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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' (Issue #41 - SNOW, GO, GROW)

Published over 3 years ago • 4 min read

1 Family Photo Video: SNOW

Here in Truckee, Calvin and Lawrence are experiencing snow for the first time. My brother JT joined us for a week - I think the kids had more fun playing with JT than the snow.

JT brought his ukulele, which they thought was magical. Each morning, Lawrence would point to its case in the corner, we would acknowledge it was JT's, then Lawrence would sprint across the cabin and pound on JT's door to wake him up.

I think JT learned a bit about having kids this week.

I captured a clip of Calvin strumming the ukulele in a live photo. I wondered if I could create a song from that clip by looping the audio and adjusting its pitch. The video above is the result of that experiment. I used Audacity to loop/pitch the audio and Camtasia to edit the video. It was a fun project learning how to better use those tools.

1 Dad Joke: GO
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Josh Knox (🚢,🚢)
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January 30th 2023
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Highlights: GROW

​Growth Without Goals by Patrick O'Shaughnessy​

What would it take to be a great father? Unconditional love and support seemed obvious. Patience too. But what could I teach my son Pierce and future kids that would help them live good, fulfilling lives?
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We accumulate accomplishments and call it success. Success means something very different to me, and I think being a great father will be about effectively communicating this different definition of success to my kids. Success is about building a set of daily practices, it is about growth without goals. Continuous, habitual practice(s) trumps achievement-based success.
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In these woods I’ve begun to teach my son (and will soon teach my daughter) this lesson: explore for the sake of exploration, without expectation. Discover essence in your surroundings and in yourself, free from external conditioning (stories) and expectations. Build from the inside out and bottom up. Great habits and practices make a great and successful life. Cultivate those and the rest will take care of itself.

​The Paradox of Goals by Anne-Laure Le Cunff​

In the process of working toward a goal, we come to imagine what it will feel like to achieve it. For example, we start thinking: “When I graduate, I will feel accomplished” or “When I launch this product, I will have more free time to spend with my family” or “When I get this job, I will feel like my career is on track.”
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Unfortunately, the happiness we feel when reaching a goal is short-lived.
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Goals drive us forward, we set out to achieve our goals, we make progress toward a goal. Those are called orientational metaphors. In our collective psyche, goals rely on a sense of movement. And that’s not wrong. But we may be misguided as to the direction of this movement.
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Instead of a linear scale progressing from a present state to a desired outcome (the classic “up and to the right”), goals should be conceived as cyclical.
Pact: Choose an action you want to commit to. It could be something you’ve always wanted to experiment with, or something you’ve just recently heard about. It could even be something you suspect you won’t enjoy, but don’t know for sure because you’ve never given it a proper try. Your pact needs to be Purposeful (something you care about), Actionable (something you can do today), Contextual (based on your current situation), and Trackable (a yes/no action).
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Act: Now, just do it! You need to stick to that action for long enough so you can collect sufficient data. This requires monitoring your progress (a good old habit tracker can do the job) and taking care of your mental health so you can maintain motivation and momentum.
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React: Once you have enough data (which will depend on the nature of your pact), you need to start regularly reflecting on your progress. Is your current pact having a positive impact on areas of your life you care about, such as health, well-being, or relationships? How does it feel to perform this action? Is it energizing or draining? Do you want to keep on going with this pact for one more cycle, or should you tweak it or abandon it?
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Impact: Keep on going through the first three steps of the cycle (Pact, Act, React), and you will start noticing the impact on areas that feed into the ultimate goal: living a happy, healthy, fulfilling life.

​Forget about Passion and Goals by Scott Adams​

To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary.
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If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure.

iamJoshKnox Highlight

Video editing and real work squeezed out a lot of my writing time this week.

Still collecting my thoughts on my education essay. If you haven't responded yet and would like to read a draft, reply and let me know!
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In the meantime - here's an essay from the archive:
​Why Does Daddy Have To Work?​
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Until next week, and for many more!
​iamJoshKnox​

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Josh Knox

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