Keepers: words to live by
I recently came across Beck Tench’s concept of areas of possibility, an evolved version of “areas of responsibility,” which is integral to the GTD methodology. (I also adore Tench’s idea of kinder to-do lists.)
Whereas areas of responsibility provides buckets for you to place tasks into based on your current responsibilities, areas of possibility allow you to expand your tasks beyond what is to encompass what might be. In essence, you’re articulating who you want to be, then reverse-engineering your daily tasks to act as a bridge to becoming that person.
Crucially, who you want to be is derived from who you are, requiring a significant amount of honest self-observation. “Mapping areas of possibility is observational, not aspirational,” as Tench says.
The exercise led me to create a list of things I want to accomplish, viewed through the lens of who I want to be. I only included goals that have been lingering for months, or even years. If I think of myself on my deathbed, the thought of not having completed these particular goals creates an empty space in me (if it doesn’t, I didn’t include it in this exercise).
I started with a simple prompt, then listed as many qualities as came to mind:
I want to be the type of person who…
Some examples:
- …is comfortable in his own skin.
- …whose word is his bond.
- …who never reduces a person to an simplification, but acknowledges the complexity of their personhood.
- …who takes daily walks.
- …who never loses his sense of wonder.
I started to notice distinct themes emerging, so I wrote a sort of mission statement for each theme that captured the spirit of each quality:
- “…who plays the piano; who does yoga; who has a distinct, elegant penmanship” are summarized as “…who builds into his daily life those things that nourish his mind, body, and soul.”
- “who speaks only when he has something to say; whom people are not afraid to ask for help, for fear of being judged; who listens attentively when others speak, without thinking of what to say or when to interject” are summarized as “…who connects with his fellow (wo)man in a way that recognizes and celebrates what we are, rather than what we pretend to be.”
I created five of these mission statements, then gave each a theme. The former example in the list above became “Sustenance,” and the latter became “Connection.” All told, I identified five themes that I’ll use as a compass for my everyday thoughts and actions:
- Alignment
- Connection
- Understanding
- Sustenance
- Impermanence
It’s a bit pedantic, I know, and I’m sure this exercise isn’t for everyone. For me, though, it’s given a distinct shape to my days, my desires. I strongly believe that we should all try to be just a bit better today than we were yesterday. In the abstract, it’s hard to know whether you’re actually accomplishing that goal. Laying out how to get there helps—and it’s also just kinda fun to figure out the principles you live by, even if you’ve never given known their names.
This gap between the public face and the relatively hidden political planning of neoliberals has been described by David Harvey as a contrast between the utopian theory of neoliberal freedom and the practical class project of installing oligarchical elites at the center of economic and state power.
If we were to expand areas of possibility from the personal to the societal, we might start defining what we want to be by defining what we don’t want to be. We don’t want to be assholes. And most assholes alive today got their blueprint for how to be an asshole from Ayn Rand.
Sometimes I think of the men who died making the Brooklyn Bridge; sometimes I play a game on my phone. This is as close as it gets to the sacred for me, to be on a public conveyance, in the arms of a transit authority, part of a system, to know that the infrastructure has been designed for my safety. In the winter, I can look down into the icy East River and fantasize about what it would take to push us into the river, because only a small, low concrete barrier keeps us from death. I think of how I’d escape and how I’d help others up. But the bus never hurtles into the water. They made sure of it.
The tech backlash is real and necessary, but that doesn’t mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Paul Ford wrote a love letter to tech, remind us that technology can still inspire us, connect us, awe us.
Papa connects College Students to Older Adults who need assistance with transportation, house chores, technology lessons, companionship, and other senior services.
I’m not sure how I feel about Papa, a “grandkids-on-demand” service. But I do know that it reminded me that all anyone really wants is to be seen, to be heard, to be human in the most fundamental sense of the word.