I woke up, showered, got in my chair, it’s 1034am. In the shower I was thinking to myself, what’s the thing I want more than anything in the world right now? (I think I got this question from catching snippets of a TV show my wife was watching yesterday). And the answer is “I want to ship my book”.
And so I begin a process of self-inquiry. Why not ship the book as it is right now? Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that, it’s incomplete! Okay, what would it take to complete it? Hm, to answer that I’ll have to look at the draft again, give me a few minutes.
Let’s see…
- the introduction is pretty great, it makes some specific promises and it sets the scene well. If it were just about shipping the introduction, I could ship that.
- There’s some old preamble… shall I just cut it out? Shall I summarise it? I need to make a decision here and I feel a little stuck. I should probably default to cutting it out since it doesn’t seem super necessary at the moment. I can reintroduce it if I feel like it. Okay. Decision made. Cutting it out. Because the overarching priority is to get the book shipped.
- Section 1, call to adventure, looks good, some gaps but they are known gaps, I can fill them in the final edit…
- 1.1, the desire for sovereignty, yes, all good…
- 1.2, execute the jailbreak… some doubt here, is it a distraction from the core material? I could simplify it if I had to, cut out the extraneous references
- 1.3 refusal of the call, good to acknowledge, nice
- Section 2, “dangerous to go alone” – cute phrase, but should it be in the title? feel like the title should harken back to the promises. Which of the promises best capture it? “dismantle authoritarian” comes later… well then it’s the first two promises together, “cultivate relationship” and “attain narrative resonance”… I think this one has to be “disjoint”. We talk about learning, facing… how would you rephrase it? Tools of… tools of what? Learning the skills and tools… let’s return to this after the overview.
- 2.1 experiment with journaling, why? it’s a thread, it’s continuity, the idea is to express what you don’t know that you know, attain clarity. This is where I should also talk about making lists. maybe 2.1.1? reference Venkat and Umberto. maybe mention checklist manifesto?
- 2.2 storytelling… it’s very powerful, it brings your emotions into the picture. this is important. throughout the book I think there is a message that introspect might seem like an intellectual exercise, very cerebral, but it’s really about your heart
- 2.3 framing is an attention-management skill, it’s about setting boundaries, defining the context of something, deciding what you will and won’t focus on
- 2.4 unlearn catastrophizing… you could say that this is the problem when you have no frame, no story, no thread, everything is just overwhelming and chaotic, full of failure and pain. you then learn project management, which is the art of processing the chaos of reality and finding a way to navigate it
- 2.4.1 baby steps. part of why people feel overwhelmed is that the things they want to do seem overwhelming. but big things are made out of little things. a novel is written one word at a time. there’s no other way. one word after another. a marathon is run one step after another.
- 2.4.2 do 100 things. this is the simplest concept I can think of for creating a project “out of nothing”
- 2.5 ask lots of questions. questions are the currency of curiosity, of inquiry, of figuring things out.
- 2.5.1 root problem investigation. the root of our problem is in another castle. list of tensions, confusions, complications. how we are incentivized actually to avoid solving problems because we grow attached to the familiar comfort of their predictable dramas.
- 2.5.2 investigate your desires. hm maybe this should go into problem investigation? but it’s also a little separate, and it will mirror the coping mechanisms/fears section… keep it
- 2.5.3 learn to ask for help. a big part of my first book FAN is about socialising, and I point out even there that the first person you have to be friends with is yourself. seek a shared understanding. with yourself. asking for help is a superpower. we are social creatures. we like to help each other. specialization and trade is how wealth is created. what is difficult for you might be easy for someone else. superhero movies.
- 2.6. manage your psychology. ben Horowitz, hard thing about hard things. marathon, novel, book, whatever. show up every day, don’t die, don’t quit.
- 2.6.1 cultivate a sense of humour. Alan Watts. expectations and punchline.
- 2.6.2 face your mistakes, accept them, embrace them my personal journey. maybe trust bankruptcy goes in here? no I think that’s a labyrinth post
- 2.6.3 cultivate casual optimism – seems like it could be merged into something else, but if I don’t feel strongly about it I’ll just leave it
- 2.6.4 celebrate your wins yes this is important. focus on what you want to see more of
- 3 Enter The Labyrinth – the path of trials
- 3.1 face your fears – ugh fields, unbox truths. requires baby steps, requires forgiving yourself for flinching. how I overcame being a picky eater, MVP model.
- 3.2 investigate your coping mechanisms – might end up merging this with root problem analysis
- 3.3 trust bankruptcy – this deserves its own section
- 3.4 exhaustion funnels – the important thing is that so much of this is psychological, about your beliefs about rest, what’s a “reasonable amount of work” to do… journalling helps here
- 3.5 difficult feelings – grief, shame, etc… Kratos in God of War
- 3.6 propaganda department of the mind – we are dynamic beings but we tend to have relatively static self-images. we inherit much of this from the culture around us. many of us we get very attached to specific ideas, narratives. this is what we study storytelling and framing for. also what the journaling is for.
- 4. Face The Minotaur – Dismantle the inner authoritarian
- 4.1 narcissism of self loathing. part of this is a preemptive defense against the loathing and ostracization of others. part of it can be self-deprecation, but that’s tricky stuff and you want to be careful and thoughtful with that. talk about solipsism of imposter syndrome?
- 4.2 put the gun down – you can’t bully yourself into becoming a good person, it hasn’t worked so far and it will never work ever, bc all you learn is to do more bullying. borrow from ADHD thread
- you can’t install the old way with the new way
- 4.3 death and rebirth – mourning the old identity, crossing the threshold
- 5 Return with the elixir
- 5.1 what does it mean to come home to yourself, love after love
- 5.2 self-improvement as self-alienation
- 5.3 pay it forward
- 5.4 recurring motifs
- Appendix / Misc / Blabla / Et Cetera
tbc