At some point I’ve told myself that I ought to write a manifesto. I’m not sure why I did that. I must have read somebody else’s manifesto and thought “Well, that’s a good idea, I ought to write one too.” Right now, it seems a little silly. Why just copy other people? But now I’m thinking about how everything is a remix, and how it’s worth copying things because the act of copying always teaches you something, especially if you’re at least somewhat mindful about it.
So, an attempt at a manifesto. A manifesto is a declaration of one’s beliefs, opinions, motives, and intentions. Apparently the idea is to just figure out what’s important.
I think it’s important to confront fears. I’m not very good at it, but I’d like to get better at it. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect to be able to confront and conquer every single fear, but I think it’s something that I should think about from time to time, assess and address. I don’t think I should be scared shitless all the time. I do think that I am often paralyzed or otherwise restricted by fear in some way, and I think consciously identifying, acknowledging and addressing my fears will give me a better quality of life.
I think it’s important to be kind to people. It can be difficult, but it’s always worth the effort.
I think writing is good for me and I’d like to declare that I think I ought to write everyday.
I think health is important, and I think the body is more than just a vehicle for the head. I think it’s important to appreciate the body, the breath. I would fit this within a broader idea that meatbag management is important, and really, it should come first before anything else. Once your meatbag starts to suffer, your mind suffers, your relationships with other people suffer, your work suffers, and it’s generally a miserable experience. Anybody with a damaged or hurt meatbag will tell you that they’d do anything to have a healthy meatbag again.
I think it’s important to remind myself that life is not a dress rehearsal, that it is happening to me right now– that I am living my life right now, this is it, now is the moment and it is all I have. It’s easy to forget that.
I think it’s important not to get caught up in petty conversation that doesn’t have any stakes. Some of it might be entertaining, and sometimes entertaining can mean discussing things that seem important or profound. But I think I need to hold the bigger picture in mind. If I’m not working towards fulfilling my own dreams, I won’t have as much leverage when trying to make the cases that I want to make. I think it was Taleb who said that people who don’t want to take you seriously WON’T take you seriously no matter how articulate your argument is, until you take their money. (You don’t literally have to steal from them or anything– you just have to be right where it counts– with real stakes, not in the context of verbal argument.)
I think it’s important to practice mindfulness and meditation. I suppose that goes along with the meatbag stuff. A musician should tune and maintain her instrument. A thinker, a penseur, should tune and maintain her mind. If you don’t do that then you’re fundamentally unserious about thinking, about creative work, etc.
I think it’s important to have a body of work, to have output. A prototype is worth a thousand meetings. I should explain myself less and demonstrate results more.
Wait, let’s stop.
As I write this I find myself thinking… it’s really easy to come up with a big fanciful manifesto that has a ton of well-thought out points, but all of that really amounts to nothing if you don’t follow it. Really, the only thing that matters is that you stick to it. A simple one line manifesto that you stick to is way more useful and valid that having lots of things said. In fact, as I write this I hear the saboteur inside my head laughing. The more I write about what I want to do, the less likely I am to do any of the things I say I’m going to do. This is a constant trap for me, and what I was trying to get at with the GTD-and-killing-tasks thing. It’s better to have very, very few things on your plate and make sure you get them done, than it is to make a bunch of promises.
So what does that suggest I should do? I should make much smaller commitments. Committing to big things is cute and sweet-sounding, and might seem dramatic, but my subconscious isn’t at all impressed or inspired by big hairy audacious goals. It’s like a company having a whole bunch of corporate values and whatnot, but when push comes to shove, what matters is whether you back it up with actions.
Is it possible for me to write a manifesto in such a way that– by being more clever in the way I write it, I make it likelier that i actually follow it? To say yes would be wishful thinking on my part, I think. I can’t get better behavior by writing a nicer-sounding manifesto. I can only get better behavior by… behaving better? That feels like a bit of a cop-out.
I suppose the thing is to keep it to a couple of lines, then revisit it every day, at every action. How do I guarantee that? It should be at the top of my to-do lists. It should be a short as possible. It should be a single line. What would be the single line that I use to drive my own behavior? The first thing that comes to mind, cheesy as it is, is Yinsen talking to Tony Stark in the first Iron Man– “Don’t waste your life, Stark.” I’m not Tony Stark, but that kinda resonated with me.
The next line that comes to mind is from Da Vinci. “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” I suppose that’s the best I can shoot for, for now. Spend my days well, sleep happy. What is a well spent day? Time spent doing work that’s not superficial, time spent shipping things.
A well-spent day brings happy sleep.