On Discipline II

I'm going to pursue this discipline notion for a while. A few developments. I did some googling the other day, and found an interesting set of articles about using waking up early, like 5am, everyday, as part of a regimen to establish a more disciplined and productive lifestyle. I hope I'm not veering into the zone of mid-life crisis psychobabble (I did just turn 35), but I did find these articles interesting. Eliza and I talked about them over lunch today. We're not ready for 5am, but maybe we'll start with 7am or something.

Here's the article. It may all be a hustle, but....

This waking up early thing is very counterintuitive for anyone who knows me. In high school, my parents were convinced I would flunk out because I was what you might call an extreme napper. I still like to get 8 hours a sleep nightly, and have just never been able to be one of those highly productive people who functions well on 4 hours nightly. We'll explore this concept further if it goes anywhere.

With the Barnes & Noble gift cards rolling in from the holidays, I did a little bookbuying the past few days. One book I got pertains: "How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci," by Michael Gelb. I haven't read it yet, but hopefully it's not a bunch of gibberish.

Here's his website: http://www.michaelgelb.com/. Unfortunately, so many of these writers on creativity, leadership, management, etc. are consultants to big business. Gelb seems to be one of these, looking at his website. But again, hopefully the book is useful. Keep you posted.

A quick aside on genius and gender. Gelb has a whole shtick on developing genius, and like many who cite geniuses (geniuii? kidding) in history, they're 90% plus male. The Atlantic Magazine had this problem recently when they published a piece on the 100 most influential Americans: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200612/influentials-main. Abraham Lincoln was #1 and a woman didn't appear on the list (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) until #30. I won't attempt an answer here, but there is a challenge to define these qualities in a way that is not sexist but also is grounded in reality (including recognizing the historical reality of sexism).

I also looked up the concept of revolutionary discipline on google and didn't come up with much. Mostly references to the concept in current anarchist or sectarian Marxist literature (this makes sense in that sectarian folks seem most enamored with obscure jargon), and a number of reference to usage during the Bolshevik period in Russia, etc. I only looked briefly, but so far didn't find any useful history of the use of the concept, and wikipedia had nothing.

So I may take this as an opportunity to do some research and write an article for wikipedia. I'm pretty backed up on my writing, so who knows if this will happen, but with a little discipline....

I haven't read it carefully yet, but the NY Times just had an article on "brain calisthenics" for seniors, given the boom in people living into their 80's and 90s. Article here.

There's also a new website which calls itself "the world's first virtual mental gymnasium." I'll do some working out and let you know how it goes...