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Small Sips and A Video Abut Flow States
This Week's Note
Small Sips
Steven King, in his book “On Writing” said “If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that. Reading is the creative center of a writer's life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.”
While the concept of small sips certainly applies to reading and writing, learning the significance of taking a lot of small steps (regardless of what we’re doing) is essential, especially when we’re split between many obligations.
Chief among the duplicitous benefits the “small sips” approach can offer is a holistic strategy for achieving our goals and (hidden below the surface) a barometer for determining which goals our capacity allows us to healthily pursue. In practice, the “small sips” approach filters opportunities by their ability to be broken into a lot of modest steps. In those rare cases where long swallows are required, “small sips” gives us a method to accurately determine if we can afford to pursue what's on the table.
On the surface, “small sips” seem to slow us down, but in reality, viewing opportunities through the lens of what we can achieve in gradual steps increases our efficiency. By eliminating choices that don’t align with our stores of capacity, we refuse to move the wrong needle and gravitate towards opportunities that can be holistically sustained.
This Week's Resource
​A video from Van Neistat about easy or hard flow states that sheds light on something we've all probably felt. ​
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