A Mason's Work

[00:00] We spent this week talking about the ways you work against yourself, the way you misapply
[00:05] the level of time, overloading tomorrow you with things that you won't do today, or carrying
[00:12] verdicts about your past that were issued under completely different conditions, or
[00:17] swinging the gavel at fears that don't have a body yet, or as we talked about yesterday,
[00:23] building elaborate architecture as a delay mechanism dressed up as progress.
[00:27] All of it has motion and texture of feeling like work, but none of it is the work.
[00:38] Here's where the square comes in.
[00:41] Before we go further, let's be clear about what we mean when we talk about virtue.
[00:48] Because when we talk about squaring our actions against the square of virtue, we have to understand
[00:55] what that means.
[00:56] Virtue as a concept tends to be talked about with a bunch of extra baggage, moral baggage
[01:01] that the word doesn't really need.
[01:04] The Latin root is vertus.
[01:08] It means excellence, potency, and efficacy.
[01:14] A virtuous thing is a thing operating sort of at full spec.
[01:19] A virtuous knife cuts well.
[01:24] A virtuous foundation holds the building up.
[01:29] There's no moral judgment here.
[01:32] It is a performance standard.
[01:35] It is a, in many ways, a true false condition, or a, does it work or doesn't it?
[01:43] And so when we square our actions against the square of virtue, that's the test we're running.
[01:48] We're not like, are you a good person or are you doing okay?
[01:51] Or, you know, none of this sort of cagey contextual forever spiral of trying to figure it out.
[01:59] When we square our actions against the square of virtue, did it work?
[02:05] Does it work?
[02:07] Is what you're doing getting the outcome you're creating?
[02:12] So in operative masonry, we test right angles, right?
[02:18] We are using the square to determine whether or not these two pieces fit together.
[02:23] When we do this for ourselves, when we look at our week, when we square our week against
[02:30] the things we've done and the things that we have left undone, or the stuff that we tried,
[02:35] and the outcomes we've created, we're beginning the process of evaluating using that level of time.
[02:45] Did I do what I set out to do?
[02:51] A great way to figure this out is to grab your treasurer's apron, your mental treasurer's apron,
[02:59] right?
[03:00] A treasurer does not have, uh, your treasurer might have feelings in your lodge,
[03:05] but in general, the treasurer application is not a feeling conversation.
[03:10] This is an emotional content.
[03:12] This is, you look at the check register.
[03:17] Did I pay the bills?
[03:20] It's not like, did I feel like paying the bills?
[03:23] Or did I feel like solving the problem?
[03:26] It's not even any of that stuff.
[03:31] It's, did the bills get paid?
[03:34] Did the problem get soft?
[03:36] Did it debit correctly from the account?
[03:39] The same thing's true when we look at our efforts.
[03:44] When we look at how we spent time on this one project or work on the pile,
[03:53] did the pile get smaller?
[03:56] Well, maybe it did.
[04:01] Maybe it didn't.
[04:02] And that hedge is essentially part of what's keeping you stuck, right?
[04:08] So grabbing that square, grabbing that treasurer's apron and getting to it, evaluating, did the effort
[04:17] you undertook solve the problem, uh, is really the beginning of, of meaningfully understanding.
[04:24] Are you being true to your objectives?
[04:26] Are you doing what you're supposed to do?
[04:28] Do these pieces fit together?
[04:30] Well, does the behaviors that I'm undertaking solve the real problem?
[04:34] So that's a hard place to sit, but the level of time demands that the work we do fit the overall
[04:47] structure that we're trying to create.
[04:50] If you want to make more money, how much time did you spend on that job?
[04:55] How successful was it?
[04:57] If you want to live a healthier life, how much time did you spend managing your diet,
[05:04] managing your exercise, finding the right decisions, doing the, doing the work?
[05:09] Has it been successful?
[05:12] A lot of these things that we plan for in life tend to move a little more slowly.
[05:15] So over the course of a life, some of these changes take a long time, but when we, as you
[05:24] saw over the course of this week, micro adjustments, micro behavior changes are the best way to ensure
[05:32] long-term outcomes here.
[05:34] You are not going to collapse an entire health regimen into a weekend and expect that it's going
[05:44] to create all of those outcomes.
[05:45] The body doesn't move that fast.
[05:47] You can't do it.
[05:48] It's not possible.
[05:50] And there's the little rebellion in you right now.
[05:54] It's like, but I could, but I could.
[05:56] And that's the voice of this misapplication of the level.
[06:02] Take your time, small bits, small actions with a virtuous test after did it square.
[06:12] That's the challenge.