THE LEAFLET
January 23 2025
getting it in (parts 1 and 2), essence and maintenance
GETTING IT IN, PART 1
Setting yourself up for success with the right tools and environment and rituals is a good and smart thing to do. What a sneaky vexation, then, that attention given to the tools, environment, and rituals can subsume or stand in for the doing of the thing itself. You obsess over the notebook and mug and tea-making and do very little writing. You get the performance gear and the gym class pack and the data tracking app and you don’t actually lift. The perfect (situation) becomes the enemy not just of the good but of the actual. I’ve fallen into this trap so many times, especially with writing.
To avoid this, there’s a different mode of practice that I’ve come to think of, wryly, as “getting it in”. This is a useful mode to discover and cruise within. Its defining feature is smiley indifference toward the environment, tools, and rituals that set you up for success. When you’re in this mode, you eventually relish crummy tools and unfavorable circumstances and busted rituals. You’re still doing your thing despite all of that. You’re getting it in.
When you’re getting it in, you start to take pride in, even build a collection of, the trying circumstances that have failed to thwart you. You amass a Seuss-y list of situations where you still got it in: on a plane, in the car, in pain, at the bar, on Dumaine, near and far! What a splendiferously diligent writer you are.
[“written” in the notes app on my phone; with h/t and apologies to Jadakiss, 50 Cent, and others]
-eric
Read the rest here.
GETTING IT IN, PART 2 (PARENTS)
I’ve seen some readers of this newsletter unlock “getting it in” when they become parents. Raising a child means so very often the crystalline crème brûlée of your preferred ritual is now spilt milk on the floor - the substance of the thing is there, but the structure is a mess. Your tools are bent (or lost in the bardo of dust bunnies beneath the couch). Your environment is loud and variable and smeared with the leavings of Kirkland fruit n veggie pouches.
Yet.
These parents do their thing - teach or write or lobby or lead. They get it in. The volatility a toddler radiates through their days forces an essentialism about their work. They slough off a preciousness about context and kick ass at their thing in scarcer minutes and sloppier circumstances. They don’t waste time; there’s no time to waste.
A lesson I’ve drawn from watching these working parents get it in has a few pieces:
“Willpower” maybe isn’t the thing at all. It’s not the place to focus my energy and honor/shame. These same working parents are often real real tired. They may have lower reserves of willpower and working memory than ever - possibly, all of the daily supply has been spoken for by 10AM. Yet. They’re getting it in.
Mindset and identity might instead be the things - the place to focus energy and pride. These same parents seem to channel Murakami’s simple outlook: “This is a thing I am here to do (in this life). So I do it.” Distilled even further: “I am a [writer/runner/teacher]. So I [write/run/plan lessons].”
Oh and also: the kids are melting down, the road is icy, the acid of gas station coffee is eating through your empty stomach. You’re gonna be late and your boss will be quietly pissed in a way you can’t fix. When your partner turns to you, bidding for your attention, do you look at them with kindness and use gentler words than necessary?
This, too, is getting it in.
-eric
Read the rest here.
ESSENCE AND MAINTENANCE
In one bewildering season of my time as CEO, Ben made a typically perfect book recommendation. He suggested I skim The Four Disciplines of Execution. I did and then carried chunks of it to my team and said - we are doing this. Let’s try it.
I liked the realism of the recommendations in the book. Specifically, the authors recognize that there is inevitably a “whirlwind” of responsibilities blowing around and through any brilliant central stratagem you and your team have come up with. Total, exclusive focus on the most important thing isn’t really possible or advisable. Someone has to file all the state taxes, answer customer calls, make sure that the right number of rooms are booked for the conference (anyone who works in operations knows this list could stretch to another 50-100 items before you have to think hard).
For his part, Greg McKeown recommends making a daily list of essential items and maintenance items: 2 essential and 3 maintenance. Richard Rumelt’s writing about the cost of having a strategy at all presumes that you’ve got beaucoup maintenance on your hands and may have to tradeoff on some of that maintenance to execute your strategy (so think twice, dear reader, before you commit to having a strategy at all).
The through line here is essence and maintenance. Classifying the two in your own work, giving them both their due. Especially in fast-paced early days, where you’re scrambling for survival or, happily, scrambling to keep up with rampant demand, you can lose sight of one of these two halves.
Often, essence feels sexy and maintenance feels safe. Different people on the team will be drawn to one of the two, so much so that they’ll see it as the sole guarantor of success. A challenging truth is pretty much every day of an organization’s life (and of your own) requires attention on both.
-eric
Read the rest here.
COMPELLING QUOTES
Novelist Haruki Murakami on mundanity and contemplation:
No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.
Historian William Dalrymple on the trivialization of killing in foreign lands:
In London … there was great satisfaction that the first military expedition undertaken during the reign of Queen Victoria had been such an effortless success: in London society, a new dance—a gallop named “The Storming of Ghuznee”—became the fashionable strut of the season.
Blogger and marketing maven Seth Godin on leadership and history:
Significant work involves tension, change, and the transitions of starting and finishing. What we’ve done will change what we do. What we do will change who we are. And the cycle continues. The challenge of leadership is helping people put that history to work in a positive way.
Keep going, keep growing,
Ben & Eric