Seeing that I started this blog because I thought it would be interesting to record how I went about achieving my New Year's resolutions, it should be about time for me to comment on my 2011 progress and update the banner at the top of the blog with my 2012 aspirations. I have no plans to write a post with a detailed update on whether or not I bought any new books in 2011 (I didn't) or whether or not I look better naked (my wife and I agree that I do). Whether or not I can check off a particular goal before moving on to the next batch belittles what I was trying to accomplish with the resolutions in the first place.
Merely moving onto this year's goals after reviewing last year's entirely skips delving into whether my original motivation for choosing a particular goal was advanced. So I look better naked. Why did I want to look better naked in the first place? Getting more fit would improve my health, but there were elements of vanity and male pride involved as well. I wanted my wife to see me and think about how sexy I looked. I didn't want to look like the other schlubs walking around the neighborhood pool. Plenty of people start off the new year wanting to lose weight, but my choice to write about achieving a particular goal took all the soul and spirit out of writing about the process.
I wrote 80 post last years. Early in the year, I basically wrote about my thinking on various topics with plenty of references to myself through excessive use of the personal pronoun I. By the end of the year I had dropped the personal pronouns for a more general presentation (this was a conscious and deliberate action). I was trying to emulate other blogs. Part of this was just to see if I could do it. Writing from the personal perspective has always been my default writing style when I'm thinking about something. Could I drop that style for something less self-referential? I feel that I managed to do that switch reasonably well, but I don't really like writing blog posts that have the flavor of a textbook.
I've also recently found that there are numerous blogs focusing on the kinds of things that I've been writing about for the last couple of months. Taking risks, pushing your limits, the kinds of actions you should take to reach expert levels of performance, these are very popular topics in leadership and self-improvement blogs. Despite the wealth of general advice on what research has found results in achievement, I haven't found much that actually puts these recommendations to the test (The Dan Plan being a notable exception). I read an ebook last week that was long on tips for overcoming the primitive fears that inhibit deviating from our safe and routine behaviors, but the entire thing felt empty. It was a good pep talk. Nothing more.
I think my recent posts have been in that vein. I've been emulating other writers while writing about topics that are addressed in many other places on the web while offering little more than a dry musing that is really little more than a pep talk. The emotional resonance that The Edge has for me is lost when I don't put the idea in a context of action and application. It's actually pretty easy to write about The Edge as an idea, but it's much more complicated to convey how central The Edge is to a complex web of associations and motivations in my pursuit of something beyond mediocrity.
As easy is the fastest way to an empty mediocrity, I'm going to use this blog to share more than ideas. I'm going to share my efforts to make academic ideas live. Rather than merely write about the skills of disruptive innovators, I'm going to put them into action and see what happens. What does it mean to have a bias against the status quo and how does that manifest itself in somebody's professional life? How will following the advice of Tony Schwartz or some other expert impact my performance? These are not going to be mere experiments for the sake of experimentation. They are going to be purposeful steps in the pursuit of something UNREASONABLE.
No comments:
Post a Comment