Gustave Flaubert was on to something. He said: “Be settled in your life and as ordinary as the bourgeois, in order to be fierce and original in your works.” As the year’s end approaches, I’ve been considering the ordinary things that empower me to be fierce and original. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about daily practices. Nothing as expansive as scalable loops. Just small, simple actions that—like mathematics and protocols—are unreasonably effective.
For the past year, I focused on time-restricted eating. Rhonda Patrick has some good resources on TRE, as does Satchin Panda. In theory, this meant confining caloric consumption to between the hours of ~1100 to ~2100. In practice, I did this 60-70% of the time.
For the coming year, I’ve been considering what the focal daily practice should be. Re-upping TRE was a possibility. The aim being to shoot for >90% adherence. Another candidate was controlled phone time. Specifically, configuring the device so that it is only functional one hour after waking, at least one hour before sleep, and for a four or five hour window during the day.
Re-adoption of coffee coin was another option. Coffee coin TL;DR? Prior to making a coffee flip a coin. If it’s heads, brew away. If it’s tails, no coffee for the rest of the day. Repeat until you land a tails or reach the upper bound of acceptable consumption.
Finally, I considered daily meditation (as a joint practice with my partner). It’s still likely that I’ll opt for this daily sit but it’s been somewhat disrupted as an option. Here’s why.
There’s that famous Gibsonian line: “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” There’s an equally un-famous line that I’m going to put in the mouth of Dōgen: “Enlightenment is here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” The idea is that the practice for and the realisation of enlightenment are one and the same, that it is all around and already present within oneself. Whilst watching Love Actually—great film; don’t @ me—Liam Neeson gave me an idea for bringing it out.
His son, Sam, is in love with a girl at school. Daniel (Neeson) is encouraging Sam to share his love, to tell Joanna (the girl) about it before she gets on a plane to America. “Tell her that you love her… You’ve got nothing to lose and you’ll always regret it if you don’t.” Daniel goes on to express a regret; that he should have told Sam’s mum of his love for her every single day.
That right there is the daily practice for the coming year. The thing that may make enlightenment a little more equitably distributed. At the least, it’ll positively refactor my experience in interesting ways—that’s the bet, anyway. Three hundred and sixty five acts of kindness. A year of practicing love:
- Each day, take a card
- Write the date
- Write, “I love you”
- Give it to a loved one
The practice of time-restricted eating has been impactful for me, certainly. But I’m willing to wager that the practice of loving-kindness will be even more transformative, that expressing love every day will trigger a powerful, wholesome cascade in my life and relationships. And you know what would be even better? If you did this yourself and joined me in finding out…
Swell & Cut 