The 10-minute rule, and more tips to kick off your week
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Issue #164: the genius of stating the obvious and the anniversary of Mexico’s independence
By Harris Sockel
Here are three pieces of wisdom for your week.
1. Simplicity is hard. Humans are so proud of building complicated things (look how smart we are! look at this dizzying flowchart we made!) and ignore the obvious. It’s like that quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Or, as leadership coach Greg Satell writes, “Simple truths are rarely left out in the open, but obscured by the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life. It takes work to dig them out and that work requires focus.”
2. There’s a quote from one of my favorite books, Several Short Sentences About Writing, that replays in my head whenever I’m putting something off:
Think of all the requirements writers imagine for themselves:
Absolute silence
A favorite pen
A favorite ink
A favorite blank book
A favorite laptop
A cup of coffee in just the right cup…
It’s a roast. We often fail to get started because we’re waiting for the perfect materials, teammates, or vibes. The lesson applies to more than writing. Don’t wait for the perfect conditions to do something important. They’ll never arrive.
3. High expectations sound great in theory, but they can be paralyzing in practice. Dr Nicole Janz, Book Coach, recommends lowering your expectations when they’re getting in your own way. Instead of saying “I don’t have time for _____,” take those six words and rearrange them into: “I’ll just spend at least 10 minutes on ____.” Whatever you have to do to make a task feel less intimidating.
Also today: The origins of Hispanic Heritage Month
Today marks the 214th anniversary of Mexico’s independence — and the impetus for Hispanic Heritage Month, first proposed by U.S. Rep Esteban Torres in the late ’80s. The Mexican War of Independence began with a literal call to arms by a very intrepid priest, Miguel Higaldo y Costilla, who rang his church bells at 2:30 a.m. on September 16, 1810 and gave a middle-of-the-night speech inspiring a revolt against Spanish colonizers.
Earlier this summer, Tomas Pueyo published a list of fascinating facts about Mexico you may not have known, beginning with its sheer size — 761,000 square miles, enough to encompass 30 European countries:
And, a few years back, David Bowles, the Mexican-American translator and academic, uncovered the long and winding history of the words “Latinx” and “Hispanic.” The latter comes from the Latin for “Spain” (“Hispania”) and was used by the Romans to label people who came from the Iberian peninsula. That’s one reason why many writers take issue with the term “Hispanic Heritage Month” — it’s a pretty European-centric phrase that (like many words we use today) has been retrofitted into something it was never meant to mean. Bowles concludes:
“You don’t have to use Hispanic. You don’t have to use Latino or Latina or Latinx or (please let this win out) LATINE… You don’t have the power / authority to stop others from using WHATEVER THE HELL they want for themselves or to refer to the nebulous collective we [mostly] mestizo folx from Cemanahuac make up.”
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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