Happy Friday!!

Freshman know-it-all

In 1997, I strode into West Virginia University as a music composition major, confident in my composing skills.

I had written several pieces in high school—two marches, a medley of Henry Mancini tunes, a love song for a girl I had a crush on. Every piece showed strong instincts for form and balance (and one showed my penchant for grand, but fruitless, gestures).

Here’s what I thought: sure, college would improve my skills, but I was already pretty awesome.

After my freshman year, I was convinced I didn’t know a damn thing about writing music. Every instinct I had trusted was undermined. I would stare at music I had just written, knowing it sucked, but not knowing why—and that hurt!

What was wrong with me? Why was technique making me worse?

And—most critically—how can my college music struggles help you be more productive?

Syntax vs. Feeling

There is a paradox between theory and practice, between technique and performance—or as e.e. cummings might put it, between syntax and feeling.

If you want to get better at something, you have to develop technique. Which, of course, requires you to focus on technique—at least to a certain extent.

But when you want to put that technique into practice, focusing on it will actually make you worse. Books like W. Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis and Matthew Syed’s Bounce explore how athletes can fall victim to this effect. The result is what we commonly call “choking.”

To expand on our e.e. cummings analogy, consider this meme: (if the image doesn’t show up, view it here)

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The Happy Fool beginner relies solely on instinct, and his feelings serve him reasonably well. At the very least, he thinks he’s good at what he’s doing. (Compare to me as I strode into college.)

The Manic Worker at the top of the bell curve is overwhelmed by syntax. Every step is an effort, and must be supported by data or systems or algorithms or… you get the idea. (Compare to me after my freshman year.)

The Wise Monk expert once again trusts his feelings. While it’s true that the Happy Fool and Wise Monk might both “wholly kiss you” (to borrow from the poem), the Wise Monk is going to be a much better kisser. He has internalized syntax, and his feeling is informed by that.

So yes, “feeling is first.” In any performance situation—in any profession—it will always be better to trust your instincts and go for it.

But that doesn’t mean syntax is a bad thing. In fact, it’s essential. Technique makes your instincts better over time.

Pivot to productivity

So far, I’ve used “learning versus doing” as the primary metaphor. But the same principle holds true for the balance between planning and working.

​Michael Ashcroft explores similar territory from a different perspective when he compares awareness and attention. His course on Alexander Technique helps you see the big picture—to notice what’s happening around you. When you’re truly aware, you have the power to direct your attention where you want it to be.

And that’s our pivot to productivity. Syntax and feeling, technique and performance, are directly related to preparation and execution.

Here’s the analogy I use with my clients:

💡 Sometimes you’re the coach, sometimes you’re the player 💡

👆 That’s your weekend upgrade.

Coaches plan. They’re aware. They see the big picture. They develop strategies, plot tactics, design plays, position players for optimal impact.

Players execute. Their attention is on—for example—the seven seconds of the average (American) football play. They’re not looking at the big picture or strategy. They’re here, in the moment, executing.

The crux of this upgrade is recognizing when you need to be the coach and when you need to be the player.

If you try to coach when you should be playing, you’ll wind up like me after my first year of college—second guessing everything, hesitating, unable to execute.

If you try to play when you should be coaching, you’ll be executing without purpose or direction. It’s a “forest and the trees” problem: you may be hacking down trees left and right, but with no sense of where you’re headed in the forest, you’re not actually accomplishing anything.

How do we know when we should be the coach and when we should be the player? How do we perform both roles?

How do Tools for Thought help?

If you’re new to the Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I explore how processes can be created in Tools for Thought (TfTs). TfTs are apps optimized for linking your ideas, thoughts, notes, etc.—apps like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, Obsidian, and Craft.

I ran my GTD system in Todoist—a dedicated task management app—for six years. I was only able to coach there, which is a limitation of any dedicated task app. You can plan your work in that environment, but you can’t do your work there.

This is also the reason many struggle with GTD in general. It’s easy to add things to the list (coach), but hard to do things on your list (player).

When I moved into Roam Research in 2020, my world changed. In the same environment, I could build the tools to be both coach and player—as well as the structure to keep them from getting in each other’s way.

You can do the same in your TfT of choice.

Two Questions

For a TfT productivity system to work, it needs to help you answer two questions: “What do I want to do?” and “What am I doing?”

What do I want to do?

This is a coach question, and it applies at both large and small scales.

On the large scale, “What do I want to do?” is about the priorities in your life and the goals you set for one month, six months, five years from now.

Wrap your [[priorities]] and [[goals]] in double brackets and periodically review them with journaling prompts. This will develop your coaching strategies, and it will be easy to track them over time using the backlinks you build with those double brackets.

On the small scale, “What do I want to do?” is about tomorrow’s agenda. Go to tomorrow’s Daily Notes page (or your TfT’s equivalent) and write down what you want to accomplish tomorrow.

You may find, over time, that you want to flesh out a “back end” for your system that surfaces work automatically. I endorse that, but it’s good to start small. Simply listing what you want to do tomorrow is powerful.

What am I doing?

This is a player question. What am I executing right here, right now?

In my system, I accomplish this with a Log. (In fact, my Daily Notes page is only two sections: Agenda and Log—”What do I want to do?” and “What am I doing?”)

The Log is simple. When I start a task, I write down the time and what I’m doing. Then I do my work. When I’m done, I write down the time I finished. I automate the process using the SmartBlocks extension in Roam, but it works fine manually too.

Logging is great for reviews, of course. It’s nice to be able to look back at what I did and learn from that.

But there are two less obvious benefits to the Log, and both relate to what it means to be a player rather than a coach.

First, logging your work is committing to it. When I write down the time and the task, I am implicitly saying, “This is what I commit to do here and now.” That has surprising power.

Second, when the day is done, I have both my Agenda and Log visible. They are almost never the same. But instead of having only a list of things I didn’t accomplish (the remaining Agenda items), I also have a list of things I did accomplish (the Log). That’s a far more motivating way to end the day, and it validates the importance of being a player when you can easily see the work you’ve accomplished.

Did I recover?

Yes. By my junior year of college my music composition technique began to become second nature, and my instincts were reliable again. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to call myself the Wise Monk, but I did pass through syntax and back to feeling.

You’ll have a similar experience if you use your TfT to ask yourself “What do I want to do?” and “What am I doing?” on a regular basis (and in both large- and small-scale ways). By serving as coach and player—but keeping the roles distinct—your syntax will make your feeling far more valuable.

What do you do next?

1. Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

2. Over the weekend, separate your coach from your player and make sure each understands their role.

If you’re a “tinkerer” with systems, you’re probably coach-heavy. Explore how you can better answer “What am I doing?” to empower your player.

If you hustle endlessly but feel like nothing gets accomplished, you’re probably player-heavy. Explore how you can better answer “What do I want to do?”—for both your big picture and near-team—to empower your coach.

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

When you’re coaching, coach. When you’re playing, play.

R.J.

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P.S. For the record, none of the links I share in this newsletter are affiliate links. I write Weekend Upgrade to help you improve your productivity and communication as well as to build my audience. I don’t write it to make money directly. If I include a link, it’s because I think you can find value in it!