[AKN #59] Doing what works is hard, Greg Giraldo on New Yorkers, and the best 9/11 story you probably never heard
another krappy newsletter #59
Sup homies?
Welcome back to another edition of my dubious newsletter.
You never really know what you are going to get with me.
Am I going to give you some primer on how warts work?
Or will I stand upon my privileged soap box and wax poetic about how you do not need to be passionate about your job?
Not even I know honestly. Cause, you see, I write this portion first.
But what I do know is that whenever I get into the cadence of journaling every morning (specifically Morning Pages), I am able to write this whole newsletter faster and with more clarity.
Funny how I know that, yet I still find it so difficult to continue doing it.
In fact, I recently found myself suddenly stopping the habit altogether for 3 weeks!
I wrote an article about why you should journal, but then I didn’t do it myself?
Damn. I always knew that Kevin guy was a hypocrite.
Should recall him. Or bare minimum burn him at the stake.
If only someone did something about those wildfires, I would have been spared :(
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: Why is it hard to keep doing what works?
I am very good at setting and achieving goals.
I am very bad at maintaining a regular cadence after I achieve those goals.
Take my various soirées into weight loss.
Typically these look like the following:
Step 1: I set a goal to lose 20 pounds.
Step 2: I crush that goal.
Step 3: I lose interest and drift back to a normal baseline weight.
This pattern occurs in essentially all domains of my life, but especially the ones where it involves “good” habits such as diet, exercise, journaling, meditating, and reading.
It defies logic. I much prefer the person I am when I am doing all of these things, but I cannot seem to keep doing them.
However, after closer inspection, I came to a very interesting conclusion about why this happens.
Why do I stop doing good habits?
Because I stop doing what was working.
I am great at achieving goals because I understand how to manage my personal psychology when it comes to fulfilling goals.
I am terrible at maintaining the habits necessary to achieve those goals because I violate those same rules.
For example, if you look at the structure of my routine both while achieving a weight loss goal and after achieving a weight loss goal, it becomes clear that I just stopped doing the system that worked.
Recreating and annotating the framework for achieving my New Years Resolutions from this post with my before and after habits to drive home the point:
If I want to achieve a goal or change a habit, I need the following conditions to be met:
I need an audience.
DURING GOAL ACHIEVING PHASE:
I enter a weight loss bet with a group of loved ones.
I hire a coach to make sure I am eating what I said I would eat.
I am publishing my experimental findings along the way.
POST GOAL ACHIEVEMENT:
I stop doing all of those things.
I need competition.
DURING GOAL ACHIEVING PHASE:
I get very into the idea of lifting more weight or going faster on the Peloton.
I measure my weight weekly and report it to the weight loss bet group.
POST ACHIEVEMENT:
I stop doing all of those things.
Limit moderation where I have trouble exhibiting moderation.
DURING GOAL ACHIEVING PHASE:
I structure rules around what I can eat or drink and when.
POST ACHIEVEMENT:
I tell myself I will make it work.
I will execute simple. I will eventually stop complex.
DURING GOAL ACHIEVING PHASE:
I give myself structure in the form of “these are the meals I am going to eat week over week.”
POST ACHIEVEMENT:
I tell myself I will “figure it out” day by day.
Get real about why I want what I say I want.
DURING GOAL ACHIEVING PHASE:
Tell myself “I want to look good.”
POST ACHIEVEMENT:
Tell myself “its important to be healthy especially during a pandemic.”
I. Stopped. Doing. What. Worked.
So really when you think about it, it is very obvious why I regress backward:
Because good things fall apart unless you expend energy.
Developing a sustainable system
It is obvious that the reason I end up stopping some of those habits is because the way I execute them are fundamentally unsustainable.
Can I reasonably continue to participate in a weight loss group forever?
No. That would be insane. Who would participate in that?
Can I reasonably eat the same set 3-5 meals week over week in all conditions?
No. Occasionally I am going to go on vacation and eat like a slob or have lunch catered at work.
So really the problem to be solved is how do I structure something that fits all of these categories for the long haul?
Something I will ponder over and get back to you on.
In the mean time, feel free to share your own experiences with what worked in maintaining your own good habits for long stretches of time.
LAUGH: Greg Giraldo on New Yorkers
I wrote a more serious piece on 9/11 as my lead up to my obviously-necessary-to-the-discourse take on Afghanistan, but who needs another serious piece on 9/11 this week?
Let’s instead focus on using comedy to rise above the tragedy for a few seconds by listening to the late Greg Giraldo’s take on people from New York City.
I especially enjoyed his bit on the response from New Yorkers post 9/11 around 5 minutes in. His description of the bachelorette party there is definitely worth the watch.
“Midlife Vices” is a real tour de force and if you really want to go down the rabbit hole, here is the whole 41 minute and 20 second special.
Guy was a legend.
LOVE: The best 9/11 story you probably never heard
This is the story of a seemingly ordinary person saving thousands of lives.
Rick Rescorla was a Vietnam war veteran that was working as a Morgan Stanley security guard at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
While everyone was told to remain calm, Rescorla leapt into action and successfully evacuated 2,687 of the 2,700 Morgan Stanley employees.
He unfortunately died that day as he went back in to get the 13 employees left in the building.
While the story itself is amazing removed from the context of who he was over the course of his life, the story of who this guy was is even more ridiculous.
Like for example, this story from his time in Vietnam:
Amazing story. Amazing man. May he Rest In Peace.
Closing time
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Mahalo,
Kevin