📖 Current Read; 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living — Ryan Holiday
A Garden Is Not For Show
The Daily Stoic Meditation for September 15 outlines that it is not good to be a show off.
Keep to yourself, so you can grow, learn and develop and fully mature.
“First practice not letting people know who you are — keep your philosophy to yourself for a bit. In just the manner that fruit is produced — the seed buried for a season, hidden, growing gradually so it may come to full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stalk is fully developed, it will never ripen. . . . That is the kind of plant you are, displaying fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you.”
— EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.8.35b–37
Do Not Be A Show Off
It is not good to show off.
Showing off simply displays great vices and does not benefit you.
Showing off about yourself can be incredibly detrimental.
Constantly talking about who you are, your achievements and what you will do can be exhausting, both for you and your listers.
Further, it could also be embarrassing; what happens if you don’t achieve all those things you’ve bragged about?
Do not show off.
It is much better to keep to yourself and grow gradually.
Keep To Yourself
Keep to yourself.
Do not brag, do not show off — keep everything to yourself.
Until You Have Proof
Keep to yourself until you have proof.
Until you have proof of everything you wanted to do.
Until you have proof of your progress, your work, your achievements.
Until then, stay quiet and slowly grind!
Grow Gradually
Grow gradually.
All growth comes from small, atomic steps that combine to make something great!
Small, Atomic Steps Compound
Habits, routines, rituals, and daily practices accumulate over time.
A commitment to a daily action may be a small step, but it counts in a month or year. The effects of repeating the same good routines and habits are huge over the long term.
Most people underestimate tiny daily steps, but those actions lead to massive results.
“Your little choices become habits that affect the bigger decisions you make in life,” — Elizabeth George
Don’t underestimate the power of compounding — your daily rituals are compounding for or against you.
Habits build upon each-other the more they are performed, leading to stronger and more efficient action.
If you want to make great progress, start with small steps and build them up.
Small steps allow you to grow gradually.
They allow you to make daily progress that, over time, becomes something grand.
If you keep to yourself and continue to work hard each day, you’ll be unstoppable!
Idea of the Week. 💭
Less Is More
Less is More
The Wrong Notion
As a whole, we have a completely inaccurate idea about what it means to be truly successful and happy.
We are always looking for more.
We chase the things we do not have, we desire the things that are not ours, all so that we can have more. We work longer hours, take on more projects, and do more things.
This is due to the fact that, wrongfully, we equate doing more work with more success.
It makes sense, right? If you work for more hours, surely you’ll get more done and be successful?
Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Always doing, wanting, and trying to have, more, is in fact incredibly counterintuitive.
Negative Impacts
It seems as if doing, having and being more, etc, is the most efficient way to go about things.
However, in reality, things are the exact opposite; always striving for more harms your productivity.
A few examples of the negative consequences;
- You have less energy for the things that matter (family, friends, exercise etc)
- You’re constantly fatigued, and maybe even sometimes angry and frustrated
- You’re likely to become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work
- You’ll be more inclined to procrastinate
- Having and doing more serves to keep your environment constantly cluttered.
In short, there’s a great bunch of negative impacts when it comes to wanting and doing more.
The most significant consequence is the fact that doing more leaves you with incredibly high chances of burn out, which is a state of intense physical and mental exhaustion.
In regards to being burnt out, you simply lack the energy for any type of work, even if it is meaningful and deadlined.
Your chances of reaching burn out are much higher when you push yourself to work more than needed.
Less Is More
It’s clear that doing, trying and having more has negative impacts, ones that serve to harm your productivity more than help it.
And so, what’s the solution?
It’s not quick magic, but it’s a pretty good solution nonetheless; do less.
In this case, less is always more.
Rather than trying to do every job in the office, or help out all your friends, condense it down, try and do just a few things.
Why?
As seen with the negative impacts of doing more, there’s positive impacts of doing less;
- You can focus on those few, meaningful projects
- You have much more energy, ambition and motivation
- You’ll have time for other activities (gatherings, exercise etc)
- Your focus, when working, will be much more enhanced
- A general increase in productivity overall
- Much less risk of burnout
The most significant reason to do less is that, however paradoxically, it actually helps with your productivity! It can increase it significantly.
When you’re working on a million projects, your time is split haphazardly, and it’s unlikely that you can ever get any real work done, for you always have another thing to do.
If you focus on just one or two meaningful things, however, you can devote lots of time and energy there, ensuring that the work is of a much higher quality.
How?
There are plenty of ways to do this, ranging from Warren Buffets 5/25 strategy, to simply picking 1 thing to focus on.
For Warren Buffet (even though we’re not entirely sure if it’s his strategy), he uses the 5/25 rule.
Step 1. Write down your 25 most important goals
Step 2. Draw a circle around your top 5 goals.
Step 3. Focus on Your Top 5 Goals and Say No to the Rest
This strategy enables you to eliminate any other distraction, any other thing that could potentially harm your productivity! You can just focus solely on those 5 things.
However you do it, the message is clear; pick only a few (maybe 1, maybe 5) key things to work on, and don’t divide your attention elsewhere.
Less is always more.
Quote of the Week. 🗣
Fyodor Dostoyevsky on finding the source of unhappiness to therefore combat it!
The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.
To end, here’s a question from me! ⚡️
How can you work on emotional control?
Thanks for reading!
Until next week,
Sam. 😆
