Update: This article was drafted on the 25th of October, 2013. It is being published on the 26th of February 2022.
But I continued to plant dots, thinking of the apple, but not quite seeing it, making denser and denser dots in one area, but lighter dots in other areas. Putting dots around to define the shape of the apple. Not a line, but shape.
Dots are very forgiving. They allow you to slowly move forward. It's like looking at something blurry in the distance and as the thing moves closer towards you, you begin to make out its shape. As it gets even closer you begin to see even more detail. Light and dark shapes change into materials, glass and steel. You can see where the pockmarked concrete meets the polished wood. Soon that blurry thing is now a coherent shape. Something of substance. It has life.
That's what happened with the drawing of the dot apple. It was actually quite difficult placing that first dot. If you were making a line drawing of the apple, it's easy to sketch the outline quickly. Line drawings force you to think of the outline, the shape the final thing. After I'd made up my mind that I was going to draw an apple, and had and apple in front of me, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine where it would be on the page. In the middle of the page, of course. With line drawings, you make quick strokes to quickly see the shape. At least an outline. A guide that you're moving in the right direction. But when you're using dots even the first hundred aren't an indication of what you're trying to draw. In a line drawing someone can look over your shoulder and say "hey, that looks like an eye." And if it doesn't look like one, you can crumple that piece of paper and start over. That exercise can happen in less than a minute. "How about this one?" you ask. "Sort of like a foot!" comes the reply, and you try again.
In a line drawing if your outline is really good, you can hone in on the details. But the problem with a really good outline is that sometimes it has already achieved its purpose. Adding more lines does not add new information and the precise opposite may happen. The carefully drawn outline of the apple could become a confused pear or an avocado.
But dots don't behave the same way. A person looking over your shoulder can only ask, "what are you doing?" All that would be apparent to them are random dots.
"I'm drawing a boot," you say. "doesn't look much like a boot," they answer. You look at your dots and continue adding.
"That's an "L"," your shoulder companion says. "Go away!" you reply. No judgements can be made. Even you don't see it yet, at least not on paper. It's in your mind.
"Ah ha! I can see where you're going now. Why didn't you start with a sketch, an outline?"
"Go away," you reply again.
Let's digress for a minute. Every project must start from somewhere, from nothing. Even that line sketch must start from absolutely nothing. That point of departure, the starting point is always difficult. Always. When you're at the start line of a race, before you take that first step, you're anxious. You're anxious thinking about how the race will turn out. In your mind you've already drawn the outline and visualised the end. You're already at the finish line. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating getting mired in details and not worrying about the goals, but balancing the act of getting to the goal by taking care of what you are really in control of. The detail.
Balancing the act of getting to the goal by
taking care of what you are really in control of.
The Detail.
The only thing that you're really in control of at the start of a race is taking that first step. Paying attention to your body, listening to the starter, thinking of what you should do first, or next. Knowing or worrying about the ten-thousandth step does not help the goal.
When starting to build a house, when you're staring out at the empty land in preparation to dig the foundation, your only concern is that first dig, shovel into the ground.
If you want to write, you may have an idea about what your characters are going to do, but that first word decides if you will continue to write or not.
The dot drawing exercise does one thing really well. It anchors your feet to the ground forcing you to pay slow painful attention to the details.
The purpose of the dot drawing exercise is to slow you down.
The dot drawing exercise is a great tool for nearly every activity you can think of.
Find the dots.
The building of a house, or a skyscraper is done brick by brick and running a race is done one step at a time. But projects are based on much grander goals. The completion of the software project with all of its moving parts. The construction of the entire building which includes electrical wiring, heating and air conditioning systems. During a race, it's mostly about accomplishing the goal to get to the finish line. The conflict is about managing what is manageable while at the same time not losing focus on what the goal is. Keeping your focus on making sure that the dot you put down is absolutely the best dot you can put down and not worrying that you don't have visibility over the entire project. In your hand you're holding a dot, or a brick. You close your eyes and see a blurry shape of an apple, or a house. You then plant your dot, or lay down your brick.
TIME
Time is the necessary ingredient that stitches together the dots to create the apple.
PERSISTENCE
Persistence is the force, the attribute of mind that keeps you going despite the fact that you can't see anything.
CONVICTION
Conviction is that part of character, a part of faith and trust, that believes that the process will eventually turn out well despite what you are currently looking at and, most importantly, what others over your shoulder are saying. the so-called voices of the detractors.
PATIENCE
Patience, perhaps the most important of all, the ability to sit and wait. Granted, it goes hand-in-hand with conviction and persistence, because while sitting there quietly, ignoring the voices around you, you need to know that the wait will eventually end up with something good.
TRUST AND FAITH
Trust that the technique will work and that the process will result in a successful project.
But how?
Everything comes from something. There was the Big Bang that started it all and in a billennia the universe has expanded. Even life proceeds slowly and painfully, and it seems that we only perceive those moments when you look back.
Here's a summary of our ingredients:
- Time
- Persistence
- Faith
- Patience
I believe that the word faith captures both conviction and trust.
Find the dots.
Place the dots slowly and confidently while all the while, experience what is around. A dot all by itself is still a beautiful thing just like a note from a piano, or a guitar. But when combined with other dots, the union of all those dots becomes something greater. The whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts yet the design, the placement of each part determines the beauty of the whole.
We'll get to how that happens in a moment.
Mies van de Rohe said that God is in the details. This can be extrapolated to Beauty is in the details. I recall a Ted Talk where the speaker was illustrating how matter is mostly space. When you look at an atom, it's over 90% just space, yet when you look at a person, made of atoms, made of molecules, that person seems like solid matter. Imagine that, you're 90% made up of space, nothingness, yet there's a solid person, physically present, not a concept. Those infinitesimally insignificant atoms, in large numbers, form a coherent whole. It's at the molecular level where you see that the molecule is empty space. Further down, the atoms are also mostly space. Lastly protons, electrons and neutrons are energy in constant motion, fluctuating in shape. It's this energy that's the basis of the Carbon atom, that thing that makes our particular life form possible.
The big bang.
Molecules.
Atoms.
Electrons, protons and neutrons.
Out of nothing, everything.
Find the dots.
Find the dots in every activity that you are engaged in and then proceed on assembling and arranging the dots.
The following statement that I made previously is worth repeating again. The dot exercise is a great tool for every activity that you can think of. The dot drawing exercise does one thing really well. It anchors your feet to the ground forcing you to pay slow, painful attention to the details.
The largest hurdle I had with the dot drawing exercise was the need for immediate feedback. Something to let me know that I was on the right track. That I wasn't wasting my time and that eventually I would get somewhere. As I've grown older, I realise that my patience for engaging in activities that don't have some sort of purpose is almost non-existent. Engaging in something where at the end of the day I would have nothing to show for. And then my critics would swarm around and accuse me of having wasted all that time. They'd look at the mass of dots on the page, shake their heads, turn and walk away muttering, "man! talk about wasting time! Talk about being clueless. Of not knowing how to do anything. What an idiot!" Part of the problem is not being able to answer the question "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm drawing an apple." Or, "I'm building a house." "Don't you think you should use lines?" Or, "Don't you think you need to put down bricks in an orderly manner? You'd also finish faster if you lay down bricks in an orderly manner." Heaven forbid they should ask you to explain why you're drawing an apple using dots. Why an apple in the first case? It makes me happy. It relaxes me. It slows me down. It's not a race.
The dots can also be a great guide, the precursor to putting down that solid line, but they can also be the finished drawing themselves. Just like the electron flying wildly around the nucleus, all is nothing.
But we were discussing the issue of wasting time, the perception of wasted time. Thomas Edison is said to have invented the first commercially viable light bulb. But to get to that point, the story goes that he produced ten thousand failed bulbs. It's difficult to understand that level of persistence in the light of clear obvious failure. Why didn't he just stop and quit? The same can be said if the Wright brothers. Their first flight was a mere three seconds, which they considered a huge success. Clearly both Edison and the Wright brothers could see something that an entire population couldn't see, on this grand scale. And the fact that the rest of the world didn't share in their enthusiasm didn't deter them or cause their resolution to falter. They could see something in their minds eye. They only needed to articulate it.
This perception of wasted time is a primary part of the herd mentality. Quite a dangerous mentality to hold when you're trying to create something. Like the cow that sees fresher grass off to the side and peels away from the herd to go and eat there. All alone. There might be a few cows who yell at him, "hey, where are you going? Can't you see that we're all eating over here and doing quite well? Do you think that you found something that all of us have missed?" The herd mentality though not the focal point of this article, of the issue, has a large part to play when it comes to taking one's eye off the ball. The criticisms cause you to lose focus on the dots. You step back and convince yourself that perhaps you were originally deluded. That in fact there is no apple. You revert back to lines.
There is so much to do and deadlines are oppressively loud that the obvious thing to do is take short cuts.
The dot is the natural enemy of the short cut.
You have ten things you need to do. They're all seemingly important. Some are quite clear and will transpire naturally, like an appointment to be somewhere. Some are not so clear, they're foggy, nebulous. You have to build something. Make something. Deliver something. You're not sure what you'll need and you'll characteristically underestimate the time you'll need.
You'll find all the dots in each one of the tasks, and immediately put aside the deadline. Repetition, dots, forgiving, correcting.
The Grand Canyon, the river valley, are formed by the repetitive motion of the river water as it applies soft pressure on the hard rock. Over time the rock gives way and the river makes its path. Soft easy pressure applied consistently is often more powerful than the launch of a single atomic bomb.
Repetition is a good friend of the dot method. Its not one dot placed at a precise location that, in solidarity with the other dots, forms the whole. But the majority of dots being in approximately the right location that form the whole.
It might sound monotonous, but it really isn't. Like when meditating using a mantra, the mind is focussed on a single sound, it then disengages from the body and from external stimulus. It's free to roam within itself, outside the earth. The mantra is not the object of meditation, rather the vehicle that guides the mind towards that meditative state. Repeated over and over, it becomes like the canvas for the mind to display its art. And when the mantra's tone is extinguished, the minds meditative state is complete.
Find the dots.
What are those repetitive actions that you must take each and every day, slow plodding steps, that will become the canvas, the platform for your goal to be achieved?
The dots are atomic. The dots are repetitive. The dots provide a background.
I want to clean the kitchen, but there are dirty dishes everywhere. The task seems miserably boring. I just can't get myself to start. There seems to be no end in sight. There seems to be no end in sight. I know what the end state of the kitchen should be. That's perfectly clear. I even understand how I can start. But I just can't get myself started. There's way too much chaos. I'd even rather be doing something else. There's no desire to be inside that activity, but a huge wish to be on the other side of it. Done, completed.
Find the dots.
Pick up a single spoon, take your sweet time and wash it. Concentrate not on completing that single task but on how good it is to use water and watch that spoon slowly get clean. Slowly, not quickly.
The dot is; the water cleaning the dirt. This is the repetitive task. Like putting dots on our piece of paper, watch the water remove soap suds.
Notice the shape of the spoon and how the water runs off the edges, removing the soap and leaving the spoon shiny. Run the water over the plate. Like a river cuts into the rock eventually forming a valley, the water runs over the surface of the dish, washing away the dirt.
Don't count the dishes.
After all, you don't count the dots do you? You just keep placing them methodically. So also, don't bother counting the dishes, after all, it's not the dishes that matter. It's the flowing water. Leave the dishes alone. Look at the water. The water is the dots, not the dishes. You're aware that the dishes are there, but your focus is not on the quantity of work. Your focus is on the quality of the work. Your focus is on the quality of the one that's in your hands. Everything else around you is meaningless. The only thing that matters is the water, the single dish, the single spoon, the single fork that's in your hands.
That thought is worth repeating; Everything around you is meaningless. Your focus is on the single object that's in your hands.
Time.
Everything that happens, happens within the context of time. Time is a necessary ingredient. No matter how much effort you put into a baby, you cannot make it grow any faster than its supposed to. This is, of course, outside the scope of artificial growth as would be induced by using steroids. You just have to sit and wait for things to happen in their own time. Your job is to provide the environment and coax them along. Let time do its work. If you drop a seed on concrete paving then stand aside and watch it, nothing will happen. Most likely it will wither and die. Even though time is a necessary ingredient your participation is also necessary to coax things along for successful outcome. You need to put that seed in fertile soil and then nourish it. Continually water it and feed it. With this care in the context of time, the seed will germinate and grow into a mighty oak.
You cannot speed up time, neither can you ignore it and slow it down. You cannot rewind time. Like a conveyor belt it keeps moving and if you don't take care of things on that conveyor belt, they will still keep moving on. They won't wait for you. Time does not wait. Time is in constant motion. There's a perception of being hurried. If you turn on a tap to rinse your toothbrush before brushing your teeth, squeeze the toothpaste onto the toothbrush, start brushing your teeth without turning off the running tap of water, you may get that sense that you're being hurried. You're being rushed since it feels wasteful just to keep the water flowing. So you may hurry up to brush your teeth so that you can silence the tap. Silence the running water. But if you turn off the tap, then you can concentrate on brushing your teeth, taking your slow, sweet time because nothing is waiting for you. That's the closest you will get to stopping time. The same thing happens when you're washing dishes. The running faucet forces forces you to move a little faster. You can slow yourself down by slowing down the stream of water, the gush from the faucet quietening down. Less noise seems to indicate a slower pace.
Slowing down time is not thinking about time. Its ignoring time. Its not listening. Its being unaware, not aware. Unconscious. When you're unconscious of time, not aware of it, and are focussed on the thing in your hand, that dot, then you are truly then in the present moment. You may have heard that phrase used a lot. It has a lot of meaning but has become commercialised, so I try to avoid it, but you can't avoid everything.
Think of time as a canvas on which you paint your activities. You have this canvas in front of you on which you have to paint your activity. However, your canvas is incomplete and so you can only work on one section at a time. Your ink also arrives in drops and so you stand there, wait for each piece of the canvas to appear, then wait for the drop of ink, then you paint. And then you wait again, and repeat. Wait and repeat. Wait and repeat. And gradually once the entire canvas has appeared, you have completed painting.
Its possible that you might not do anything. The canvas might appear and you might not do anything. and so its possible that the entire canvas will present itself and you will find yourself in that situation where you have a full canvas, lots of ink, but you did nothing. The essence of procrastination. Like the moving conveyor belt, the items pass in front of you, but you don't pick them up or assemble them. But they keep moving and the nothing is constructed. There will be days like this, but less and less once you have the dot principle well under hand. The purpose of the dot principle is that the tasks are so minutely broken down that you don't realise that you're building a complicated jumbo jet. Because that's where the seeds of procrastination start from. This overwhelming sense that the job is too big. And so you sit there wondering how it will ever get done. It's too big. And so the dot exercise tells you not to think of the entire plane. To worry about the dot that you're going to place next.
My father once wrote me a letter when I was quite distraught. I was lonely and wanted to leave my studies and go home. I don't remember much of the letter, but what I remember were two key phrases. The first was, one thing at a time, and that thing well done, is the rule of life. Sounded good, philosophical, but not practical. In a sense obvious, not earth shattering. What was I do to with advice like that? The second was, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. Again the commonness of that phrase lacked immediacy in what I was going through. It's like telling someone who is tired to take some rest. Of course. Or telling someone who is full to stop eating! It's only now, much later in life I've come to connect how those two phrases fit perfectly with finding the dots, especially when it concerns the aspect of time.
In the first instance, one thing at a time and that thing well done is the rule of life attests to the fact that you should put your attention on the one thing that you are doing. Place the single dot. If you're washing dishes (looks like I'm hung up on this example) then concentrate on the single spoon, the single dish, the single cup, and not on the entire heap of dirty dishes. All the while, ignoring that time is passing.
Ignore that time is passing. Concentrate on the immediate task. Ignore that time is elapsing.
Do the one thing really well. And if you do that repeatedly, the many things all well done will coalesce to form a really well done whole.
One thing at a time and that thing well done is the rule of life and the pathway to success.
The second phrase was also one that is a good example of the time aspect of finding the dot.
The big bang.
Molecules.
Atoms.
Electrons, protons and neutrons.
Out of nothing, everything.
Find the dots.
Find the dots in every activity that you are engaged in and then proceed on assembling and arranging the dots.
The following statement that I made previously is worth repeating again. The dot exercise is a great tool for every activity that you can think of. The dot drawing exercise does one thing really well. It anchors your feet to the ground forcing you to pay slow, painful attention to the details.
The largest hurdle I had with the dot drawing exercise was the need for immediate feedback. Something to let me know that I was on the right track. That I wasn't wasting my time and that eventually I would get somewhere. As I've grown older, I realise that my patience for engaging in activities that don't have some sort of purpose is almost non-existent. Engaging in something where at the end of the day I would have nothing to show for. And then my critics would swarm around and accuse me of having wasted all that time. They'd look at the mass of dots on the page, shake their heads, turn and walk away muttering, "man! talk about wasting time! Talk about being clueless. Of not knowing how to do anything. What an idiot!" Part of the problem is not being able to answer the question "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm drawing an apple." Or, "I'm building a house." "Don't you think you should use lines?" Or, "Don't you think you need to put down bricks in an orderly manner? You'd also finish faster if you lay down bricks in an orderly manner." Heaven forbid they should ask you to explain why you're drawing an apple using dots. Why an apple in the first case? It makes me happy. It relaxes me. It slows me down. It's not a race.
The dots can also be a great guide, the precursor to putting down that solid line, but they can also be the finished drawing themselves. Just like the electron flying wildly around the nucleus, all is nothing.
But we were discussing the issue of wasting time, the perception of wasted time. Thomas Edison is said to have invented the first commercially viable light bulb. But to get to that point, the story goes that he produced ten thousand failed bulbs. It's difficult to understand that level of persistence in the light of clear obvious failure. Why didn't he just stop and quit? The same can be said if the Wright brothers. Their first flight was a mere three seconds, which they considered a huge success. Clearly both Edison and the Wright brothers could see something that an entire population couldn't see, on this grand scale. And the fact that the rest of the world didn't share in their enthusiasm didn't deter them or cause their resolution to falter. They could see something in their minds eye. They only needed to articulate it.
This perception of wasted time is a primary part of the herd mentality. Quite a dangerous mentality to hold when you're trying to create something. Like the cow that sees fresher grass off to the side and peels away from the herd to go and eat there. All alone. There might be a few cows who yell at him, "hey, where are you going? Can't you see that we're all eating over here and doing quite well? Do you think that you found something that all of us have missed?" The herd mentality though not the focal point of this article, of the issue, has a large part to play when it comes to taking one's eye off the ball. The criticisms cause you to lose focus on the dots. You step back and convince yourself that perhaps you were originally deluded. That in fact there is no apple. You revert back to lines.
There is so much to do and deadlines are oppressively loud that the obvious thing to do is take short cuts.
The dot is the natural enemy of the short cut.
You have ten things you need to do. They're all seemingly important. Some are quite clear and will transpire naturally, like an appointment to be somewhere. Some are not so clear, they're foggy, nebulous. You have to build something. Make something. Deliver something. You're not sure what you'll need and you'll characteristically underestimate the time you'll need.
You'll find all the dots in each one of the tasks, and immediately put aside the deadline. Repetition, dots, forgiving, correcting.
The Grand Canyon, the river valley, are formed by the repetitive motion of the river water as it applies soft pressure on the hard rock. Over time the rock gives way and the river makes its path. Soft easy pressure applied consistently is often more powerful than the launch of a single atomic bomb.
Repetition is a good friend of the dot method. Its not one dot placed at a precise location that, in solidarity with the other dots, forms the whole. But the majority of dots being in approximately the right location that form the whole.
It might sound monotonous, but it really isn't. Like when meditating using a mantra, the mind is focussed on a single sound, it then disengages from the body and from external stimulus. It's free to roam within itself, outside the earth. The mantra is not the object of meditation, rather the vehicle that guides the mind towards that meditative state. Repeated over and over, it becomes like the canvas for the mind to display its art. And when the mantra's tone is extinguished, the minds meditative state is complete.
Find the dots.
What are those repetitive actions that you must take each and every day, slow plodding steps, that will become the canvas, the platform for your goal to be achieved?
The dots are atomic. The dots are repetitive. The dots provide a background.
I want to clean the kitchen, but there are dirty dishes everywhere. The task seems miserably boring. I just can't get myself to start. There seems to be no end in sight. There seems to be no end in sight. I know what the end state of the kitchen should be. That's perfectly clear. I even understand how I can start. But I just can't get myself started. There's way too much chaos. I'd even rather be doing something else. There's no desire to be inside that activity, but a huge wish to be on the other side of it. Done, completed.
Find the dots.
Pick up a single spoon, take your sweet time and wash it. Concentrate not on completing that single task but on how good it is to use water and watch that spoon slowly get clean. Slowly, not quickly.
The dot is; the water cleaning the dirt. This is the repetitive task. Like putting dots on our piece of paper, watch the water remove soap suds.
Notice the shape of the spoon and how the water runs off the edges, removing the soap and leaving the spoon shiny. Run the water over the plate. Like a river cuts into the rock eventually forming a valley, the water runs over the surface of the dish, washing away the dirt.
Don't count the dishes.
After all, you don't count the dots do you? You just keep placing them methodically. So also, don't bother counting the dishes, after all, it's not the dishes that matter. It's the flowing water. Leave the dishes alone. Look at the water. The water is the dots, not the dishes. You're aware that the dishes are there, but your focus is not on the quantity of work. Your focus is on the quality of the work. Your focus is on the quality of the one that's in your hands. Everything else around you is meaningless. The only thing that matters is the water, the single dish, the single spoon, the single fork that's in your hands.
That thought is worth repeating; Everything around you is meaningless. Your focus is on the single object that's in your hands.
Time.
Everything that happens, happens within the context of time. Time is a necessary ingredient. No matter how much effort you put into a baby, you cannot make it grow any faster than its supposed to. This is, of course, outside the scope of artificial growth as would be induced by using steroids. You just have to sit and wait for things to happen in their own time. Your job is to provide the environment and coax them along. Let time do its work. If you drop a seed on concrete paving then stand aside and watch it, nothing will happen. Most likely it will wither and die. Even though time is a necessary ingredient your participation is also necessary to coax things along for successful outcome. You need to put that seed in fertile soil and then nourish it. Continually water it and feed it. With this care in the context of time, the seed will germinate and grow into a mighty oak.
You cannot speed up time, neither can you ignore it and slow it down. You cannot rewind time. Like a conveyor belt it keeps moving and if you don't take care of things on that conveyor belt, they will still keep moving on. They won't wait for you. Time does not wait. Time is in constant motion. There's a perception of being hurried. If you turn on a tap to rinse your toothbrush before brushing your teeth, squeeze the toothpaste onto the toothbrush, start brushing your teeth without turning off the running tap of water, you may get that sense that you're being hurried. You're being rushed since it feels wasteful just to keep the water flowing. So you may hurry up to brush your teeth so that you can silence the tap. Silence the running water. But if you turn off the tap, then you can concentrate on brushing your teeth, taking your slow, sweet time because nothing is waiting for you. That's the closest you will get to stopping time. The same thing happens when you're washing dishes. The running faucet forces forces you to move a little faster. You can slow yourself down by slowing down the stream of water, the gush from the faucet quietening down. Less noise seems to indicate a slower pace.
Slowing down time is not thinking about time. Its ignoring time. Its not listening. Its being unaware, not aware. Unconscious. When you're unconscious of time, not aware of it, and are focussed on the thing in your hand, that dot, then you are truly then in the present moment. You may have heard that phrase used a lot. It has a lot of meaning but has become commercialised, so I try to avoid it, but you can't avoid everything.
Think of time as a canvas on which you paint your activities. You have this canvas in front of you on which you have to paint your activity. However, your canvas is incomplete and so you can only work on one section at a time. Your ink also arrives in drops and so you stand there, wait for each piece of the canvas to appear, then wait for the drop of ink, then you paint. And then you wait again, and repeat. Wait and repeat. Wait and repeat. And gradually once the entire canvas has appeared, you have completed painting.
Its possible that you might not do anything. The canvas might appear and you might not do anything. and so its possible that the entire canvas will present itself and you will find yourself in that situation where you have a full canvas, lots of ink, but you did nothing. The essence of procrastination. Like the moving conveyor belt, the items pass in front of you, but you don't pick them up or assemble them. But they keep moving and the nothing is constructed. There will be days like this, but less and less once you have the dot principle well under hand. The purpose of the dot principle is that the tasks are so minutely broken down that you don't realise that you're building a complicated jumbo jet. Because that's where the seeds of procrastination start from. This overwhelming sense that the job is too big. And so you sit there wondering how it will ever get done. It's too big. And so the dot exercise tells you not to think of the entire plane. To worry about the dot that you're going to place next.
My father once wrote me a letter when I was quite distraught. I was lonely and wanted to leave my studies and go home. I don't remember much of the letter, but what I remember were two key phrases. The first was, one thing at a time, and that thing well done, is the rule of life. Sounded good, philosophical, but not practical. In a sense obvious, not earth shattering. What was I do to with advice like that? The second was, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. Again the commonness of that phrase lacked immediacy in what I was going through. It's like telling someone who is tired to take some rest. Of course. Or telling someone who is full to stop eating! It's only now, much later in life I've come to connect how those two phrases fit perfectly with finding the dots, especially when it concerns the aspect of time.
In the first instance, one thing at a time and that thing well done is the rule of life attests to the fact that you should put your attention on the one thing that you are doing. Place the single dot. If you're washing dishes (looks like I'm hung up on this example) then concentrate on the single spoon, the single dish, the single cup, and not on the entire heap of dirty dishes. All the while, ignoring that time is passing.
Ignore that time is passing. Concentrate on the immediate task. Ignore that time is elapsing.
Do the one thing really well. And if you do that repeatedly, the many things all well done will coalesce to form a really well done whole.
One thing at a time and that thing well done is the rule of life and the pathway to success.
The second phrase was also one that is a good example of the time aspect of finding the dot.
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