I’ve just been scrolling through my photos. The Middle East seems long ago, though it’s only a fortnight. The sand, the Islamic culture, the emptiness and dry headwinds and oil pipelines.
In Sri Lanka, it’s humid; a light breeze pulls white waves from the blue Indian ocean which wrinkles beyond beige umbrellas. I cycle in short shorts; girls show their shoulders. I like the vitality of the tropics, the abundance of green, the Asian elephants and those purple-faced langurs.
I’m grateful to the cosmic causal chain that allowed me to start cycling. None of it was my doing, really. It’s all reliant on the work of others: I didn’t design my Brooks B17 saddle, nor did I build a ferry to cross the channel or even map Serbia’s cycle paths.
But if I did one thing to kick it off, I picked a date to start. The more I think about it, the more essential this seems.
Most of us have good ideas but never act.
My life is littered with ideas lost in the eternal “someday”, never having materialised. I have tried to do so much—too much—so my novel remains unpublished, I am not a yoga instructor, and I can’t code nor cook.
When we’re accountable to others, we set a start date. When we hold ourselves to account, we don’t.
Couples who get married pick a wedding day; when we start a new job, our employer tells us when to turn up to work; when we leave, we give our notice. Infamous dates live in perpetuity: 9/11, Pearl Harbour and D-Day.
However, some of the most exciting events in our lives are self-motivated; they don’t involve too much direct agency from others. We dream about a meditation retreat, a massive hike, or getting strict with our Keto diet. In my case, I recently began cycling.
Last year in central London, my brother and cofounder Monty and I were doing ‘cofounder therapy’ to help our professional relationship. Our therapist, Emily, would sit opposite us on a grey fabric sofa on the top floor of a poorly ventilated office building close to Chancery Lane. Each week, she observed us; we discussed work and left. Her presence was helpful, even if she didn’t understand why.
One Wednesday afternoon in June we arrived at Emily’s office. When I rang the bell nobody answered and then we remembered Emily was on holiday. We decided to go to the pub instead and the closest was The Last Judgement, which now seems appropriate.
Over a Heiniken Zero, we discussed the future of work and working together, and we realised now was a good time for me to make my dream real and go for a long bicycle ride. We looked at the diary and the earliest possible date for me to start the ride: the 21st August 2023.
A fortnight later I remember getting a phone call from my dad. A large box had arrived and he’d signed for it. “What is in the box?” he asked. I explained it was a emerald green Ridgeback Panorama bicycle, XL and polished.
“Wow, you’re doing it!” he said incredulously. I was doing it because the date was decided: Fixed in my mind and shared with others. I began to bring my vision to life.
This trip wouldn’t have happened were it not for setting a date.
Self-motivated life landmarks begin as a fleeting idea or a dream. If we are agentic, we catch hold of it, note it, and drag it into reality. Ideas come to us, as if channelled, at the ticket barrier of the Tube or during the penultimate page of a novel, between tennis serves or when tying our laces. Fortunately, we are ideas people—all creative and inventive humans.
Ideas, in themselves, are not the problem. But they are avoidant so they leave when left unattended, no matter how numinous or insightful. Some ideas appear brilliant so we tell all and get excited—we buy the .ai domain—but they can also flame up and fly out of the bedroom window when we’re sleeping.
If we don’t set a date, we don’t don’t commit the idea to reality, and our dream never materialises. We move on and forget. When starved of attention, ideas die and are buried six feet deep in the notes on our phone.
There is another dimension: We often don’t know what of the many ideas we should pursue. Conventional wisdom suggests that we should pick one and be done with it, and if we’re not picking one thing and executing it relentlessly, we are doing something wrong. Successful people appear to be doing one thing well and not messing around with other, unsuccessful, ideas.
James Clear shares a story that explains how Warren Buffett prioritised his time. Buffett asks his colleague Mike to write down Mike’s top 25 career goals and then circle the ‘top five’ goals in the list. Mike then has two lists: the ‘top five’ list and one with 20 less important items. Clear tells us:
Buffett asked him [Mike] about the second list, “And what about the ones you didn’t circle?”
Flint replied, “Well, the top 5 are my primary focus, but the other 20 come in a close second. They are still important so I’ll work on those intermittently as I see fit. They are not as urgent, but I still plan to give them a dedicated effort.”
To which Buffett replied, “No. You’ve got it wrong, Mike. Everything you didn’t circle just became your Avoid-At-All-Cost list. No matter what, these things get no attention from you until you’ve succeeded with your top 5.”
There is not one goal here, but a handful. The most focused people say no 95% of the time and with all that time saved, they still experiment with new—less conservative—ideas.
All need a start date.
Often, we don’t set a date because we are worried about missing it. It’s okay to commit everything to hitting some date and then not to hit it. In this case, we find we can achieve more than we expect.
So, if you want to publish a book, set a date for its publication. If you’d like to release an album, put it in the diary; if you want to start a business, arrange a launch dinner with your best friend.
My week in books
Wild Mind by Natalie Goldburg. When I’m feeling frozen as to what to write, I pick up a book by Goldburg who explains honestly the difficult journey of creation for any writer. With her, I feel it’s a tremendous team effort. Reading just one page of a book of hers makes me enthusiastic and rips open the right hand side of my brain—revealing a little more creativity and intuition. A taste: “It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected.”
Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse. Another wonderful Hesse novel where he explores the dichotomy of our lives. A quote: “We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.”
Reading: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power by Stephen Kotkin. A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman.
Live well,
Hector