 other languages, it seems she’s quite the linguist).

I am currently learning to sing the Peppa Pig ‘Let’s Get Ready’ song in Mandarin. In this song, Peppa is teaching her little brother, George, to get washed and dressed ready to go out to play and jump in said muddy puddles. It’s a lot of fun to sing, and quite a useful part of the language to learn.

I’ve probably learnt as much practical Mandarin from this one song as I have my entire endeavour of self-directed learning.

I found a way to make learning practical and fun, and in doing so, a way to make consistency easier. You see, learning the language in 88 weeks full-time study isn’t so much about exposure. It’s about consistently putting in the effort.

The added motivation of having fun is important. Ultimately, I’m a big kid. Last year I went to Disneyland in Shanghai and loved it just as much as the next 10-year-old.

Just like being drenched at Disneyland is fun, singing kid’s songs is fun. Plus, it’s going to be even more fun when my daughter is old enough to sing along with me.

Many of those who know me, would be surprised to hear about the big kid thing. I spend a lot of time in serious mode. Those who know me best would say I don’t let that kid out enough.

Anyway, I digress. The point is motivation and consistent action leads to results. Yet, one need not proceed the other. I find they drive each other. Acting leads to motivation and motivation leads to acting (consistently), and vice versa.

This is what Mark Manson calls The “Do Something” Principle:

The idea is that action leads to a feeling of inspiration, which creates motivation, then it loops back to action. Manson gives the example of redesigning a website. It’s a big project that’s hard to start, but just starting with the redesigning the header results in an accomplishment that provides inspiration, which motivates you to keep going. I generally agree with Mark on this principle, and it certainly holds for projects with a definable start and end, such as redesigning a website or completing a degree.

But for things with no discernible end point requiring consistent action over time (when are you ever “done” learning a new language), sometimes an external source of inspiration is needed to keep the consistency going or kick it off again. For me learning Chinese, the current source of inspiration is having fun singing Peppa Pig songs in Mandarin.

But not having an external motivation for something you’ve been putting off, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take action. The truth is, while it can help, you don’t need it. Try the “Do Something” approach while waiting for a source of inspiration, try taking the next little step, and maybe that’s all you’ll need: the inspiration and motivation will follow.

Now lastly, how’s this for an external motivation:

I’m going to make you, beloved reader, a deal. If I get to 50 subscribers to ‘Watts the point’ by the end of September 2024, I will post a video of me singing Peppa Pig ‘Let’s Get Ready’ in Mandarin. It may be equally awful and hilarious. If you want to see this please, subscribe if you don’t already and, send this article to as many people as you can and ask them to subscribe!

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Actually, this was also the case for most sports, basketball was just my chosen place to learn about failure.

I learnt about failure a lot, with one exception. Free throws. One season my free throw percentage was 99%. OK, I wasn’t keeping the stats, but the point is I very rarely missed from the line.

Naturally, I missed (failed) a lot of shots to get to this point. But unlike any other aspect of the game, this one I managed to master.

To achieve this I analysed everything about taking a free throw. The weight of the ball in my arms. The angle of my arms. The placement of my hands and fingers on the ball. The power to put into the throw, and trajectory to throw it at. I got to a point where I could just feel it, no need to think about it. I could feel my way to making a shot.

By paying full attention to every aspect of taking a free throw, practising until free throws were just natural, and being fully present in the moment when taking a shot, I didn’t miss. In the end I only ever missed when that last part, being present, was missing.

I also practised being present, so even getting into the moment to take a free throw was a quick mindset shift. At the time, I didn’t realise I was practising mindfulness. It’s only recently I recalled my free-throwing prowess and realised what I’d been doing back on the court.

Oh, how I wish I’d held on to that skill!!!

Not the free throws, I couldn’t care much for them anymore. The mindset thing to instantly get fully present in the moment. Over the years of my life, like anyone else, life has got more complicated. More to think about, more to get distracted by, more to worry about. The nature of my mind has become increasingly clouded, and being fully present in any moment often seems impossible.

The truth is though, “returning” to the present moment is mind-bogglingly simple. Because the only moment you are ever in, is the present one. There is nothing to return to. You are already present. Even if you’re replaying the past or forecasting the future, you are doing it now.

Alan Watts puts it this way1:

The only difference is we are either focusing our attention on what is actually happening around us now, or we are focusing on an illusion of the past or future (and sometimes an illusion of what’s happening now… but who doesn’t like daydreaming). The question worth asking yourself when doing the latter is, ‘is this constructive and serving my current task?’

All my memories shared above about my past basketball endeavours were happening in my mind at the moment I wrote about them. This was useful in the circumstances. However, suppose I was reliving the bliss of a swish during a conversation with my wife about our plans for the day. That’s not so useful (and could lead to an argument about being present in the moment!).

To go back to the free throws, when I drew a foul while taking a shot, and stepped up to the line to take the free throw, I put my entire attention on that task. I put aside thoughts on the foul that led to it, any thought of missing the shot, attempts by the opposing team to distract me. Anything that wasn’t about taking the shot was put aside. I now understand that this required a deliberate decision.

You’re constantly facing a choice: to put your attention on the reality of the present moment, or on some illusion you’re having within it. The latter can be completely OK, especially if it’s being done to aid completion of a task in the present moment. It’s also OK to daydream, to let your mind wander in a state of purposelessness, from time to time. So long as you’re aware you’re doing it.

The key is remaining aware of where your attention is and where it needs to be, based on the reality of any given moment, then focusing on what matters in that moment.

Moment by moment, whatever choice you make, do it on purpose.

Now, please make a deliberate choice to leave a comment and share about a time making a choice to be present really helped you. I’d love to hear about it!

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For instance, a good friend of mine barely scraped through high school. Teachers informed me the future for this friend was bleak, a life of struggle.

Fast forward some 20 years and my friend is now working for a large corporate, in a very respectable role. He has a beautiful two-story house near the ocean in a coastal suburb, where he lives with his wife and two children.

He has more friends than I could count. If the measure of success is the number of people who turn up for your funeral, this guy will leave us all for dead.

(excuse the pun, but given I could edit it out but choose not to, I have to confess the pun is very much intended…)

One thing I can count on though, is that if I go first, he’ll most certainly show up for my funeral. He probably wouldn’t miss it for the world, and the same goes for his many other friends.

He loves boating and being on or in the water, and makes time to enjoy his water-based hobbies as often as possible. He’s even won multiple Australian national championships pursuing one of them.

You could say, he’s lucky. But his success is due to something his teachers weren’t considering. My friend’s success comes down to following this formula (based on my observations, but I reckon he’ll agree if he reads this):

Knowing what he values, and focusing his mental energy on the things he values. Then building lasting relationships and applying a solid work ethic to anything he does.

Anyone who has read ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson, will recognise this philosophy. Decide what you value most, then give all your fucks to those things and none to anything else.

That doesn’t mean you never do anything you don’t care about. In my friend’s case he often needs to spend physical energy on things he doesn’t give a fuck about. But mental energy for these things is limited to what’s necessary to save energy for the things that matter to him.

Maybe you have to work a job you don’t care for, to support something you do care for. In this case, it helps to keep the bigger picture in perspective when it feels like you’re grinding your way from ‘9 to 5’ (or longer…) in a job you don’t enjoy to provide for a family you care deeply about.

This is much easier said than done. Trust me, I know! But sometimes in life, you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do, so in these situations, it’s best to let go and focus your attention on getting it done as well and as quickly as possible. With this approach, you may even enjoy it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve found enjoyment in something I thought I’d hate doing, just by getting on with it.

With that done, you can get back to focusing on what you really care about knowing the thing you don’t care about is taken care of. So even if you never get a ‘lucky break’, it won’t matter because you’ll spend your life feeling lucky.

So “you’ve got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?”1

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