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Assessment: How Did It Go? Take a few minutes at the end of the practice session to assess how well you achieved what you set out to practice. This part will be difficult or impossible if you came into the practice session without a goal. Again, it doesn’t have to be some complicated process. Just think back and take stock of what you did, what worked, and what didn’t. This assessment of the practice session is a great time to think about your plan of attack for the next practice session. Again, keep it simple, and jot down your thoughts if it will help you remember for the next session. This way your practice sessions will overlap and feed off each other. Hemingway used to stop writing in the middle of something, sometimes even in the middle of a sentence or paragraph, so that when he returned to the writing desk, he could just dive right back in and easily pick up where he left off. Reviewing the practice session and generating ideas for the next practice session are kind of like Hemingway’s approach. If you do it, you can jump right in on the next practice session because you’ve already primed the pump.
The Practice of Practice
Jonathan Harnum
From what I’ve observed, the Strategy of Identity is particularly helpful for Rebels. Rebels generally have a tough time accepting the constraints imposed by habits, but because they place great value on being true to themselves, they embrace a habit if they view it as an aspect of their identity. For instance, a Rebel might want to be a respected leader. The identity of “leader” might help him to choose to keep habits—such as showing up on time or going to unnecessary meetings—that would otherwise chafe. He will choose to behave this way. A Rebel wrote on my blog: “For me, the most important characteristic of a Rebel is the freedom to be authentic to the person I am at this moment. My desires and needs shift, and I want the autonomy to pursue that. But I also have a strong sense of self—certain values and characteristics that define who I am and that don’t change. For example, I’ve always defined myself as a great mother. I wasn’t going to be the kind of mom that I had—I was going to be a dedicated mom who shows love. And I do.” Another Rebel noted, “If a habit is part of who I am, then that habit isn’t a chain holding me to the ground, it’s permitting me to be authentic to myself.”
Better Than Before
Gretchen Rubin
Early in 1844 he wrote again, asking Hooker’s help with “one little fact” about endemic island plants. Then he ended his letter with an impetuous blurt of candor. This is a famous moment. It appears in all nine of the Darwin biographies now piled on my desk, plus countless other studies, and it can’t be omitted merely on grounds that the hands of previous writers and scholars have worn it smooth. The letter was undated, but the postmark said January 11, 1844. Darwin confided to Hooker that, besides his interest in southern lands, “I have been now ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work,” a work that most people would call downright foolish. He’d been pondering the odd patterns of plant and animal distribution that he had seen in the Galápagos and elsewhere; he’d been reading up on domestic breeding; he’d been collecting every bit of data that seemed relevant to the question of whether species are changeless entities. “At last gleams of light have come,” Darwin wrote, “& I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.” This was a daring admission, cast in sheepish understatement, and contradicting one of the fundamental tenets of British natural theology. Truth be told, he was more than “almost” convinced. Less famous is the disclaimer he added immediately: “Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a ‘tendency to progression’ ‘adaptations from the slow willing of animals’ &c.” He was trying to distance himself from the discredited ideas of one particular precursor, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Darwin knew well that his theory, besides being unsavory, might too easily be confused with other unsavory transmutationist notions that even he considered worthless.
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
David Quammen
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