Maximizing Your Life’s Potential
Volume 1, Issue 2: Maximizing Your Life’s Potential
(Originally Published February 5, 2019)
What’s New This Week
Welcome back to the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook! This is the second official newsletter, and our community is growing fast! We surpassed the 100 member-milestone in our first week, and we’re ready to keep growing as we further explore the human experience in the coming weeks. Thanks so much for joining us, and be sure to share this newsletter with a friend!
In this week’s newsletter, we’ll explore the idea of maximizing your life’s potential. Many of us have thought at one point or another, “there are just not enough hours in the day,” or “there are so many things that I’d like to do — I just don’t have the time to do it all,” or something to that effect. This concept is often referred to as the “poverty of time” (or “Time Poverty” in some instances).
The concept of a “poverty of time” (a concept well-explored in this Medium article by John P. Weiss) is something that many people face, which makes a lot of sense, given the finite number of days, hours, and minutes that we each have to live our stories. However, the idea of maximizing your life’s potential in life goes beyond the notion of “getting things done”, or simply maximizing productivity. Instead, it seeks to explore the totality of the human experience — from people to ideas, from art to productivity, and, of course, adventure.
As always, there’s plenty of content here, so feel free to just take what you need. Let’s get started!
Listen
In this week’s Listen section, we’ll be dissecting a piece (minutes 2:12 ~ 10:00) of episode 194 , “Make An Introduction”, from the podcast “Happier” with hosts Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft. In the “Happier” podcast, Rubin and Craft discuss happiness, human nature, and good habits. Rubin, the podcast’s creator, is the author of many books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Four Tendencies, Better Than Before, and The Happiness Project. We’re about to take a deep dive, so get ready!
An introduction, in an abstract sense, is a person’s first experience of a subject or thing. We see introductions in novels, articles, newsletters, movies, and advertisements that serve to familiarize an audience with the forthcoming experience. In the world we live in, we are constantly introduced to things. We are introduced not only to lifelong friends, acquaintances, business connections, future spouses, and colleagues, but also to perspectives, ideas, cultures, deeper emotions, experiences, and technology. We each perceive the world from a unique, specific framework of reference, driven by the things we have been introduced to and that we have experienced. Each introduction that we experience refines those frameworks, allowing us to constantly update and improve the information we use to understand the world around us.
If you want to maximize your potential experience in life, introduction is necessary. They say that ‘travel is the cure for ignorance’, but why is that? In the words of Mark Twain, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” His statement draws from the idea that introducing yourself to different, diverse cultures does indeed refine the framework by which you experience the world.
Taking that idea one step further, why do we as a society say that reading is valuable for your personal growth? In an age-old quote from the notable children’s author Dr. Seuss, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” How does this idea work? Similar to the thoughts of Mark Twain, Dr. Seuss implies here that when we introduce ourselves to new ideas and concepts, as we do in books, we are again able to refine the frameworks of our minds to grow ourselves and craft a fuller, richer experience in life. Another quote that exemplifies this idea comes from George R.R. Martin, which reads, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” We can introduce ourselves to new experiences and ways of life through the stories we read and consume, and we become better individuals because of it.
And finally, we return to people. People are everything. When you introduce yourself to a person, you are acknowledging their existence, and when you remember their name, you are acknowledging their inherent value as a fellow human being (note, this is not the same as assigning or giving value to a person, but rather merely acknowledging the value that already exists). There is so much nuance that accompanies the introduction of human beings, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll consider the most important aspects of human introduction that can help maximize your potential experience- when we introduce, and how we introduce.
When do we introduce ourselves to a stranger? Is it when we see that they have something to offer us, or when we have something to offer them? Is it when they are talking to a friend of ours? What leads us to introduce ourselves to new people will differ for each of us, and finding the answer to that question will tell you a lot about yourself as a person. If you see a stranger, just any average person, and you decide not to introduce yourself, ask yourself why. You might be surprised by the lengths we as humans may go to in order to rationalize when we do and don’t feel like introducing ourselves to someone- someone who has a story just as you do, a story which has the power to change the way that you view the world.
The last thing I want to note on introductions is the way in which we introduce ourselves and each other. Personal introduction is a huge, largely untapped opportunity to show another person (or multiple people) how much you value each of them individually, as well as what you actually value about them. For example: “Here’s my friend Josh,” versus “This is my friend Josh, who might just be the coolest person I’ve ever met.” Whether or not Josh really is that cool (I’ll let you be the judge), in the latter introduction, you’re not only showing the other person what you value about your friend Josh, but you’re showing Josh himself what you value about him, and the fact that you value him at all (I don’t think I know a Josh at the moment, but if you’re reading this and your name is Josh, you’re probably pretty cool). When you introduce yourself to another person, do you ask questions like, “So… what do you do for a living?” or do you take it up a notch and say something like, “What has been the most inspiring thing you’ve experienced lately?” One introductory question shows intentionality and genuine interest in getting to know a new person, while the other doesn’t show much of anything.
As you get going this week, be intentional in introducing yourself to new and unfamiliar contexts, ideas, cultures, and people. And who knows, you might find just the adventure you’ve been looking for.
(If you’d like to practice the art of the email introduction, feel free to introduce yourself to me at the end of this newsletter!)
Learn
This week’s Learn section features a talk from Tim Harford, where he shares how innovators like Einstein, Darwin, Twyla Tharp and Michael Crichton found their inspiration and productivity through cross-training their minds. He introduces ( 😉) the idea of “slow-motion multitasking”, effectively re-defining multitasking and the idea of “doing several things at once”.
I’ll save most of the words for Mr. Harford, but it is important to note that when he refers to “doing several things at once”, the scope of time he refers to is relatively large, like working on multiple projects over the course of a day, a week, or a month, rather than literally doing multiple things at the same moment. Also, it is worth noting that a “project” is not limited to technical tasks like building a website, an app, or a birdhouse, but can include just about anything you want to do, such as learn to play an instrument, learn how to draw, practice social skills, or become more emotionally intelligent.
This idea of slow-motion multitasking is a major step toward maximizing your potential experience, because it allows us to take on multiple pursuits concurrently, while not giving up anything we are passionate about pursuing. What might it require of us? Patience. While “Tunnel vision” may allow us to focus in on a single thing for a duration of time and “get things done faster”, what happens when we encounter a huge obstacle inside that tunnel? Check out the above talk to learn more.
Level Up
In this week’s Level Up section, we’ll check out the book “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky, Founder and CEO of Behance, for some practical insights as to how we can maximize our potential for achieving our goals and dreams.
According to Belsky, an expert in the productivity and creative industries,
“No one is born with the ability to drive creative projects to completion. Execution is a skill that must be developed, by building your organizational habits and harnessing the support of your colleagues and your community.”
If you see yourself as being a “creative” person, as I do myself (or if it’s the case that you watch some sort of entertainment where creative people are depicted), you may have picked up on some of the stereotypes of creative people being messy and disorganized because “that’s just how they are”. Belsky opposes this notion in the book, reasoning that, “The ideas that move industries forward are not the result of tremendous creative insight but rather of masterful stewardship.”
With respect to achieving results, what good is it being creative if a person cannot execute the creation process? What good would it serve DaVinci to be an incredibly skilled artist if he could never finish a work of art? What good would it serve Mozart to be an incredibly skilled composer if he could never finish a composition? Belsky presents the formula that Making ideas happen = Ideas + Organization + Communal forces + Leadership capability. For this week’s section, we’ll focus briefly on his ideas on organization.
The Behance CEO presents us with the concept of the Action Method: the idea that everything is a project (as we noted above in Tim Harford’s Ted Talk). Projects range from taking a class to personal finances, from planning birthday parties to getting in shape, and from building an app to basically anything else you can think of doing. In his notes, he states that every project in life can be reduced into 3 primary components: Action Steps, References, and Backburner Items. Action Steps are the specific, concrete tasks that move the project forward (i.e. send the email, make the phone call, watch the lecture. Note how these are all verb-based statements). Though we have introduced the idea of “slow-motion multitasking” in the Learn section, remember that you can only focus on one action step at any given moment, but you can work on action steps across multiple projects within the same larger-scale time frame (i.e. a day, week, or month). References are the project-related documents, notes, sketches, manuals, website links, or discussion that you may want to refer back to at a later point to accomplish your Action Steps. Finally, we have the Backburner Items, which are the things that are not currently actionable but may become actionable at some point in the future.
What might this look like in practice? For me personally, I usually have no less than 4 “projects” going on at the same time (this newsletter being one of them), and this system of organization absolutely works. In terms of tooling, I use the application Asana to keep my tasks and projects organized and to keep track of the Action Steps and Backburner Items. Among the many great things about Asana are the facts that it is free for individual use, you can actually create “projects” within the app that have their own space and sets of tasks, and the main task view splits your action steps into sections based on due date. For References, I use Evernote because it is also free, it allows you to save your notes in the cloud, and you can even “clip” web pages and other online content directly into your Evernote notebooks. Ideally, each project in Asana would correspond with a notebook in Evernote if you were to choose this route for organization. I would say that if you struggle staying organized and making your goals and dreams achievable, this is an easy win to get you back on track to maximizing your potential.
Fireside Spotlight
In this week’s Fireside Spotlight, I would like to share a poem I published on Medium back in 2018 called “To Do or To Be?”. Most of us have heard of the famous speech from Hamlet, “To be or not to be,” wherein he contemplates the relative values of life and death. Inspired by Shakespeare’s piece, I chose to wrestle instead with the idea of “doing” versus the idea of “being”:
To Do or To Be?
Whether ’tis nobler to finish the deed,
Whether ’tis nobler to set the soul free,
Whether ’tis better to do or to be,
The reticent cosmos has yet to decree.
So we stand, ready to roll up our sleeves,
To mark our grand toils and dance with the leaves
’Til we gain the rewards we are fit to receive
And we subside to dust having been too naive —
We believed that work could complete a being —
A being whose work is never done.
- Elgin Davis
In my piece, I consider the question: “At any given moment, is it more valuable to our human experience to be doing something “productive”, or to be content in our existence, enjoying the wonders of life and “producing” memorable experiences?” When we look to maximize our potential experience in this life, there is truly no one-size-fits-all, prescriptive method that each of us can follow to find the best experience, because each of us is writing a different story. Rather, the key here is to recognize the things that we value, and to pursue those things boldly and intentionally. The question then becomes, “What do we value?”, which we’ll tackle in a future newsletter.
My favorite line from “To Do or To Be?” is the ending, which hints at the idea that as humans, we will never run out of work. We may work day-in and day-out toward whatever goal may be set before us, but do we realize that beyond the achievement of that next goal is always another goal? There is always more to be done, and if we live lives chasing solely after the fruits of our labor, what time do we have to enjoy them?
As humans, we may proceed as such until we draw our last breath, and when all is said and done, the ultimate question that I ponder in the piece is this:
“When my life comes to an end, would I rather have lived a life full of meaning and purposeful experience, or a life that was productive?”
That is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, and in fact, they are not. But if I had to choose one, it would certainly be the former. I could not imagine laying on my death bed saying, “Man, I sure wish I had worked more.”
Pursuing a life that balances the two modes patiently and intentionally may be just the thing we are looking for to truly maximize our life’s potential. One of my favorite quotes by Ernest Hemingway is, “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
What will the details of your story be?
Walk It, Talk It
Thanks for joining me again this week in the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook! In the words of Dale Carnegie, “Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.” How can you apply the ideas in this newsletter to your life? How can you use it to gain power in living a more epic story? Talk to your friends and family this week about something you found interesting in the newsletter.
Until next time,
Elgin
Have feedback? Content you want to see or share? Just want to talk?
Feel free to drop an email to winterhearthstudios@gmail.com to get in touch with me, I’d love to hear from you!
Hey, I’m Elgin, and I love to create. I’m the creator of Winter Hearth Studios and the Winter Hearth Epic Life Playbook, a space where we explore the depths of the human experience, discovering the keys to crafting a better life and inspiring you to Live An Epic Story.
I’m currently a 4th year student at Harvard University studying computer science and design, and in my free time I love to travel, draw, and pursue bold, exciting adventures.
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