90 Day Experiment

Learning, Immersion, Easy vs Hostile Learning Environments

Hey friend,

I’ve been AWOL for several weeks gearing up for a revamp of this newsletter:

For the next 90 days, I’m going to publish a story per weekday.

Below is 

• why I’m doing this

• how I’m setting up this experiment for myself (if you’re interested in the topic of learning)

• what you can expect from me over the next few months!

Why fiction and why so aggressive?

I absolutely love writing fiction. My first taste of writing fiction was a tiny story in this article about Finding Your Voice, several months later this Guide for How to Fuck Up Your Sex Life, and then a few more before my first story with more complex characters, The Samurai’s Page. 

Writing fiction allows me to play while thinking about and expressing things I think are important. And while no words can possibly wrap their arms around things like Beauty, and Love and God, poetry and music and fiction seem to be able to get closer than non-fiction. And that’s the sort of stuff I love to write about.

I want to write stuff that moves you. That stirs something in your soul. I want to write the sort of things that you want to read and reread during your highest highs and lowest lows. Because I deeply care about humanity and because I imagine the process of becoming someone who can write like that will be one of the greatest adventures of my life. In order to do this I need to become a much better writer. I know that immersion is a great tool for learning, and I want to get better as quickly as possible. 

I had a major shift in the way that I view achieving greatness reading Why Greatness Can’t Be Planned a few years ago. Following my curiosity has reached the utmost importance to me. Combining curiosity with discipline seems to be the most reliable way to achieve greatness in a lifetime, even if you don’t know how that greatness will manifest. This experiment is the next iteration of me following my own curiosity.

Last but not least… I’m simply bored by non-fiction personal development stuff. And I bet I’m not alone in that. Nearly every coach I know writes non-fiction on a blog or social media. I don’t know a single one that writes fiction. My ego hopes this makes me special.

The Experiment

Publish a story per day, and occasionally an email with some news on podcasts I’m releasing, other articles, and announcements about Soul Searching Adventures and other events I’m putting on.

Assumptions

• I’ll become a better writer. I’ll know this to be true based on how I feel and because of the feedback I get from my writing coach as well as some of my readers.

• I’ll feel overwhelmed at some point by the amount of work this holds me to, and regret this decision on at least one occasion. 🙂  Then I’ll feel proud of my audacity for doing it anyway.

• My wife will say “Are you actually crazy!?” at some point because of my sometimes dark, sometimes highly inappropriate sense of humor expressed in the writing.

• One or more of you will write to me thanking me for inspiring you to take a massive step of your own.

My Learning Plan

I reached out to a few friends who are knowledgeable about writing before starting this experiment. Two started publishing companies, two are multiple time NYT best-selling authors. Here’s the plan with their help.

Deliberate Practice

If you’ve studied The Learning Process at all then you know that deliberate practice is the most important part of development. After the beginner phase of anything, just getting in reps is not enough. You have to be intentional about what you’re working on, or you’ll remain in a plateau. There are exceptions, but in general this is the most important thing.

Every other week I’ll meet with my writing coach to identify focus areas. Things like showing vs telling, tone, dialogue, etc. Writing technique stuff. 

Feedback

In his book, Range, David Epstein says that there are friendly and hostile learning environments, and it has everything to do with feedback.

Tennis is friendly because you hit the ball and get immediate feedback about your hit. It goes left or right, fast or slow, up or down. You hit the ball back and forth, receiving feedback after every hit and getting the opportunity to make real-time adjustments. The tighter the feedback loop, the faster the progression.

Writing, podcasting, leading, parenting, and most of life and work are hostile learning environments because sometimes we don’t get feedback for days, weeks, or months. Most often, if we aren’t proactive about seeking feedback, we get none at all. 

How then, do we know if we did a good job?

On each call with my coach we’ll reflect on how the past week or so went on prior goals. What went well, what could have gone even better? I may also get feedback from some of you telling me what you liked.

Pitching and receiving

One of the most popular creativity books of all time is The Artist’s Way, recommended by multiple writer friends. In it author Julia Cameron highlights two parts of the creative process:

Pitching is the act of creating stuff. There’s a line in the book that goes something like “Great Creator, I’ll handle the quantity, you the quality.” The idea is that as creators, what’s inside our control is the volume of work we put out. The outcome, that is the quality and reception of our creations, is controlled by greater forces.

My pitching will look like this:

• Write first thing each workday for at least 2 hours. Some days I’ll devote more.

• Morning pages, 3 pages stream of consciousness writing, at the beginning of each writing session. I’ve gotten a dozen story ideas from doing this practice.

• Publish something every day

Receiving is the process of encountering creative inspiration. You’ve heard that artists, scientists and entrepreneurs “get their best ideas in the shower.” Receiving more is about carving out more time to be in an open, responsibility-free space like you’re in when you’re in the shower, car, or toilet.

For this reason the book recommends creating an Artist Date with yourself each week. So I’ll be carving out a couple hours each week to walk, run, hike, do a yoga class, etc. solo to make myself open to receiving new inspiration.

What about you? 

Is there something that you’ve been wanting to do, but have been too afraid or busy to start? Is there something you’ve already dipped your toes into that you’re ready to dive into further?

Here’s my invitation: Write down a 90-day experiment for yourself answering the following questions:

• What is your commitment? 

• When and where exactly will you do this thing? 

• What is your hope at the end of this? 

• What is your plan?

• Who can hold you accountable, give you feedback, do an experiment of their own alongside you, and/or encourage you along the way?

And if you’re doing an experiment of your own, lemme know!!!!

Thanks for reading. Without you, this would be impossible.