The Reason Why I'm Embracing Rugged Flexibility
An amazing new book, watches from National Parks, and carving out hobby time
Dinner at Lilia Comedor (on NYTimes Top 50 restaurants) - delicious food, bad photo!
Hello there,
As we slide into fall I’ve been enjoying the funny transition with one hot day then a cold rainy day then another sunny day.
The perfect time for hot chocolate on the rocks™️ !
(I’m pretty sure if I just add the trademark sign in writing I own the idea, right?)
Last week I made a quick (and fantastic) trip to Austin to hang with old friends and the plane right got me into the zen-like focus. Fueled by tomato juice + gingerale (eww!) I consumed an entire book and I’m excited to share what I learned.
How to Adapt to the Inevitability of Change
In Master of Change by Brad Stulberg, the intro sucked me in perfectly connecting the thesis to the story of pro-climber Tommy Caldwell and his “rugged flexibility.”
The premise is that we all must adapt to changes in our lives, and here are my top three lessons from the book:
1) The power of asking for help
Enormous redwood trees may be 100 ft tall but their roots are only 6 ft deep. So how do they stay upright with winds and storms coming through every year?
They spread their roots wide, with systems that intertwine with other trees.
We all face change, at the very least when we grow older, which is as inevitable as taxes.
Studies show that asking for and receiving help is one of the most predictive characteristics for resilience.
Recognizing that after disorder there is no going back to the way things were. You don’t return to the old order but instead you reorder.
But the real test is how you adapt and grow through the disorder we face.
2) Skill as an emergent interaction
You’ve probably heard the story of the British cycling coach who suggested dozens of 1% improvements to his team. Each little inefficiency they removed got them closer to the goal of winning the Tour de France.
What you probably haven’t heard is the real motivation behind the improvements.
The coach aimed to build that momentum of improvement so the team could see measurable changes. And that change spurned them on to work harder and increase the gap between last year’s performance and this year.
“Skill is not some thing to develop or acquire; rather, it is an emergent interaction with an ever-changing environment.”
— Stuart McMillan (coach for Olympic athletes and World Champions)
3) Build a house with many rooms of identity
The lowest point in Michael Phelps life came after he won the most gold medals in Olympic history. You might expect him to be soaring on the highs of his success, but instead he felt lost.
After exceeding his wildest goals, he couldn’t imagine what the next chapter of his life would look like.
Filling your entire life with one identity can threaten you with fragility.
Think of your identity as a house; you can have phases where you spend all your time in one room - athlete, businessman, son, parent - but life will force you to move.
Maybe it’s an injury, or a retirement, or your kids moving out. When you have a variety of rooms that make up your identity (for me it’s simply “the guy who keeps the Zoom meetings lighthearted”) you have another room to go to when external forces arise.
The alternative might be that you find yourself without shelter, lost and hopeless.
If you can learn to define yourself broadly, then change—be it aging or retirement, gain or loss, success or failure—becomes less threatening. You can take a hit in one part of your identity without losing others.
Worthy & Remarkable
Gravel makes travel products and their ninth Kickstarter for a Super Packable Travel Blanket has raised $181k
These National Park Watches feature beautiful illustrations and unique mehcanisms from a spinning starscape to a rotating seal and raised $250k so far (plus self winding?!)
The runner Alexi Pappas on the Rule of Thirds which gives context for those training days or low energy days when we feel like crap
Two of the best climbers in the world are brother and sister - here’s Brooke and Shawn Rabotou training together (daaang!)
One Thing from Me
Despite how obvious it sounds, I’m constantly reminding myself to design my life to be lived today, not sometime in the future. For the past few years I’ve kicked my love of music ahead to some future date, “when I have more time.”
But clearly we never have more time. We all get the same 24 chips per day, and unless you start cutting sleep, I’m left with about 16 chips to work with.
I’m certainly guilty of spending minutes on things that don’t truly bring me joy, so instead I’m carving out time to learn percussion.
Yes, that’s right - my twelve year old self would pump his fist to hear I’m drumming again!
I probably won’t restart the John Mayer cover band we had in high school, but I’m excited to explore sounds closer to Tom Misch (funk / nu jazz). It all comes full circle because his sbass player is the son of John Mayer’s bass player - woah, small world!?
"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
— Ernest Hemingway
Percussively,
Jono