The Lenses series collects thoughts that shift how you see things.
Enjoy today’s lenses.
Forgetting
The art of competing, I’d learn from the track, was the art of forgetting…
You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.
— Phil Knight (co-founder, Nike)
I often forget my limits while setting too demanding running workouts. Even though it helps me improve, it’s a painful realisation each time I can’t execute it as planned. Seems like nature likes us to forget about limits to improve, but what about forgetting in other aspects of life?
I spent a week of August in Spain. It was one of the hottest weeks in my life, with temperatures reaching 35°C (95°F) almost every day. But now, after a few weeks, I don’t remember the heat. I have only positive memories from the trip.
The cognitive bias that makes us remember the past in a much better light is called rosy retrospection. Selective forgetting seems like a good mechanism for shaping our reality: it can help us push past our limits, or turn a week of unpleasant heat into a great story about summer holidays.
When was the last time you saw through rosy retrospection?
Contributing
The measure of a life is not what you consume, but what you contribute.
Spend less time owning, consuming, taking. Spend more time giving, creating, making.
— James Clear
Creating is fun, especially while crafting sentences. That’s where I feel the sense of accomplishment.
There is a rule of thumb that only 1% of participants in an online community create most of its content. Now that AI makes it easier to generate content, the number might differ. But if I take a look at my friends, it’s still a minority of people creating regularly.
I believe that we still need authentic people sharing their unique takes online. If you are in doubt, I encourage you to try. You can be in the 1% right away.
What stops you from creating?
On a more artistic note, you may enjoy this letter from Kurt Vonnegut about creating.
“Not-doing”
In our culture, not-doing is very undervalued. It’s as if one has to always be doing something in order to justify one’s existence. But such compulsive doing is an avoidance of being, literally, one’s true nature.
— Adyashanti
For most of my life, I was convinced that spending time doing nothing could not be good. Now, my relationship with productivity keeps evolving. I prioritise balancing not-doing and doing.
Not-doing is fine. And compulsive doing might not be the best way to experience life. So, I vote for balancing it. At the other end of the spectrum, one of my most productive chapters this year came from multiplayer pomodoro, the opposite of not-doing.
What is your relationship with “not-doing”?
P.S. Try sitting for 10 minutes with your eyes closed, doing nothing, a tiny demo of meditation retreats.
Thanks for reading,
— Michał
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