Brass tacks
In two of my most recent posts, “Emotional divinity” and “Show your work,” I explained the value of working openly use your emotions as forward leverage. This companion post — about how I do this — took a little longer to prepare, and a lot more courage to share.
As a linguistic imagineer with fused hemispheres and full, direct access to my subconscious, it’s hard to know if my methods would apply to anyone else. Still, I think it’s time to share my “deep workflow” loop and encourage you to consider trying it.
So I took a few days to do the engineering design and validation on a possibly reproducible method. I’m also exposing the fact that JOTIF wasn’t originally chosen at random.
Dual purpose acronym
Judgement.
Orientation.
Time.
Inference.
Feedback.
It's a continuous loop for me, but you can start out trying it once a week. Make a judgment. Orient yourself around that judgment. Spend some time with the problem, with the work, with the relationship, whatever. Make inferences (which is all we can do, because we have only our own perceptions). Seek feedback that validates, adjusts, or negates those original judgments. Then use that feedback to update the judgment and start the process over again.
Even that seems a little vague, like a random prescription from an unfamiliar doctor at an urgent care clinic. I realize I’ve been circling the point because it’s very personal and maybe hard to do at the outset. So I’m going out on that limb now.
This is exactly how my "emologent" (EMOtional LOG ENTry) is laid out.
Judgment
Mood
How does the world strike me at this moment? What am I feeling? What are my strongest emotions right now?
Energy
How strong do I feel today? How energetic or lethargic?
Mental weather
How's my thinking? Is it chaotic? Highly logical? Procedural? Clear, cloudy, stormy, foggy?
Actual weather
How does the weather look and feel? How is that affecting my mood?
Orientation
Loop
What is on my mind that won't go away? What song is on repeat in my head? What is consuming my attention enough to distract me, even while I’m trying to write this?
Lingering
What isn't looping, but still on my radar? What's under the noise that I need to pay attention to? Where am I forgetting the needs of others because I’m wrapped up in my own stuff?
Unfinished
What's the inventory of things that I want to do, or that I should do, that are still pending? Which things are really urgent, which aren't, and which are masquerading as priorities because of the way I'm looking at them?
Gravity
Given all this, where is the center of gravity? Where can I focus my attention today that will move big things in a direction that I like, in a way that serves others and possibly improves the world as I touch it?
Time
Anchor
What is the one thing that *should* matter most to me today? What is the one thing that *actually* matters the most to me today? What's the difference, and how can I design my day around closing that gap?
Mokusatsu
(From the Japanese word meaning “to kill by ignoring”)
Based on my anchor point, what am I resisting that matters? Am I trying to bury it with distraction? Bad priorities? Just plain lack of desire, disguised as rational thinking? How can I deal directly with this issue and keep it from eating away my focus today?
Idea pressure
Where are my ideas going at this moment? Where should they be going, based on my chosen anchor point? How can I trim or align my thinking to get where I think I should be going today? How can I keep rogue ideas and impulses from derailing my day?
Creative current
Given everything so far, what is the actual creative current I should dive into today? What does it look like I can give myself to, fully, and how do I think that will help me? How should I set up my day so that this stream is inevitably what I cling to all day, and make all the other streams less attractive?
Inference
Gains
What am I likely to gain if I follow the path I just laid out? Should I think bigger? Smaller? Should I go grand plans or kaizen today?
Pivot
Can I work out the pivot point? What's the one change in attitude or action that seems most likely to help? What’s the minimum walk-in (an engineering term for “the fewest things that have to be done first”)?
Signal boost
Now that I have a possible pivot point, how can I turn up the gain so that making that change could stand on its own as a very good day? How do I make that my deep work for the day, my ninety minutes or three hours of total, uninterrupted commitment?
Rare value
What is the absolute core of that deep work? What is the result that could stand alone as a visible accomplishment that creates meaningful progress?
Feedback
(Collected as I go through the day)
Points of friction
What’s the biggest roadblock that I can see from here? How do I mitigate it from here? What’s the next one?
Quest pulse
As I work, where does the day and the work seem to want to go, and how does that compare to my plans? How can I adjust? Should I adjust?
Today’s ember
What is today teaching me that I didn't expect? What is today's "secret message"? How can I respond to that message right now?
What wants to live or fall away?
What should I keep doing? What should I start doing that I'm not doing? What should I just stop doing? What should I wean myself off of? What do I just need to tolerate, but minimize?
Payoff pitch
Now for the really scary part: Yesterday’s actual emologent.
Every complex method deserves an example. Be gentle and don’t judge. This is shared and anonymized to help you see how to do this.
Incidentally, I’ve had a habit since my second term of college of waking up naturally at four AM to do this, or something like it, then sleep another hour or two. In case you were wondering where I find the time. I should also mention that I use voice dictation to speed up this process. I do not spend my early morning hours pecking at a tiny keyboard.
Judgment
mood
I’m feeling rushed and a little bit lost this morning. I’m giving two speeches today at the local college, one to students and one to adults. It’s drawn from my Inner Fire posts, but a lot of it is biographical, and that feels like dangerous territory. I’ve done a lot of “outlier” things in my life and gained a lot of credentials. This involves talking about those things in some detail. I feel exposed and vulnerable.
energy
I’m up for the work. I always love talking to people and sharing things I’ve learned. I’ll probably be useless this afternoon, but that’s a worthy price.
mental wx
My mind is crystal clear. Divinity weather.
actual wx
It’s cooler, but the rain has stopped. Feels pretty decent.
Orientation
loop
I know that this college is probably someplace that I could contribute. I also know that my current sacred direction {the guidance from my inner fire} is currently pointing another way. I don’t have time today to get these aligned, and that’s not a one-day solution space.
lingering
There’s minor financial noise: the water company requires extraordinary effort to close out my account at the old house; the phone company claimed it couldn’t access my checking account for payment, so I had to go off auto-pay. Both of these actions create friction that enriches the supplier, so I need call them both out on this. While I’m wrapped up in today, my wife is putting her whole life on hold to stay with her best friend and minister to her while her husband is in and out of hospital. I really need to do some things to minister to my wife and help her keep her own energy up.
unfinished
There are basically three fronts here:
1. Actively following my inner fire, which has a tremendous agenda spanning five or six major areas with barely started websites to match.
2. Renovations to our house have stalled, frankly because we just needed a break. I’m wasting perfect weather for some of the pivotal attic work. I keep staring at a tiny paint & trim job in the corner of the bathroom. My bedroom needs curtains to help with temperature control.
3. I need to get back to reading. I have two shelves of programming and operating systems books I need to read, sewing techniques I need to learn, and an excellent Brandon Sanderson trilogy I’ve barely started. Not to mention a couple of books I promised some writer friends I would read and review.
Yesterday I doubled our lifestyle runway by making some better long-term financial moves, so I have more time to finish these things.
gravity
Honestly, my CG is balance without full depletion. I’ll be interacting with people all morning, but I also want to spend some time with my wife and her friend today, so I’d better punctuate this two things with some rote, mindless labor.
Time
anchor
This is a rare day, where my should and my want-to align perfectly. I want to deliver two strong messages to two groups of people, and I want my wife to feel supported. I know she told me she left something at home that she wants me to bring later, so I can leverage that by failing to bring it the first visit, so I can run back home after an hour and retrieve it. Making an extra effort will raise her mood more than just stopping by.
mokusatsu
I’m resisting having a conversation with folks at the college about teaching there. I’m qualified, but my sacred compass is currently pointing elsewhere. Still, I don’t need to leave it to rot. If they don’t bring it up today, I should, just to make sure it’s not left untouched.
idea pressure
Clearly my blog is starting to gel, but still unfocused. Over the course of the last year, I’ve had five or six really mediocre book ideas. Now I have a literary agent from a major agency, who’s calling every other day or so, encouraging me to narrow down my subject matter into a book capsule. He’s absolutely right: that’s my biggest should and my biggest want-to right now.
creative current
Today, though, I won’t have the creative energy to deal with that. In the last week, I’ve had two of four Inner Fire posts that resonated heavily with readers and, in retrospect, started to converge on a workable idea stream. I need to spend tomorrow’s wake-up time trying to gel that into the spine for what I’m trying to say. Today, though, it’s about sharing the message.
Inference
gains
The morning lectures and evening connection are clearly the right answer for today. In between, some kind of manual labor is good, but I need to make it something that will also give my wife a sense of progress when next she can make it home. The biggest thing I can think of is clearing the nine bags of sewing notions that her best friend gave us last week. Her best friend gave up sewing 12 years ago when her adult son contracted ALS, and she’s never wanted to go back to it. She finally made the decision last week to get most of the notions out of the house, and she asked us to take them, since I’m sewing fairly productively for some significant income. It’s a big mix in about eight garbage bags and one contractor bucket. I have the containers to sort it into, I just need to do it. That would be a really good mindless treasure hunt to clear my head and reload my mental and emotional capacity after a morning of lectures.
pivot
The real pivot point today is setting my alarm back about 15 minutes so I can print my notes for my lectures. I was planning on using my phone, but I really think that would be too small and hard to follow. In short, it would be a distraction to my delivery. And the extra time will also give me an edge and locating the specific building. I’m supposed to go to.
signal boost
I think the only way I can turn up the gain on this is by calling my wife as soon as I’ve finished sorting the sewing materials, and letting her know that I’m bringing dinner, which is simple to pick up. That will give her the sense that a real problem with an annoying pile of clutter near the doorway has been resolved and let her know that I want to minister to her a little bit tonight, since she’s been traveling around all day, getting her best friend’s husband settled in rehab.
rare value
Honestly, today the rare value is built in. I don’t have to schedule it, it’s already there.
Feedback
points of friction
Finding the building where I was supposed to speak initially was the hardest part. The campus, just like my college, is a series of small twisting roads on acreage laid out for walking. But it doesn’t have as many signs as my college did. Not to worry, everyone I asked helped to get me there In plenty of time. And many of the things that I had planned happened spontaneously: a person at the college brought up the fact that they really thought I should consider teaching there; my wife let me know before she left the rehab facility, which is 90 minutes away, that she was bringing dinner. And when I dug through the many bags of notions, I found several things I was lacking, but hadn’t managed to remember to buy.
quest pulse
I feel like I read this day more or less perfectly and found rare value in places I didn’t expect it.
todays ember
Today’s secret message is more about what it didn’t do, than what it did. The compass needle didn’t move. I’m going in the right direction, with the right level of activity and the right kind of attitude. I need to preserve what I’m doing right now and keep it going.
what wants to live or fall away?
When I finally made it home, it was clear I had done all the good deeds I could do for the day. I sat on the couch, snuggled under a Mexican blanket with the cat on my lap, binge watching a thriller sci-fi series on Apple TV. Even then, my winnowing instincts were good. At some point in the show, I realized that the plot was getting unnecessarily complicated, probably in an attempt to hold my interest. So it fell away, and I ate junk food, and played video games for the rest of the night, kind of a throwback to my teenage years. Good day. Good choices. How do I do this again?
Parting advice
So now you’ve seen the method, how it came to be, and an example of how it’s used. Be aware that I’ve only gone daily with this for about the last 10 years.
I started with a weekly rotation, still waking up early every day, but filling it in a little at a time over the week. That result I used to drive the next week. Then it slid down to three or four days, and I used the planning till I emptied the bucket. Only in the last 10 years or so has it dropped to once a day.
Also be aware that my ability to write a lot every day has been developed over decades of practice. If you try these methods, and my sacred little voice says you should, don’t expect it to happen fast at first. Like anything, but especially like sewing, it takes much time and practice to do this efficiently.
Nevertheless, even if done haltingly, other people that I’ve taught this to (over the years) have found it remarkably effective, even when trying it for the first time. And of course, I’m always on here, so feel free to leave comments, feedback, or questions.