This is the Too Many Trees newsletter, where I share what I’ve been writing and reading in the realm of leadership and personal development. My coaching practice is centered around the idea that we are more effective in moving towards our goals when we become more conscious and intentional in focusing our time and attention.
This issue is a bit light on content, as I chose to prioritize my family and my existing coaching clients with the limited focus I had available each day. My toddler son has been waking up screaming almost every night recently, which meant less time on serious reading and writing, and more time on my phone and binging Umbrella Academy season 2, which I quite enjoyed - the plot doesn’t always make sense, but the show is visually stylish and the episodes end with propulsive cliffhangers that make it hard to stop watching.
How do you respond when things get tough? I advocate for choosing an activity that will recharge your body so that you have greater capacity to handle what’s next, partially inspired by David Cain’s idea of a “cupboard list”.
How do you choose your responsibilities? Rather than let others fill up your to-do lists and calendars, I suggest you can consciously choose what to do based on our values and the impact we can have.
Translating “I don’t have time” into “This is not a priority” is a linguistic hack I’ve adopted to remind myself that if something doesn’t get done, it’s because I didn’t prioritize it enough to do it within my limited time and attention. Partially inspired by a post by Derek Sivers where he says “The hours don’t suddenly appear. You have to steal them from comfort.”
Blog: No blog posts in the past two weeks, due to not having time, I mean, not prioritizing writing over comfort. Book reviews in the queue include Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, by Jacqueline Novogratz, and Working, by Robert Caro
Links:
The powerful words of John Lewis, published by the New York Times on the day of his funeral: “Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”
My friend Lina published a piece advocating for radical community as the way to counter the political spectacle of Trumpism: “We need support to allow people to stand up in a different way and create the space to do so, to use public dialogue to reignite compassion and build a collective vision for the country.”
The TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote a thoughtful piece on Why I Loved Cop Shows, and Why They Must Change where he grapples with his love for cop shows from Hill Street Blues to NYPD Blue to The Shield to Justified, all of which centered on problematic anti-heroes who we rooted for because we knew them. The people brutalized or exploited by those cops in their plotlines were never granted the same level of storytelling or attention, and that has skewed how we think of cops.
The First Round Capital blog has a nice summary on how to prioritize personal development for busy entrepreneurs and leaders, with concrete advice about prioritization, communication, trust, and accepting critical feedback. I found this from the Work Different newsletter that often has thought-provoking links.
I am really valuing Heather Cox Richardson’s daily updates on American politics - she reads all the news so I don’t have to, and, as a history professor, she places that news in context. It saves me a lot of time to just read her summary each day rather than constantly scan the news.
This newsletter continues to be an experiment, and I would love to hear how I could make this more useful for you. Let me know what is working for you, what you want more or less of, or anything else on your mind at eric at toomanytrees. And if you know somebody that would benefit from my perspective, please forward this to them or let them know they can set up a free intro chat with me.
Thanks for reading. See you in a couple weeks.