highly concentrated effort
notes in december, kyoto
fragments of notes from december
I stared at the koi flicker, flame-like, beneath the dark surface of the pond. The smack of green in the middle of the garden, like a surprise, then a gradual feathering of colors from the inner circle of trees to outer ring: evergreen to sunshine yellow to a deep reddish magenta.
We owe nothing to randomness, I thought to myself then. Some gardener donned gloves and planted those seeds in a very specific place with an overarching vision of harmony and order.
Most things we take for granted as just existing is the result of highly concentrated effort. When I see really curated spaces (such as said gardens in Japan), I’m reminded that everything that is deemed beautiful, impactful, moving, is usually the result of deliberate action. When I see outsized success I’m aware it’s a result of trying more, sometimes trying and failing for years or in a way that lacks social recognition. When I’m moved to tears by mastery of craft — the elegance of movement, of process, it’s due to devotion of time and spirit. Things don’t just become great by accident. Most times its a long and quiet slog with no obvious return.
When I think about the exceptional people I’ve been lucky enough to know, I notice all of them have been working for years on things that ended up looking like ‘emergent’ or overnight success after months, if not years, of struggle and uncertainty.
//
It’s the end of a season and the cusp of another. A new frontier. I sat by the window as I left Kyoto: the high speed rail hummed steadily across grassy fields and urban centers, run-down two story buildings and a horizon as long as a dream.
On the train ride I repeated this line to myself, your allocation of effort determines your reality. Mastery requires effort sustained over time. The ability to make practice sacred through repetition. It’s the gardener, philosopher, writer, financier, artist, entrepreneur. Our roads, architecture, movies, books, music, everything beautiful in this world. All of it an amalgamation of desire and effort.
If there’s anything I believe, it’s that everything worthwhile comes at the end of the arduous, quiet trek, the days digging into the work and hoping and waiting, the long days of trying. I admire it greatly. I’ve begun to see it everywhere: the effort that beats beneath the surface, the pulse that runs through everything.
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PPS: You might like falling into life or life lessons from 2022 (in bullet form!)
Related to care and effort:
John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, was asked how the ambient high-impact, thoughtful culture of Stripe came to be: whether it was a deliberate set of decisions or a lucky random side effect. He said in reply
People at Stripe really care. The returns of care, like sweating the details, are un-quantifiable… the long-term aggregate returns of caring a lot is super high.
I think this is deeply embodied by a very large fraction of the first 100 people at Stripe but it became this thing with a tremendous amount of momentum and endurance. And people at Stripe today are still maniacal about padding issues and spacing issues and consistency issues. We use this word over here, but that word over there, it adds up.
Books
Essays
I really enjoyed this piece Writer’s Who Operate by Will Larson which explores a few reasons why writers might remain in industry rather than pursuing writing full-time. It echoes a lot of the sentiments I hold around having a full time job + writing being ideal for my mode of thinking and output.
This piece on friendship which touches on the need for intention, ritual, and also the lovely elasticity some friendships have (ebb/flow). I have a few 10+ year friends and thought of them while reading this.
Substacks
I’ve been less active on reading substacks as I would like given my travels across Asia, but I did really like these from
and
What we make testifies who we are. People can sense care and can sense carelessness. This relates to respect for each other and carelessness is personally offensive — John Ive
At its core, my self-preservation is a radical act against a world that has kept erasing me. I am not blogging for the people who will read it after I die, I write to know myself and what I think and what I had journeyed to until I die. I write because the world has become noisy & polluted, and when the most beautiful thing we can do is to attend to each other, that this is best done when we present the invitation to do so; that I trust in myself, and maybe even other people, to filter through and deem what is important beyond what is in our periphery." — via Alice Otieno’s Are.na page, original source: degrees of slowness by Chia
"The ability to make practice sacred through repetition. It’s the gardener, philosopher, writer, financier, artist, entrepreneur." Breathtaking!! I enjoy the reassurance of the idea achieving great things is illegible for a long time before it becomes Great. Big things are not legible when you look at only the small, mundane details and they seem incoherent/delusional when you look only at the vision - it takes skill to hold them both internally
"Your allocation of effort determines your reality. Mastery requires effort sustained over time. The ability to make practice sacred through repetition."
This gave me goosebumps. I'm at the start and middle of a few major commitments and this quote perfectly speaks to what I believe and must remember during each step of the long road ahead. Thank you for so eloquently writing exactly what I needed to read.