Why I do this.
Dear friend,
- Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog
- Yvon Chouinard’s Let My People Go Surfing
- The Moth’s How To Tell A Story
- Shane Parrish’s Clear Thinking
- Tim Ferriss’s Tools of Titans
- Kamal Ravikant’s Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It
- Seth Godin’s Linchpin
- Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic
- Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning
All these books, all this thinking, about how to live a more fulfilled life. And yet the people writing the books are stuck in the same loop as the rest of us. So… what’s the point? Why read this stuff? Why write it?
It’s simple, I think. It feels good to write. It feels good to connect. When we find something that works for us, we want to share. I think most creators, especially the authors of books, sincerely want their audiences to lead better lives.
There’s no other way to explain the toil they’re willing to go through to help their audiences. There are ways to make more money in less time. There are friends that need hangs. There are families that need time and energy. But these writers see a path to a better world. They see a path to a better them. They see potential and take the time to step out of the doorway to let the big black dog into the house (see You Might be the Roadblock).
I’ve been big into Morgan Housel lately. Not sure what drew me in, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. He references old books, synthesizes content across deep content areas– history, psychology, and finance– and he’s a fanboy of Kahneman, Taleb, and Munger. He’s been on the The Tim Ferriss Show twice and has two relatively short and tight books. He’s exactly the type of creator I aspire to be.
Committing to the craft of writing is scary.
Housel says that if you sit down to write and the idea won’t come together, if you’re blocked, then maybe the idea just isn’t that good. Maybe that particular piece isn’t meant to be that particular way. Maybe you should go for a walk and come up with a better idea.
Cal Newport strikes me as the same kind of thinker. If you’re not good at your craft yet, if you haven’t explicitly chosen a craft, then maybe you should make that choice first before deciding you want a particular outcome. Another of Housel’s major tenets is that you can’t possibly know where a thing is going. If you knew, there wouldn’t be a point in doing the thing. Stripping your ideas down to bare metal and seeing if there’s something there…
Yep. Scary.
After all, “it is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us” (Williamson, 1992). The only way to find out how bright I can shine is to dial it up. From the inside out. Maybe there’s a sun next door. I’ll be outshone and no one will even know I’m there. Maybe it’s pitch black and my feeble candle will light the way.
Other light sources aren’t in my control. But how bright I choose to shine? How much I invest in my ability to light up my surroundings? Whether I level up from candle to electricity over decades of work… that’s up to me. I want to find out how good I can be, without going broke. Without sacrificing my family or using drugs. I want to see if I can craft ideas that travel. The point isn’t the outcome. It’s the process. Learning. Growing. Changing my brain by banging the keys. That’s why I do this.
Writing letters in this format is fun and rewarding. It’s feeding energy back into my life. The ideas that make it to draft are those that start showing up everywhere once I’m looking for them. I relish the challenge of honing them. I love the comfort of finishing them, for now. When the idea is outlined for a given letter, I can feel it. It’s like locking in the last edge piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then as I fill it in, I’m always surprised by the resulting picture. It’s never quite what I thought it would be. When the given letter is done, the idea lays down to rest and waits for its next opportunity to act in my life. Like Yoda. It fades away and integrates with other thoughts and I trust it will come back for another round of making when it’s ready.
Everything wants to exist there. Right there at the tipping point of being made and having been made. Of having enough room, just barely, and squeezing through the gap. We live to squeeze through gaps. To experience moments. And moments are fleeting. All of them. Every single one. The world moves on. Thirty kilometers a second. Where we’re going, we’ll never know.
The only way to find out is to get there. And without you, dear audience, I wouldn’t do the work. That’s why I do this.
Yours,
JT