Beau's Blog

What’s on my mind? This is a question that I use to journal. Historically, the idea of journaling has been intimidating to me, but I’ve figured out how to make it work.

With that telling meme said, what IS on my mind?

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In my journey towards becoming who I want to become, procrastination comes to mind. Future idealized Beau rarely procrastinates. Present Beau is making progress here.

One idea I’ve been consciously acting on is “if a task will take less than two minutes, do it now – don’t wait”. This idea was popularized in multiple places such as the books Getting Things Done and Atomic Habits. One concrete benefit I’ve noticed here is with keeping my apartment cleaner. It’s not perfectly clutterless, but it’s certainly cleaner than it would be otherwise. One less concrete benefit is freeing up limited mental RAM.

Similarly, I was listening to an interview and one idea from Alex Hormozi was: there is massive benefit for confronting the hard conversations you are putting off.

For me now, the biggest one is figuring out my Japanese tax situation which is directly linked (at least in my mind) to how long I intend to stay in Japan. There’s no need for me to figure this out today or this week but my life will improve by figuring this out. I strive to proactively tackle difficult and uncomfortable conversations (often with myself) rather than just letting them simmer under the surface.

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Identity has always felt like a challenging complicated concept to me. Recently, I heard the idea that identity is determined by what you do. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Two components here particularly resonate.

• The word “do”. This indicates action. Action is tangible, real. In our world filled with ideas and consumption, action contrasts and is especially valuable.
• Simplicity. This is a simple proposed definition. All else equal, simple is good. Of course, there are always tradeoffs with simplifications. In this case, I would rather have an imperfect understanding that serves me instead of a jumble of disorganized thoughts.

For most of my life, I have been able to ride a unicycle as well as juggle three balls. For most of my life, I have identified as a unicyclist as well as not identified as a juggler. I never had a clean way to explain this. I thought perhaps it was related to skill or knowledge or intent or seriousness, but now feel good about explaining it in terms of action. I’ve spent countless hours unicycling whereas with juggling I actually could count the limited hours.

More recently, I’ve wondered about whether or not I identify as a runner. The past few years, I’ve done a fair amount of running. On one hand, I’ve done multiple runs at least as long as a marathon and I do love a runner’s high. On the other hand, I have never studied good running form, don’t know about running shoe vocabulary, am not plugged into running communities and (at least up until this summer, I) hadn’t done any running competitions.

With this newfound simple definition of identity, I don’t have to consider whether or not I experienced a runner’s high or know runner vocabulary or count how many other runners I know. Lately I’ve been running about twice a week, and guess what that means?

I’m a runner!

I’ve never enjoyed writing. English class? It was my least favorite class growing up and especially so in college when it focused on writing.

Today when I think about things that energize me, writing is top of mind. This is a very recent phenomenon. For the past few years, I’ve been happy with my somewhat-regular journaling habit. For the past six months, creating this blog has improved my life. Writing is a common denominator here. Writing has helped me reflect and grow. Writing inspires me to do things (like explore more of Tokyo). Somehow I’ve ended up in a place where I write several times a week. Guess what that means?

I’m a writer!

For both running and writing, one key detail is that I have found ways to do these activities that work for me.

Comparing to others or actually, lack thereof has been crucial. I am nowhere near a top tier runner. I am nowhere near a top tier writer. As an independent adult, I’m much more aware of the fact that life is best when we focus on our own game and compare against ourselves, not against others.

I run at whatever pace I feel like. I run whatever route I feel like. I run to explore new places. I write about topics that are meaningful to me. I write to explore experiences more deeply.

With my examples of running and writing, I take away a powerful lesson. Humans are adaptable. As a kid I disliked running and writing. Not only that, but for the majority of my adult life, I truly disliked running and writing. Now I like them both and identify as a runner and a writer. That’s amazing. If that change can occur for me in these facets of my identity, why not in other parts of my life? If my identity can change, anyone’s can change. Human potential is awesome. Human potential gives me hope.

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Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Caffice
November 20 & 24, 2023

PS – I recommend against going to Caffice in Shinjuku. I’m surprised there are lots of people here on a Friday afternoon – 1200 yen for tea with terrible wifi is a total rip off. I’m doing my best to make the most of my time here and get my money’s worth. In order to do so, I’m forcing myself to be extremely productive. Hmmm I suppose this is a painful yet potentially effective strategy I could experiment with.