The Deliberate #63: Proof of life

A 9-month retrospective and check-in

I’ve discovered a new flavor of guilt over the past few months that has been heretofore unknown to me. It shows up every time I get a notification that somebody new has signed up for this newsletter and I know that I haven’t written anything in *counts on fingers* 9 months.

So, since it has been a minute, here’s your quick reminder of what this is and who I am. This is The Deliberate and I am Sam Spurlin. The Deliberate is my *periodic* newsletter about the intersection of my various obsessions: attention, personal development, complexity, organizations, and generally just doing one’s best to live deliberately in a world that seems primarily designed for the opposite.

I don’t get unsubscribe notifications and I never check my subscriber list, so if you want to bail there are no hard feelings. Life is too short for another email you don’t want.

Nine Months, Condensed

The last one of these came out in early November 2023. What has happened since then?

• Emily and I moved from Arlington, VA to Haverstraw, NY for her new job at the United States Military Academy at West Point. I’m enjoying have easier access to nature. I’m also loving having my wonderful wife who I love very much back in an actual office and out of our shared home office.

• I have fully inhabited the co-host position on The Ready’s podcast, At Work with The Ready. Last summer I took over a temporary co-hosting spot during our Future of HR miniseries and apparently I did okay enough at that to earn the permanent co-host slot. Every two weeks we have a fresh episode about some aspect of work, organizations, and how to change them for the better. You can find it in your podcast player of choice or, if you want the Full Visual Sam and Rodney Experience, we’re on YouTube, too.

• Max and I decided to put our podcast, Fields of Work, on hiatus, even though he’s got a great new gig on a farm in New York (we are inadvertent quasi-neighbors!). Neither of us wants to say it’s fully retired, so just keep that bad boy in your podcast player for its eventual/hopeful resurrection.

• I’m still training for triathlon. My original race schedule was extremely Virginia-centric which proved to be problematic with our move to New York, so I decided to cancel everything except the main event: IRONMAN Michigan 70.3 in September (the same race I did last year). It’s fun! Usually! I’m still very slow and don’t swim as much as I should, but it gets me outside and moving more than my default inclinations.

• Work has been a lot, as usual. Have had a relatively stable batch of client projects (one since September, one since March, and one since May) that are keeping me more than busy. Traveling a bit, with trips to Florida, Atlanta (twice), Boston, Phoenix, and San Francisco all in the past few months. Driving to LaGuardia or Newark or JFK is a far cry from my Arlington existence of two metro stops from DCA, let me tell you. I’ll be celebrating nine years at The Ready in a couple weeks, which honestly sounds like a prank. Will undoubtedly write something about that, soon.

• My writing has been mostly non-existent except for some moderate consistency sharing some nuggets of thinking on LinkedIn, recently. I’m in my thought leader era, apparently. I have a vague intention of pulling all these posts together into something more accessible than a series of disparate LinkedIn posts, but for now the best place to see them is I guess to give me a follow over there?

• I have been working, a little bit, on some behind the scenes writing and thinking related to my Deliberate Patterns project. I go back and forth between thinking it’s extremely trite and not worth further exploring and thinking “this is the thing I should be doing.” Trying to navigate that “third way” between despair and euphoria by just coming back to it semi-consistently until I feel like I have something to share.

What Has My Attention

Reading

Still reading as much as I can. The full list can always be found on Goodreads. But some recent faves include: American Gods, Children of Time/Ruin/Memory, The Goblin Emperor, When We Cease to Understand the World, and The MANIAC.

Watching

Barely watching any TV, but have managed to make my way through Andor, The Last of Us, 3 Body Problem and Fallout over the last 9 months. I also finally gave in to the phenomenon of Drive to Survive and have surprised myself by having very strong opinions about a sport and people I didn’t really know anything about a month ago. Riding my bike inside on the trainer has turned into basically my only TV time.

What are movies again? Literally the only three movies I’ve watched in 2024 are Gettysburg and Dune 2 and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Playing

What are video games again? I finished Final Fantasy XVI (loved it) and have just barely started Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I’ve also spent maybe 10 or 15 very ad hoc hours on Hollow Knight and Helldivers 2, too.

Listening

The Rest is History might be my new favorite podcast.

Deliberate Practice of the Day

Problem

We get too much unwanted and useless email.

Practice

Every time you open your email inbox and you see something you’d prefer to never see again (like a marketing email or a request for feedback from a brand), take the three seconds to open it, scroll to the bottom, and click the unsubscribe link. Do this every single time you check your email.

Result

For a couple weeks, it won’t seem like much has changed. Eventually, though, you’ll start getting less. I think of it as weeding my email. Weeding isn’t fun but it definitely feels good when it’s done and the end result is refreshing. I’ve gotten to the point where I get so little unwanted email I actually get a little thrill when there’s something new to unsubscribe to.

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As much as I don’t want this newsletter to just become a periodic personal check-in, I suppose that’s not the worst thing in the world. I have a few friends who do something similar on a quarterly basis and I’m always happy to see them hit my inbox. Hopefully that’s true for you, too.

Until next time!