Now that you know the general idea behind the field manual and the steps involved in writing one, I’d like to share my field manual with you.
The mission I originally identified was maybe a bit broad. It was simply “Effectively prioritise!” But this was my gut reaction in considering my daily mission. The reasons behind it and the landmines it helped me identify still made it a useful mission.
I realised that I do and define myself through a lot of different things (e.g. AI researcher, writer, music producer/performer, etc.). On my best days, this isn’t a problem at all. Far from it—the different things don’t compete with each other but actually feed and complement each other. Time spent on one does not feel like it’s lost on another. There is no sense of busyness.
But on bad days it feels like I’m trying to do everything and accomplishing nothing. While working on one thing, I’m worried that I’m not spending time on any of the others. And as a result I don’t make much progress on anything and feel more and more anxious, suffocating in busyness. These were the days I wanted to avoid.
And reflecting on this helped me refine my mission and identify potential landmines. If you are curious about the details, you can listen to the original voice message I recorded reflecting on my mission and landmines back in February here:
Equipped with this insight, I came up with the following field manual to help me accomplish my daily mission and avoid (or be prepared for) the most likely landmines:
Get at least eight hours of good quality sleep.
Mornings are focused on output! Minimize input, except books.
Reduce screen/phone time.
Meditate at least 10 minutes, ideally in the morning.
Show appreciation for people, even for simple things.
Protect your time off and schedule time for reflection.
At least one uninterrupted hour spent fully focused on my top priority for the day. Not making progress is okay, working on something else is not!
Disconnect at least one hour before bed time.
When tempted by a social thing, I ask myself if I truly want it, or if it is just FOMO speaking. Practice JOMO!
Surround yourself with people who push/challenge you!
These 10 short and simple operating procedures take the burden of constant small decisions away from me and allow me to focus on what really matters. That enables me to achieve my daily mission of effectively prioritising between all my different interests.
As you can see, most of my field manual is ordered chronologically, starting from good sleep (which is a huge multiplier on everything—I’m pretty much dysfunctional if I get less than seven hours of sleep), and again ending in how I prepare for sleep the next day. This allows me to essentially check off one item after another as each day unfolds.
Improving on the first draft
One note on something I could have done better in this original field manual: The points on reducing screen time and showing more appreciation could have been quantified to be more effective and actionable (e.g. less than X min per day and at least Y acts of gratitude per day).
The last two points, embracing JOMO (the joy of missing out) and surrounding myself with people who challenge me, were actually added to my manual the following day. They were a result of the third key principle above, which asks us to share and review the manual with those crucial to our mission.
One of the people I saw crucial for my own mission was my good friend YuYang Huang, who is also my goal accountability partner and who knows exactly what is important to me and what I want to achieve. She also happened to be part of the Committee doing this exercise.
After sharing my field manual with her, she reminded me that in one of our recent monthly goal check-ins, I was mentioning that I felt like I spent too much time going out just for the sake of going out and didn’t feel like many of the people I spent my time with were really pushing me to be a better version of myself. She asked me why this wasn’t reflected in my manual, since it seemed clearly relevant to my mission.
And she was right. I needed to acknowledge that, rather than just complain about it, and take extreme ownership of the situation. So I added the last two points to my manual.
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This article was originally posted at https://medium.com/better-humans/why-you-should-have-a-field-manual-for-your-life-4ee33700ef95
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