Yesterday I went out to the driving range and hit balls for a couple hours. As I was doing it–and listening to my ipod–I realized why I like it so much.

It gives you the ability to immediately correct your mistakes and institute improvement.

I’ve always been solid with the seven iron. It’s been my club since I started as a little kid. So I always start there, and work my way downwards. As I start regularly hitting with the 7, I move to the 6. Then after the 6 is mastered, I move to the 5. All the way down to the woods. This allows you to progressively implement improvement and ratchet up success. In track in high school, my favorite workout was pyramids. Normally, 200–>400–>600–>800–>1200–>1600 and then back down again. I see this as sort of an equivalent, only with one small change: When I start to lose that momentum, I immediately turn back to the seven and start over.

In this way it becomes a comfort club, or a chorus that you turn to for guidance. You can quickly regain form and composure instead of going further and further off track. Since golf is all about calmness and the fluidity that follows it, this works perfectly.

Within that cycle as well, I always like to set back after each mistake and run through practice swings. Always turn inwards, breathe and regather. Which is how you–or at least I–should look at life. When you start to lose control, when you feel is slip from your grasp, step back and envision what you need to do. Running through it once as practice, often makes all the difference. Got to stop the slide.

But on a bigger level, I like to progress and learn via the same pyramid-like system. First, begin with comfort and control. Then venture slightly outwards in unknown areas. Each time you feel the grip loosen, return once more and until it’s back. You’ll notice, as I do at the range, that your mean score is higher each time. Success is absorbed and becomes natural. Fingerspitzengefuhl.

Of course, there are always benefits to running fast and hard and loose. Chaos and speed can be an asset. But this is how I like to learn and explore. It instills self-discipline and prevents irreversible errors.

Just posted new book quotes for And the Sea Will Tell and Till Death Do Us Part by Vincent Bugliosi, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning by Viktor Frankl, A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe and What Makes Sammy Run by Bud Schulberg.

Check them here.

My favorites:

“Usually, the very first thing I think about when I get on a case and begin to learn the facts is: what am I going argue and how can I best make the argument to obtain a favorable verdict. In other words, I work backwards from my summation. Virtually all of my questions at the trial and most of my tactics and techniques are aimed at enabling me to make arguments I’ve already determined I want to make.”

Bugliosi, Vincent

And the Sea Will Tell

“I had been waiting for justice to rise up and smite him in all its vengeance, secretly hoping to be around when Sammy got what was coming to him; only I had expected something conclusive and fatal and now I realized that what was coming to him was not a sudden pay-off but a process, a disease he had caught in the epidemic that swept over his birthplace like a plague; a cancer slowly eating him away, the symptoms developing and intensifying: success, loneliness, fear. “

Schulberg, Bud

What Makes Sammy Run

I’m doing 3 books for the Rudius Media Book Club for the next few weeks. The discussion is now open, and we’re looking at A Man in Full, The Meditations and Epictetus.

Here are the questions we’re addressing, at least initially

1) What is a ‘Man in Full?’ What do the Stoics tell us about being a “man?” (or woman) In the book, who is the true man? Is it Croker or Conrad?

2) How do you handle misfortune?

3) Where does meaning come from? How do we fulfill our nature? Where does one find the benchmarks to define themselves by?

Check it out.