Bringing Order to the Chaos

One hour of quiet reflection per week can declutter your mind and unlock new possibilities

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Sometimes, life with a muscle disease can be exhausting.

Every day, I face challenges that are physical, emotional, and mental in nature. It is often like fighting three foes instead of one.

The physical challenges are obvious. My muscles have withered away over the last fourteen years and I have grown significantly weaker. The emotional challenges, although complex, are also straightforward. It took me many years to accept what was happening to my body; even longer to find any semblance of peace.

The mental challenges, however, are in another class entirely, simply because my disease is always there, every moment of every day. I can’t escape it. If I don’t face the realities of my disease head-on, my life grinds to a halt.

There is much I have to consider on a daily basis. I sometimes like to joke that I have a Ph.D. in logistics (after receiving my Ph.D. in life several years back). Every action must be broken down into its most basic components. Every decision requires careful analysis of past, present, and future implications. If I go out somewhere, I must consider the dozens of steps necessary to ensure that I get home in one piece.

This disease takes no days off. It is always on, draining my mind of precious energy. If it’s not logistics I’m worried about, it’s something else. Finances. The future. Insurance. My hopes and dreams. Lately, it’s been swallowing. As much as I want to take time away from my daily concerns, I can’t.

I have come to accept that I must always be “on” and ready to deal with the challenges of my disease as they come. If my disease takes no days off, neither can I.

But this is easier said than done. It doesn’t take much for my mind to get overwhelmed by details. And when I get overwhelmed, that’s when stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions follow. 

Bringing order to the chaos

The goal of today’s post is not to ramble about how difficult my life can be sometimes. After all, we all have our challenges and worries that we obsess over. Swap out “muscle disease” for some other illness or hardship and I’m sure you can relate.

Rather, my goal for today is to share with you a practice that has worked well for me whenever I get overwhelmed, something that has helped me bring order to the chaos in my mind. Although I don’t want to hog the spotlight in this post, using an example is the easiest way to convey the power of this strategy. I hope you’ll bear with me.

I have refined my process over the years to help capture my thoughts, surface latent anxieties, and chart a course for the future. Sometimes it yields no tangible results; other times it has led to life-changing breakthroughs. It is not a panacea, but it is close.

It is a practice that only requires a pen, a notebook, a timer, and a quiet location.

It is taking one hour, each week, to think.

Yes, it’s that simple.

The Open Forum

From 2011 to 2014, I worked at a small tech company in Boston, Massachusetts. It was a company that modeled itself after a Silicon Valley startup, in terms of both culture and ambition. 

One of the practices we adopted was a quarterly “Open Forum”, a town-hall-style meeting popular at other tech companies. In the meeting, our CEO would give a brief speech to all the assembled employees, then open the floor up for a wide-ranging Q&A. We could ask him about the state of the business, company culture, the industry landscape, his thoughts on the economy, or anything else that came to mind. No subject was off limits. (This policy was hilariously tested on several occasions.)

Around this time, I was dealing with major life changes brought about by my disease. I was falling with regularity. I had to move out of two different apartments because I could no longer climb stairs. I was struggling financially. It was a time when I had to make a lot of consequential decisions about a future I barely understood or was ready to face.

On a stress-filled Saturday in early 2013, stuck at home during a snowstorm, alone with my thoughts, I thought back to the previous week’s Open Forum at work. In particular, I thought about how the format effectively surfaced underlying tensions, which then led to an open, honest discussion about problems plaguing the company, followed by a discussion of steps we could take to address the issues. Everyone came away from the discussion feeling like we had achieved a breakthrough, or at the very least, a better understanding of what headwinds we were facing.

Suddenly it hit me: Isn’t this what I needed? Is there a way I could use this process in my own life?

On a whim, I got up, grabbed a pen and paper, and sat down at my desk, which overlooked the falling snow outside. 

Although I wasn’t a business, I had a lot of underlying problems that I needed to confront. A palpable sense of dread lurked beneath the surface of my life that I had grown all too familiar with. Prior attempts to get to the source of the dread felt like a discouraging game of whack-a-mole; I would quickly get overwhelmed by all the problems on my mind and give up.

I didn’t want to get discouraged again. Rather than try to solve each problem as they surfaced—which derailed me before—I decided instead to write down whatever came to mind, whether it was current challenges I was facing, goals I still wanted to achieve, or my deepest worries and insecurities. I didn’t know where I was going with the exercise, but that was the point. Anything I wanted to write down, I could, without any attachments. I didn’t need to solve anything on the spot; I just needed to get the tangled mass of thoughts out of my head.

This exercise would be my own personal Open Forum. Maybe something would come of it; maybe not. But it was worth a try.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Insights and gibberish

Unfortunately, the original Open Forum notebook sheet is lost to history. I’m pretty sure I threw it out shortly after I finished. But the notes on the sheet, more or less, looked something like this: 

I almost fell again this week. Ugh. I need a scooter. How do I get one? Do I need to get it now or can I hold off a little longer? Check to see if insurance will pay for it.

I notice that when I don’t stretch in the morning, I feel way too stiff. Make a note to stretch when I get up.

What if there’s a fire in this building and I can’t get out? 

Business school - can I still do this? Did I miss my chance? Should I stay in Boston? Move to New York?

If I don’t go to grad school, should I move? Is that the change I need right now? Or should I try to stick it out in Boston?

I miss visiting my sister. Find a weekend she’s free and fly down to see her.

What’s for dinner? I forgot to take something out of the freezer.

What am I doing with my life? Seriously, is this the life I want? If not, what DO I want?

Should I ask out [name redacted] on a date?

Back to grad school. Do I really want to do this? What is involved? I need to take the GMAT. Do I want to take a prep class? How much does it cost to apply? Will I get in anywhere? Is it an MBA I want? Or a different degree? Am I doing this for the right reasons? Or do I just want to leave my job?

I need to buy more coffee. 

Wheelchair - Okay, it’s too early to think about a wheelchair. But when is the right time? When I injure myself? Don’t wait too long.

I have been feeling down lately. Am I depressed because I haven’t seen my friends recently? Invite them over. Go to a bar near my apartment.

I think I still have lasagna in the fridge from a few weeks ago. Botulism or not, I’ll have that for dinner tonight.

Business school

After a half hour of scribbling down whatever came to mind, I could see that the same worry kept bubbling to the surface: the future. I knew that I needed to get new adaptive equipment, but didn’t know what kind or when. I could also see that I was pensive about my dreams and whether or not they were still achievable. I had wanted to go to business school for many years but kept punting the decision to the following year. I needed to decide once and for all if I was going to apply. There were also several time-sensitive action items I needed to deal with that were cluttering my mind. After I finished, I wrote them down in my planner for follow-up.

Getting these thoughts out of my head, in an unstructured way, allowed me a judgment-free space to unpack what was troubling me so I could form a plan of attack. By the end of the exercise, I felt a sense of relief.

Over the coming months, I would return to this Open Forum exercise any time I felt overwhelmed. This happened often, because my life was about to change in a major way. The business school dream I had postponed for several years was now a concrete decision; I was going to go full-time. Future iterations of the Open Forum helped me figure out how to make it a reality and surface underlying anxieties. If I knew what I was afraid of, I could do something about it.

But as wonderful as it was to have this time to get my thoughts down on paper, it was never a practice I did on a schedule. It was always ad hoc and reactive to the moment. As I would eventually learn, that limited its effectiveness.

The George Shultz Hour

By 2017, I had fallen off the Open Forum wagon. I would do the exercise here and there, as needed, but not with any regularity. I was too busy. Business school had taken up all my mental energy for two years, and I was now working full-time.

One day, I saw an article on Twitter about a practice called the George Shultz Hour. It was named after former Secretary of State George Shultz, who would dedicate one hour each week to quiet contemplation of pressing strategic issues. According to Shultz, it was one of his most important hours of the week:

“He sat down in his office with a pad of paper and pen, closed the door and told his secretary to interrupt him only if one of two people called:

‘My wife or the president,’ Shultz recalled.”

The article went on to discuss the benefits of daydreaming—or “task-negative” thinking, as it’s called—which allows your mind space to think without distraction. What struck me was how similar the George Shultz Hour was to my Open Forum practice. The only difference was Shultz made it a point to do it every week.

I thought about what it would be like to do my Open Forum exercise this frequently. The thought of spending an entire hour, without distraction, every week, was a scary one. My Open Forums, although productive, usually lasted no more than thirty minutes, and almost always involved electronics of some sort. The George Shultz Hour required prolonged discipline and focus, neither of which were my strengths.

But then I thought about it some more. A dedicated hour every week, free of distractions, could be just what I needed. My mind was no less cluttered than before. The decisions before me were no less consequential. What did I have to lose? If it was too hard to do every week, I could always push it back to once a month. 

I gave it a try and found it to be much easier than I expected. In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven’t kept at it every single week over the last six years, but I try not to go more than two weeks without a quiet hour of reflection. Although Shultz used the hour to contemplate large strategic issues, I often shift between focusing on a specific problem and daydreaming. Either approach usually surfaces something worth contemplating more deeply. (Smaller, less urgent tasks that pop into my head like “set up auto-pay on my phone bill” I add to my planner after I finish.)

The other advantage of the weekly hour is that it has allowed me to ruminate on issues more consistently. Many times, I’ll get through an hour without completely working through a pressing issue. Sometimes, I know what is bothering me but a solution doesn’t present itself in sixty minutes. That is okay. I make a note of where I left off in my thinking process and pick it up again a week later. Even if I can’t figure out a solution, I usually have at least one action item for the following week, something as simple as “Get advice from Mike.” A small action still represents progress.

It is these small bits of progress that often lead to a future breakthrough.

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

“You Waste Years By Not Being Able to Waste Hours”

Late last year, I had one of these breakthroughs.

For a couple of years, I had wanted to start a website that shared adversity strategies based on my life experience. I would have a weekly newsletter of links. I would write articles. It would be great.

Every week, I would write down a task related to building out the website. I would also draw pictures of what I wanted the site to look like. And every week, I would do absolutely nothing to advance the goal. I would list out the granular steps involved, over and over, but the thought was just too overwhelming. I didn’t know anything about design. I didn’t know anything about website construction. And I didn’t want to hire anyone until I was ready to pour my heart and soul into the idea. So I pushed it off, week after week.

But late last year, over holiday break, I finally got past this obstacle. Or, more accurately, I went around it.

In one of my weekly Open Forum sessions, I permitted myself to abandon the website idea. I was tired of writing it down and not acting on it. I crossed it out and wrote down another question: If I didn’t build a website, could I find another way to share what I’ve learned about adversity?

After an hour of fruitless brainstorming, I broke through my mental block. I had recently read an article about Substack, which, from what I could recall, was a writing platform that everyone seemed to be joining. I didn’t know much about it but I had heard good things. I did some quick research and learned that Substack handles all the design elements. They handle the back-end configurations. They handle the email list. All I had to do was write. 

I began to envision my website idea in Substack form. After all, writing was what excited me—not website building. I didn’t care about fancy bells and whistles. I only cared about the content.

A month later, Hello, Adversity was born.

Now, did the idea to use Substack come about from this one Open Forum session, or as the result of dozens of previous, fruitless sessions when I fought with the idea over and over until I found a workaround?

It reminded me of the story of the Chinese bamboo tree:

“Like any plant, to flourish the Chinese Bamboo Tree requires nurturing – water, fertile soil, sunshine. In the first year, there are no visible signs of activity or development. In the second year, again, no growth above the soil. And the third and fourth, still no signs. Patience is tested and we begin to wonder if our efforts will ever be rewarded.

Finally in the fifth year – voila! There is growth…and what growth it is! The Chinese Bamboo Tree grows 80 feet (nearly 30m) in just six weeks!

So the question is: Does the Chinese Bamboo Tree really grow 80 feet in six weeks? Did it lie dormant for four years only to grow exponentially in the fifth? Or, was the little tree growing underground, developing a root system and a stable base strong enough to support its potential for outward growth in the fifth year and beyond?”

In my own situation, the answer was clear - it was from the consistency of thinking about it every week. It was from struggling with it until I realized once and for all that I just wanted to write. Had I only haphazardly considered the idea, I might still be researching domain hosts today.

In the aforementioned Shultz article, there is a quote from psychologist Amos Tversky:

“You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”

By “wasting” (which is a bit of a harsh way to describe it) one hour per week, I was able to come up with the idea for Hello, Adversity, which has brought me tremendous satisfaction and has allowed me to meet so many new people.

One hour per week gave me a newfound purpose.

Make it your own

You might be thinking, “This all sounds nice but it’s not for me.” I get it. An hour per week to sit around and think might seem daunting, either because it is hard to find a free hour or you don’t know what to do with the time. Maybe an hour away from electronics is the scariest part for you.

From a time standpoint, you might have dependents or time commitments that make finding an uninterrupted hour every week impossible to achieve. To that, I would say an hour isn’t a hard and fast rule as much as a suggestion.

Do you have a half hour every week? How about an hour every two weeks? Whatever you choose, having a consistent cadence is key, although try to schedule at least a half hour per session so you can think deeply about what’s on your mind. Sometimes productive thoughts don’t surface until the very end. Daydreaming takes time.

Maybe you do have the time, but don’t know what you’d think about. Maybe you don’t have any worries or strategic issues that come to mind. If that is the case, try thinking about what brings you joy or what interests you. Write down your favorite hobbies, or something you want to learn. Is there anything you want to experience, or any place you want to go, but have been putting it off? Start scoping out how to make it a reality.

From there, you will likely begin thinking about all the constraints in your life keeping you from doing these fun things, which will then help you start contemplating how you spend your time, and ultimately, the life you want to lead.

If all of this seems scary at first, or if you end a session feeling less certain about how to solve an intractable problem, that is okay! You can pick it up the next time. Just commit to revisiting it in the next session. Knowing that you will think about it again allows your subconscious mind to go to work in the interim.

Although my circumstances are admittedly unique and I have a lot I need to ponder on a weekly basis, this is a practice that can benefit anyone in any situation. The process is customizable. Whether you want to write out a list, draw pictures or charts, ruminate on a specific problem, or brainstorm your ideal life—how you spend your time is up to you.

The only cost is an hour per week. If it can save you from wasting future years moving in the wrong direction, it is time well spent.

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Some Helpful Resources

On thinking deeply: I found Cal Newport’s book Deep Work to be a very insightful read on the science of thinking deeply and how to structure our time to maximize intense focus. Although Newport writes about how to make the most of our productive working hours, deep thought is essential for the Open Forum/George Shultz Hour as well. 

On note-taking: If you want to be inspired by how famous people have taken notes over the years, I highly recommend Jillian Hess’s Noted Substack. It is fascinating to see how some of the best minds in history have written down their notes and ideas that would one day become some of history’s greatest works. It may also inspire you in your note-taking. Recent subjects include Francis Ford Coppola, Kurt Cobain and Beatrix Potter. 

A few interesting articles that complement today’s post:

You’re Too Busy. You Need a ‘Shultz Hour.’ - Discussed earlier.

Spring Cleaning for the Mind - A very similar process to the Open Forum idea. The author compares our mind to a junk drawer, and offers some practical ways to organize to do’s and anything else you want to remember for later.

How to Give Yourself Time to Think - Another helpful article about how to turbocharge creativity by taking time to think. This article incorporates a lot of the themes mentioned in today’s post, although it is tailored slightly towards a more formal “creative retreat”. I haven’t had the chance to read Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act, but I hope to read it soon.

The Art of Being Alone - An interesting article about funneling loneliness/solitude into creative pursuits.