In April, I wrote about why I didn’t have a Blackberry and why I didn’t think I was going to get one. Well, now I have one and I can’t believe how wrong I was. In the last month or so, my daily email volume has tripled and the significance of time-sensitive responses increased just as much. And instead of tying me down, the bberry has freed me. I can work on the train, in the car, at lunch, wherever. When you’re waiting for someone, instead of sitting around you can read your RSS or get a jump on emails you hadn’t responded to yet. But most of all, it adds a level of professionalism that I lacked before. Multiple times now, I have been able to respond instantly to requests or questions that previously would have taken be hours to get to. The results are tangible too, people will let you know how much they appreciate your timely answer. Brainstorming is able to take place outside of a single room. I’m now more productive and more efficient.

But what I said before still stands. Get one because you NEED one, not because you want to seem like you need one. Trust me, it doesn’t say anything about you. There is not glory in carrying around a computer in your pocket. It’s no different than carrying around a calculator or a credit card–it’s a tool that if you need, is worth having. Unless you actually get a lot of email, why spend $500 on an iPhone? Trust me, it’s not that hard to remember dates or go an extra hour without responding. Unless you work online, what do you need to carry the internet around for? I know the Tim Ferriss opinion of them and he is right to some degree. It’s a line that once you’ve crossed, is difficult to ever undo. But if you do it for the right reasons you shouldn’t have a problem. For the love of God though, try not to be the person that says “Call my Blackberry/iPhone/PDA” instead of “Call my phone.”

Speaking of running in LA, I’m pretty sure this is the only city in which your average run could include:

*A black transvestite in a dress and fake breasts jeering “I could beat you in a race, backwards.”

*Being forced to scream at a woman’s incessant honking “He’s in a fucking turn lane, shut the fuck up”

and having her turn around and give you the finger.

*Stopping in a park to do situps to find every available grassy area occupied by homeless people or regular people having sex.

*Stopping in a different park and noticing that “futbol” is prohibited.

*Getting one of your tear ducts so clogged with sweat, smog and grit that it swells up to the point of you being told “You look like a retard. No, you literally have the features of mongoloid.” (You can guess who said that.)

*Having small children race you down the street as their parents pay no attention to the fact that their offspring running off with a shirtless teenager.

*Having a random Mexican scream from a moving car to “put a shirt on.”

*Having that instant pang of shame immediately counteracted by Mexican women cat calling from the next vehicle.

More to come, this is only from the last week.

Running in LA has provided a new means of laziness and escape. I’ve never run in a city before, only the suburbs, so the concept of being inhibited by streetlights and cross walks is rather foreign. The real struggle in a run is not so much your physical limitations but your mental ones. “I was going to do five miles but I think I’ll turn back here and do three.” On the track and in the suburbs you’re undermined by fewer temptations, fewer excuses to break the rhythm. The city is totally different–an uninterrupted mile is a rarity and a course without shortcuts, rarer still. Which, by the way, I have found to be very similar to office work. You can cut out early, drag your feet. And this too is contrasted by a running impulse–to add distance and duration regardless of the yield or return, to go slow and long instead of efficiently. But I’ll address this more later on.

So I have found myself confronted by the path of least resistance on a more regular basis than usual. If you need to cross two streets in a four-way intersection (think an L) it is very easy to “arrange” waiting for an extra light. As I approach the end of a course, the desire to slow down to miss a flashing “Don’t Walk” signal mounts. Even more so, crossing redundant streets or shortcuts leads to an almost siren-like call to end it early.

This is how life works. This is how opportunities present themselves. The world, our instincts, they often conspire against us. Think about it evolutionarily–if the qualities of greatness are rare then in many cases it means they are not best for genetic survival. The drive to head far from home, to push onward towards an arbitrary benchmark, has probably killed more people than it saved. Raynor talks about this in The Strategy Paradox, the system creates incentives for mediocrity and punishments for risk. You, I, can see signs of this everywhere. I find it–excuse the pun–on street signs. They tempt you with rest and slow the heading of progress. And your instincts were bred to indulge this impulse, they aim to save you from yourself.

Overcoming Bias wrote about a solution last week. Tell your Anti-Story. Pressfield in The War of Art, wrote that the stronger the resistance, the more you know you’re heading in the right direction. My fix has been to push through. It is exactly when the desire to stop and rest is greatest that you ought to ignore it. Even more effective, when I find myself aching for a shortcut, I add distance to the end.

But there are limits to this too, as I mentioned with hours and the office earlier. Your desire to achieve and accomplish should never be confused with the concept of work, or spending as much time there as possible. Banging your head against a wall takes a lot of determination, but what does it do? I’ve made it a point to stay (or with Rudius to sit at my laptop) for as long as I am still DOING or ACCOMPLISHING something. If the results have stopped, then it is time to stop. Come back later when you can produce again. I try to buttress running with the same philosophy. If I didn’t sleep the night before the run will leave me in worse shape than if I didn’t. If 1pm is the only time I can do it but it’s 97 degrees outside, is saying that I did it worth the subsequent dehydration? In other words, going to far with your Anti-Story is just as bad as not telling one at all.

I’ll end with the definitive word that I end everyone of these debates with:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I

have to go to work–as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if

I’m going to do what I was born for–the things which I was brought

into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle

under the blankets and stay warm?’

–But it’s nicer here…

So you were born to feel “nice?” Instead of doing things and

experiencing them? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature

demands?

–But we have to sleep sometime…

Agreed. But nature set a limit on that–as it did on eating and

drinking. And you’re over the limit. But not of working. There you’re

still below your quota. ”