by Hill Harper
WARM-UP 2: QUANTIFY YOURSELF
Okay, my man. Like a boxer getting ready for the big moment, I want you to watch yourself in the mirror taking a few jabs, imagining your own image as the opponent. You’ll use your assets to vanquish “his” liabilities. All I really mean to say is that you’re going to take a hard, thorough look at your own assets and liabilities. I know we’ve done that before. This time, however, let’s try to be scientific about it. We talked about assessing how we got to be where we are. That involved taking stock of personality traits. Now it’s time to dig a little deeper. The more we know about the details of our lives, the more we can adjust our behavior to get it to where we want to be. It’s time to live a quantified life.
I’ll explain what I mean. Say my goal is to lose ten pounds, and despite switching to nonfat milk, eating less red meat, and doing thirty minutes of aerobic exercise every day, I still can’t get close to my goal. Something else is going on, and I need to dig deep to understand what it is.
Gary Wolf, a contributing editor at Wired magazine, has developed a system to help in that effort. He calls it the Quantified Self, and he’s among a number of thinkers who advocate tracking everything that matters to us in our lives.
Want to lose weight? Log everything that goes past your lips—everything, every drink of water, every peanut, every can of Coke, every sandwich. At the end of a week of this sort of tracking, you would have a pretty good sense of what is really going on in your style of eating. We think we know what’s happening within us day-to-day, but we don’t. We have subjective perceptions and biases. And these are especially sharp when it comes to how we view things like eating or exercising. This works extremely well for many. Want to save money? I don’t care how much or little money you make; if you write down and track every penny you spend, and budget accordingly, you can and will save money if you choose to. (That is if, of course, you earn more than enough for the bare necessities: food and shelter.) The numbers don’t lie. If we’re religious about tracking ourselves—whether it’s a question of learning to eat better and lose weight, learning to exercise better, saving money, or even learning to get more sleep of a higher quality—by objectively quantifying everything, we’ll get an unvarnished look at what we’re really doing.1 There are all sorts of tools that can help with this process, from pencil and paper to apps for your cell phone or tablet. (Don’t tell anybody, but at this very moment I’m wearing the UP wristband that came out from Jawbone. I got it in one of those “swag” gift bags. Usually the stuff in those gift bags is good, but this is really cool. Not only does it tell me how much and how intensely I moved during the day, it also measures the deepness of my sleep by keeping track of how many times I wake up and how restlessly I move while actually sleeping. I’m hoping to use it to up my burning of calories and to get more rest. Let’s keep this between us, though.) As Wolf points out, whether our goal is to get fit through more exercise or start a business, unless we track ourselves with discipline, we can’t be sure we’re staying on the right path. In fact, the data may show us that despite our best intentions, we’re actually being less effective than we can be.
For example, I found that for me to have maximum productivity, I had to make a list every night for the next day. So each night before I go to bed, I write out a list, down to the minute, of how much time I am allocating for this (writing) or that (exercising) or the other things (dinner with friends). If I don’t do that, my days just go from one to the next, and I am not sure what I’ve accomplished specifically.
And what about your system of quantification as you execute your own plan over the long run? First of all, you can start doing the exact same thing with your time in prison. I want you to begin to sketch out each day the night before. Allocate time for certain activities: reading, writing, exercise, meditation, sleep, daydreaming, practicing new skills (language, writing, or drawing skills). Quantify the amount of time you’ll spend on every activity every day inside. This will prevent your days from just blending together.
I suggest breaking your big flowchart into a bunch of smaller ones with shorter-term goals. For example, your flowchart can still start with “Me, Locked Up,” but make the end goal something closer. The next step in your chart, as you have it now, “Release,” is too big a jump. How about making the end point of this flowchart “Me with a Skill Useful for the Workplace.” However, my main point is how you’ll use your assets to satisfy the goals of the flowchart. Therefore, you need to get hold of, or draw up, a calendar for the coming months with boxes big enough to make notes for each day of each month. In the box for today, briefly “quantify” your education. It should probably say: “Have GED.” That’s about it. It’s your starting point. Then, for every single day that follows, list any activity or effort you’ll make to achieve your goal of obtaining a GED or an Associates degree, and so on. Keep in mind that these goals will always make it more likely for you to be granted release by the parole board and to survive in that world without coming back.
So, for example, if you manage to order a book that is relevant to your education, in the box representing the day you ordered the book, write something like: “Ordered a book on beginning video game design.” On the days in which you’ve done nothing to further your education, just write a big zero in the box and underline it. Finally, when you have an entry describing an effort at education for a day, after the descriptive phrase in the calendar box, assign a score from 1 to 10, based on the effort expended to accomplish it. Finally, set yourself an educational-goal score for every month, and set it a little higher for each successive month. At the end of the month, add up all your numbers and see if you met, went beyond, or fell short of your goal. Just one more thing: Your evaluations are not about your opinion of the success of your efforts. They’re about the degree of effort you put into trying to get the education you need every day.
Just remember, my Brotha. All such information that we collect is in the service of reaching our goal. I’ve included a small checklist for you that you can use to make sure you’ve stuck to the task of quantifying yourself. Funny, ain’t it? This little list will be a way of quantifying your effort at getting educated.
Love,
Hill
GOALS
CHECKLIST
I have set up a system to track my behaviors
I have rigorously followed the system for a full week
I am having “conversations” with myself and make schedules for each day the night before.
I am tracking multiple daily activities that are bringing me closer to my goals.
PART 4
BECOMING AN ACTIVE ARCHITECT OF YOUR LIFE
LETTER 28
Developing Your Blueprint
In my country we go to prison first and then become president.
—Nelson Mandela
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
—Aristotle
My Man,
How great it was to hear your voice on the phone last night. I know I sounded a little hoarse from that flu I’m getting over, but hearing how “up” you were was like a tonic for me. But more than that, seeing the letter you wrote to your son blew me away. You are amazing, and I’m so proud of you. I think it’s clear that you are more than ready to dive into talking about your blueprint and being an active architect of your own life.
BECOMING AN ARCHITECT
An architect is someone who designs and draws the plans for houses and buildings for a living, right? And a blueprint is what an architect starts with. Just like that guy designing the next twenty-story building, you need a blueprint, too.
A building shown in a blueprint is gradually erected, the structure built. It’s the same for your plans for your own life. An architect’s goal or dream is to witness a structure that she created in her mind being built in the real world—a structure made of brick and mortar, not just
on paper.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS
Often even a seasoned architect has to make modifications to a blueprint. Why? To improve it, but oftentimes he has to make modifications because of environmental conditions. You had a plan on paper, but once you went to see the actual land or building site, you realized there was a big rock that couldn’t be removed or a beautiful tree that you want to keep. So you decide to modify your blueprint and build around it. You make modifications to your plan based on the environmental conditions that are unique to the property upon which you’re going to build. And for the purposes of our discussion, that property is you—your life.
Your “environmental conditions,” like boulders blocking the construction of a high-rise, have caused you to make a lot of modifications in the last couple of years. But that’s okay; we just incorporate those environmental conditions into our plan.
FOUNDATION
Your foundation is made up of resources such as education and job training. It provides you with support and stability. And as you might think, the size and layers of your foundation are directly proportional to the dimensions of your dream. If you have a thick dream but a thin foundation, the building will collapse because the foundation can’t support it.
You’ve said that your dream—your final goal—is a very big one. You want to be a video game designer. In order to reach that goal, you’ll need the money for college. Once you get that, you’ll need sophisticated skills in computers, software, and design. So eventually you’re going to need some very big foundational elements. The foundation for your goal is education, the money to buy options like education and housing and food while you’re being educated, a degree, and proficiency in computers. This is your ultimate foundation.
But there’s another foundational element, which is faith. Without faith it is nearly impossible to achieve your goals; you won’t get very far. Faith is the mortar that will hold together the bricks of your foundation: education, job training, preparation for your goal of being a video game designer.
FRAMEWORK
Now let’s look at our framework, which supports the entire structure. An architect has to decide, given the size and scope of the building, what materials he or she is going to use to create this structure and how thick it will be.
What are the elements of your framework? Your son, your friendship with me, choosing a career you enjoy: All of these elements will rise from your foundation to build a beautiful structure that is airy and open enough to let the light in yet strong enough to withstand disappointments and setbacks.
But remember that your framework has to take environmental conditions into consideration as well. Let me give you a real-life example. I own two apartments, one in Los Angeles and one in New York. They’re both roughly the same square footage. Both have roughly the same ceiling height and same number of bedrooms and bathrooms, but they were built by two different architects. The blueprints are relatively similar. The foundations are relatively the same thickness, but the frameworks are completely different. One is made of wood; one is made of brick. Which is which, and why?
The strongest warriors can make modifications to their journey because real strength is flexible and adaptable.
Because of environmental conditions, the New York home is brick, and the one in L.A. is wood. New York winters are much colder than those in L.A. The wind blows, and brick is pretty good at keeping in warmth, right? But in L.A., earthquakes are more likely, so you have to build the framework out of wood because it can bend. It’s more flexible than brick.
On the street and in prison, they teach you how to be made of brick, and it’s a very rigid structure of “beingness.” You’ve got to “be hard.” You gotta be a warrior and move through life with a warrior mentality. But sometimes it’s just the appearance of being made of brick; sometimes it’s just fake swagga and machismo. The strongest warriors can make modifications to their journey because real strength is flexible and adaptable.
Check it out. The best running backs who have the longest careers are not the ones who take the direct hits and just keep going. They’re the ones who dodge the hits. “You ain’t gonna hit me. Uh-uh.” Those guys have the longest careers and the most touchdowns because they’re malleable and flexible. They aren’t “brick-headed.”
There’s one more detail that’s essential to any structure, to any framework or life plan or blueprint, and that is . . .
THE DOOR
A door does what? It lets people in, and it also lets ’em out. A door is essential for the success of any structure, because there are people we need to let in who are essential to achieving and maintaining our goals and dreams. No one can do it by himself. Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer in history, has a coach! Why does he need a coach if he’s better than anybody who’s ever played? Because you can’t do it alone. No matter how good you are. This is where mentors, supporters, family, and other human connections come in
.
As for letting people out, there are people whom we have to let out of our lives in order to get where we’re going. If we don’t, we’ll get poisoned, because what they are carrying is “catching”—they’re toxic. They will inhibit us from getting to our goals and dreams. They’ll lead us right back to the street and then abandon us, letting us go where the day takes us. Those are guys who should be escorted out the door.
These are the key components to being an active architect of your own life, man. Approach them by being proactive, not reactive. That’s part of thinking ahead and blueprinting. It’s foundation building, having a solid framework. And it’s also about bringing the right people into your life and letting out the ones who don’t need to be there. On that note, unless you tell me otherwise, I am going to send your letter to R. J.’s aunt to give to him. It’s time he heard truth and love from his father. Proud to call you my friend.
Talk soon.
Warmly,
Hill
BLUEPRINT = PLAN
LETTER 29
Erasing
The ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely and meaningfully in a less than perfect world.
—Rabbi Harold Kushner
Hey, my friend,
You were in the darkest mood on the phone last night. I’ve never heard you sound so on edge. And you want to know something? I don’t blame you a bit, ’cause now that I know why, I feel exactly the same way. Don’t think I’m saying I feel hopeless. Fuck no! In fact, when I hear about an injustice, the anger it causes in me acts as fuel and makes me more determined than ever!
Moreover, I have to apologize. At some point, way early in our correspondence, when I was still green about this subject, I mentioned casually that I thought many Pell education grants had been eliminated. That was a prime example of something I’ve warned you against, opening your mouth or going ahead with a plan without bothering to do the proper research. So before I left for Romania, I said you should look up those grants and apply if they were still around.
Well, you were the one who did the correct research, which makes me proud of that mind of yours, man. And as you pointed out, Pell Grants are still available—just not for you.
Are lawmakers trying to say that they haven’t read article after article or book after book by or about incarcerated people—some of whom were locked up for life or were on death row—but who have changed their mentality completely by developing an interest in learning? Or who were even put on death row wrongly? And in every single case, their education has benefited other people! Some of them I’ve mentioned already: Martin Luther King Jr. with his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; or Stanley Tookie Williams, who wrote one of the most impassioned condemnations of gangs shortly before he was executed; and Wilbert Rideau, whose internationally circulated journalism revealed inhumane conditions in prison. Or Malcolm X, and on and on. Isn’t that enough proof? As I said,
that pre-’94 decree was bad enough, but it pales in comparison to the post-1994 decree, which flatly states that a prisoner cannot get a Pell Grant. This is a case where getting politically active could make a difference. If we elect different people, we could have different standards. Everybody has a right to an education. Everybody!
Adaptability and flexibility are two keys to success.
Okay, so let’s modify our plan, because you and me—we decided we’re going to be active, creative, flexible architects of our own lives and not let ourselves be defined by the point of view of others. We have the resourcefulness to move on without ever thinking about Pell Grants. And you know why? It’s because adaptability and flexibility are two keys to success. We will take out our pencils and redraw our blueprint right around that lack of Pell Grants, just as if it was a big rock in the way!
TECTONICS
Tectonics is a word used to describe big changes in the layout of Earth’s crust, how those crusts shift, and how they change the surface of Earth. And sometimes that means earthquakes. Well, you and I can handle any situation.
Let’s be philosophical, man. We know things shift. In fact, things that seem hopeless today get repaired by the universe, even if it takes an earthquake. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at one of the most “hopeless” prison-industrial-complex states in the country, Louisiana, which has a higher percentage of people locked up than anywhere else in the world. Louisiana is a state that is home to a smaller, even more discouraging world known as Orleans Parish Prison, which is a hell of rats, roaches, suicides, and stabbings.1