Read time 8 minutes
Hello, dear friend!
I was amazed by the responses / questions I received from some of you after last week’s post on managing two boats and feeling like Boot the donkey.
I hope you are well, and thank you so much for taking the time to write back! Your words truly matter.
Today, I wanna share a personal battle I had hoped to win at the start of this year. If you believe in the power of notes and journaling, you’ll get tons of value from this essay.
A tiny story…
Two years ago, I found myself at the edge of Karachi, where land dissolves into the Arabian sea.
My company was my 54 y/o friend, whom I’ll call Jalal. I was enjoying the waves gently touching my feet and bottoms. Jalal was sitting quietly, his eyes shut softly, and legs crossed.
And then. A massive wave surged towards us, catching me off guard. Startled, I stepped back. Tried to regain my footing but couldn’t.
Finally, I managed to get up, my clothes all soaked, and I turned to Jalal, expecting him to react.
To my surprise, this oldie remained still. Unmoved. (Feel me? Not-even-an-inch kinda unmoved.)
On the surface, I pretended to be agitated, teasing him, "Isn't it stupid, Jalal bhai? Silence is meant to heighten awareness, yet you seem unaware to the ocean's fury."
Jalal smiled, perhaps noticing my notoriety. “True,” he said. “But I might also be trying to acquire radical acceptance. Have you thought about that?”
To be honest, I hadn’t. But I considered his proposition and thought about it for a moment. "But acceptance won't mean getting drowned, right?" I said.
"Why not?!"
The evening ended with us pondering over the idea and a lot of driving back to the city. My friend’s whole point centered on making peace with the fact that we control nothing.
At the end of 2022
I found myself contemplating the meaninglessness of my existence. All the joy was gone, decades long friendships ended, tired of capitalistic ambitions, and I couldn’t feel good about anything.
I messaged a friend to pour out my heart. “I’m thinking of ending things.”
In response, this beloved futhermocker (who is taking innocent people on mountain adventures in north of Pakistan these days) sent me a video of Carl Sagan, who was asked about the meaning of life. Carl's answer was simple and powerful: "Anything you make out of it."
"The hard truth seems to be this: We live in a vast and awesome universe, where daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, and humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock.
The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning."
Carl, thankfully, challenged me to rethink everything.
Hmm! If I’m the custodian of life’s meaning, that would mean I can decide and opt for all the absurd things that give me meaning. Nice!
“Why haven’t I thought of it this way before?” I wondered.
At the same time, Jalal’s idea hit me.
“Only way to seize control of life: surrender entirely.”
And there begun…
A personal pact! At the dawn of year, I made a promise to incorporate radical acceptance into my life and evaluate its impact.
The objective was to follow my instinct and accept whatever came my way: the bad, the ugly. Good writing, ugly writing Top money, low money.
For the past nine months, I've been failing, mostly, but at least been consistent in the pursuit of it.
Not a fun thing to try, that’s a given, but it helps you build battle-grade resilience. Or in words of Steven Pressfield: how to be miserable.
To put it in action, I needed some kind of system and craved an element of gamification to make it more enjoyable and trackable.
So I turned to the everlasting, every-basic-body’s favorite, and the godmother of all productivity tools:
Notes.
Here’s the thing: we all take some kind of notes during the day: in the phone, Notion, stickies, or notebook.
Why not take those notes in a format that reveals insights about ourselves? Gotta build the data first, to track it later, remember?
Daily Notes → Cards Tracker
Being a freeloading fan of Tony Stubblebine’s interstitial journaling, peeling the onion by
, and reflective writing by—all great ideas and tools for introspection—I wanted to turn my daily note-taking habit into a self-reflection tool.The approach is simple: we tend to look at our lives in macro events. (That year I was that, in that year that happened, this year I will do that).
But life doesn’t happen in macro. It unfolds on a micro-level, in moments.
Every moment we are being dealt a new card: it's either green or red.
🟢 Green cards: anything positive or joyful.
Stuff we want more of.
Things we accept with an open heart.
Moments that make us feel happy, healthy, and worthy.
🔴 Red cards: any of life's tiny or untiny surprises:
Accident
Unpleasant tasks
Shockingly-high bills
Getting fired or laid off
Falling down the staircase
Terrorist attack at your workplace
Your baby got possessed by a demon
Parachute didn’t open during Sky Dive
Here’s what I need to do next
Note the cards I’m being dealt everyday in one place and write a line to describe my internal dialogue about that card.
Now, the game (read: goal) is to accept at least 7 out of 10 red cards daily.
Here’s how it should look 👇
The left one helps me observe the flow of greens and reds in my day. Great mood tracker, too, if you will. The right one helps me count the difference at a glance.
On all the red cards, I give myself a cue on how to accept this thing.
At the end of the day, when I count 🟢 and 🔴, I get a good feeling. Because this practice helps me see the bigger picture.
Zooming out, I find myself in a position of strength. Boosts gratitude without me trying to forcefully “feel grateful” about the pulpy & sucky life that I have.
After all…
Can’t call a day shitty with 18 greens and 9 reds. Can I?
The cards tracker allows me to look at my life on a day’s scale, not year. There is no this year anymore, only today.
It has become my compass, guiding me towards gratefulness and insights about myself despite the unpredictability of the cards I'm dealt.
It’s been a huge blow to my always-bitching inner critic. I feel a greater sense of control because I’m not trying to deflect the waves that hit me, but accept them.
3 more of ‘why it’s phenomenal’
(and may help you if you try)
1. God-level perspective
Noting moments and feelings in reds and greens shifted my perspective profoundly. If there are greens along with reds in a day, guess life is going as it should be.
Previously, a punctured tire in the morning would make me think “it’s a shitty day.”
Not anymore! Now, it’s just another red card.
The big picture view of the day is an awesome thing to look at. I can clearly SEE—things are not that bad.
2. A guilty revelation
I looked down upon art that is not created by a hard-working, great-thinking artist. I favored art that epitomized the artist's story, philosophy, or originality. If it’s not one of the greats, it’s not good. Anything less and I hated it.
In actual, it has a lot to do with own perfectionism. 🙈 The cards tracker helped me realize that I’m biased.
Art is art. I was missing out a lot of great art done by ordinary people in an ordinary way. Also had a bunch of wrong beliefs about what great work is.
Now, I appreciate the magic beyond the magician. I’m more willing to hear the other person’s playlist rather then proposing to bombard with mine. I’ve picked up more indie music beside the legends. Phenomenal finding, thanks to cards tracker.
3. One behavior insight
I noticed tasks that require research tend to take a lot of time not because they are time-taking.
The problem was that they drained me and this knowledge worked against me when I’m to begin such a task. My frame of mind for the whole duration of the task is kind of sucky and it makes me linger too long.
After noticing this pattern, I started giving myself clear direction in writing before I begin on any such task.
Instead of telling myself “Research the conveyer belt space in Italy,” I’d write time-bound action steps:
a) Find 3 top insights in 40 minutes
b) Find 3 examples or stories in 40 mins
c) Spill the findings + create a narrative in 40 mins
A tip for hacking focus 👇
As we’re all half-digital, half-physical folks, the two-minute investment of writing “what am I going to do” before getting started on any task:
Puts your brain in sport-mode
Keeps you focused and away from rabbit holes
That’s a wrap for today!
Thanks for reading till the end. If you found this essay useful, consider sharing it with people who will magnify, love, or learn from it.
Cheers,
Hassaan - Reply anytime!
Instead of a song of the week—since we’re all about acceptance this time—accept something from my own terrace please.