12. Cable.
This one’s not gone yet, but it’s on the way out. I need to figure out a way to keep a reasonably fast and capable internet connection, but I could seriously do without 95 percent of the available channels, and the land line service. The DVR was a real wake-up call… once I’d recorded a few weeks of what I enjoy, I started to see how narrow my chosen viewing really is…and how readily accessible a lot of it already is online.

11. Old magazines.|
They’re great dust magnets. And really, I’m sure the content is compelling, at least in part. But I know I’m just never going to get to more than 20-25 percent of them. So, get ‘em gone.

10. Washing and stacking dishes.
I actually got started on this at the end of last year, but the exodus continues this year. My well-meaning family has made me the de facto recipient of every hand-me-down dish, pot, pan and kitchen accessory they’ve decided THEY don’t need…but my place just isn’t that big. So, aside from “nice” service for four (the largest dinner party this place can probably handle) and the basics for the week’s cooking and eating, the rest is getting Freecycled. If it can’t fit in my nifty counter-top dishwasher alongside every other dish I use regularly, adios.

9. Old CDs.
I haven’t quite decided what to do with a lot of these yet (suggestions welcome), since many are missing jewel cases and their condition varies – but the stuff I can see myself ever listening to again has already been digitized and backed up.

8. White sugar.
This one’s going to be tough, but I’m going to try to cut it out altogether this year. There’s enough sweetness to be found in natural foods (like fruits and veg), and more nutritious substitutes available to cook with… if you’ve got favorites to recommend, please let me know in Comments.

7. Excuses not to exercise more.
I’m fortunate to be of a healthy weight and build, but have always wanted to be in better shape. (Yeah, we’re treading too close to “resolution” territory for my comfort here, but at least I’m not putting an “OR ELSE YOU FAIL!” goal on this.) Small steps: acknowledge that the weight bench is neither an expanding sh*t shelf nor an auxiliary cat bed; and start using the Nike+ iPod kit I found in my Christmas stocking, to keep track of how far I’m running/walking every day.  I set a goal today to run 10 times in the next 3 weeks… one down, nine to go.

6. Social media sites as time-sinks.
Don’t get me wrong. Social media sites aren’t a waste of time, and (in my opinion) as long as one has a purpose for being involved with them and limits the time spent to activities that further their pursuit of that purpose, it’s all good. But the novelty of Facebook is wearing thin, and Twitter and I are due for a performance review conversation.

5. Predictable phonecalls.
We all have them: friends or family members with whom we keep in touch because on some level we really, genuinely want to, but whose chats feel scripted because we seem to have them every time we connect. I come away from conversations with a select few people I’ve known for years, thinking “I’m really glad this person is still in my life, but wow, I could really use an espresso right now.” In most cases, shared experiences are the answer: I know I need to reconnect with these people in person to create a few more things to reflect and reminisce about. In others, it might just be time to move on (and they probably feel the same way). Rest assured: if this item describes YOU, you’ve already heard me tell you about this…I’m not delivering any personal messages via this entry.

4. Other people’s expectations for my life and career.
I’ve touched on this one in the past and am still zeroing in on the “what” and “from whom,” but suffice it to say that I’m neither the writer nor the person I could be, if not for subtle (and overt) suggestions from others about the kind of writer and person I “ought to be.” Getting progressively more in touch with and in control of this is at the core of what makestuffsimple.com is and will be about. (Stay tuned.)

3. Junk.
What it is, isn’t important – nor is my status as a recovering “pack rat.” At the end of last year, I found myself with shelves that seemed full (but really weren’t), and floors that might as well have had hopscotch lines painted on them for the ridiculous dancing I needed to do to negotiate them. The ongoing,  uphill battle against clutter (inspired mostly by my experience with David Allen’s Getting Things Done) is finally taking root, I think; questions like “Why is this [object] in my life?” and “Do I see myself using this at any point in the next 2 weeks, and if so, what’s the next action with this item?” are starting to occur naturally.  Another really good one: “Is this available/retrievable electronically (at little or no cost) if I ever need it later?” If yes, out it goes…after I’ve made an electronic note of where to find a replacement (in Evernote, or whatever other gateway to my system is readily at hand).

2. Fake growth.
Jonathan Mead has written eloquently on this topic (among others); I encourage you to check out his thoughts on the difference between pursuing growth, and attempting to fix “deficits” we think we see in ourselves. (His contention: real growth is not about constantly seeking something outside yourself – such as external praise or fleeting moments of “fulfillment” – but instead about coming to the realization, repeatedly if necessary, that we’re already whole and already have what it takes to do anything we want to do.

1.Perfectionism.
I’m not someone who has ever been called a “perfectionist,” but maybe it’s because I hide it well… and/or because my demeanor doesn’t scream “Type A personality.” For example, in the past, I might have treated this posting as if it was the world’s single and sole opportunity to figure out who I am, rather than just a data point…and as a result, I probably would have been too chickensh*t even to write it. Yes, first impressions are important (and if this is how we’re meeting, then “Hi, and welcome!”). But the people who stress about the little stuff are NOT the world’s Gurus of Quality Control… they’re the ones who end up unhappy, unhealthy and prematurely gray.

If you’ve read this far, I’d love to know your thoughts on any of these. More next week.

“Ha! Another link ignored. +1!”

Historically they’ve done nothing but remind me of “what I’ve done and what I’ve failed to do” in the previous year, an idea which, to me, resonates entirely too much with “churchliness” for comfort.

Sure, I’ve set goals to make real change this year, much of it designed to make stuff simple — and I’m outlining some of those goals here, at least in part, to hold myself accountable.

But I refuse to use “the R word.”

I feel about resolutions the way Ferris Bueller felt about “isms.” Hold to them too tightly, or punish yourself for deviating from them, and risk falling out of the most important habit: believing in yourself.

(Yeah, OK. Ferris said it better. What else would you expect from the coolest kid in school?)

Here’s my point.

Unlike most other resolution-themed posts, I’m not trying to tell anyone else what to do to change or improve their lives. These are pretty much for, and about, me (“New Year’s me-solutions?”). I hope reader(s!) of this page will get some value from them, or at least will see in them something familiar.

• I’ll send a metric ton of paper to the recycler, starting this week. I’m struck by how much power exists in old mail, especially various “statements” and “summaries.” Numbers get bigger or smaller, sales pitches get brighter, louder and more numerous; and all of it makes me want to take my name off the mailbox. Even worse are the fat manila files in the corner file cabinet, concentrating and directing this power like a magnifying glass in the sun.

• I’ll make more room for giving back, this year. I’ve got nothing pithy to add to this, and it’s certainly not a new idea. In fact, it’s trotted out every January to spur (or guilt) each of us to some higher community purpose. OK, Universe, message received loud and clear. Suffice it to say I’m surrounded by reminders that I wouldn’t be where I am without the grace of others, and this year I’ll find a way to return the favor.

• I’ll move, remove, repair, donate or Freecycle half my furniture. Last night I moved the bed a foot out from the wall, put the nightstand where I’d always intended to (rather than next to that spot), and rotated the dresser ninety degrees. Trivial changes, perhaps, but the bedroom feels just that slight bit more “finished.”
  
  (Bonus: they confused the hell out of the cat, who, unable to find familiarity elsewhere in the flat nor to decide where to sleep, instead ran desperate laps for nearly an hour.)

• Corners of rooms will pass the “white glove” test. Again, the Idiot Feline spurs change. If clearing the clothes dryer’s lint screen can be seen as evicting the cat one handful at a time, suctioning the corners of the living room is like discovering (and relocating) whole families. Go forth, fuzzball, and multiply…somewhere else.

• I’ll reduce the space reserved for “expectations” of all types. Plenty of other bloggers will remind you of 2009’s shattered or unmet expectations (the Madoffs, the Tigers, your sports team of choice*, the 111th U.S. Congress).
  
  I’ve always heard the only way to avoid disappointment is to forego expectations, but the outlook that suggests seems pretty bleak. Maybe the delta between success and disappointment lies in how rigorously one checks their expectations against the facts in evidence (now there’s an idea). For example, I didn’t expect a certain someone to appear in my life this year, affect me deeply and then vanish – but, then, I didn’t check my facts nor listen to the little voice telling me I’d leapt before looking.
  
  Lesson learned, not to be repeated (I hope).

• I’ll reinvent my career, with complete disregard for past hurdles. I used to waste time plotting the nagging insecurities and past “epic FAILs” of my career like dots on graph paper: strained relationships with a boss and a co-worker; truly meaningless meetings into which I invested too much emotional capital; endless days and nights working toward someone else’s goals and expectations (there’s that word again) absent any personal buy-in from me.
  
  
  
  (A tale originally told, I believe, in the Gospel According to Cameron Frye, who sayeth: “Don’t make me participate in your stupid crap if you don’t like the way I do it!”)
  
  Sometime recently, I decided to rearrange them. (One can, after all, choose to see the past as interpretive – and thus, “re-interpretable.”) When I connect that constellation now, I don’t exactly see a straight line, a picket fence or a paint-by-numbers picture of the seaside…but I do see an arrowhead at the end of the line. Dots and dashes arranged as if in Morse code, spelling out a simple message:
  
  “Keep going.”

• Above all, I’ll trust myself. Got an inner critic? Sure, we all do. Do yourself a favor this year and tell him to jump in the nearest lake. I did, at least a couple of times – not quite enough to make it a habit just yet.
  
  Thanks to the writers, directors and actors in my life who reminded me to take a risk, I finally: got shot down by a real publisher; “strut[ted] and fret[ted my] hour upon the stage,” to be heard from…sometime soon; and began to give shape and voice to story ideas that have been baking for a decade. (More on these in future posts.)

Happy New Year. Refunds on misspent youth are still available, and you don’t even need your receipt.

Ever forward.

Your turn

Whether or not you call them “resolutions,” what are your plans to innovate, renovate or reinvigorate during the coming year?

* As I write this my New York Jets are playing spoiler to the upstart Cincinnati Bengals, pitching a shutout through three quarters (so far). It’s a ho-hum Battle of the Bubble, but the fact that these two teams are in a Wild Card race at all has certainly shattered my expectations.

See also: Chicago’s Jay Cutler.
(Are you listening, Ron Turner and Jerry Angelo? Just let the guy play.)

(Some of what emerged on the shared part of the trip - 2,100 miles each way from Chicago to the Pacific Coast - will likely crop up here as essays or even as fodder for future fiction.)

We talked a lot about his growing up in a crowded house: two brothers and a sister, with an age spread of nine years between oldest and youngest, and under the conscientious, watchful eyes of two New York City school teachers. Born in the years following the Great Depression, the children learned to view family cohesiveness not as a “nice-to-have,” but a survival tool.

Knees under the table, please

Although I don’t think he specifically told this one on the trip, I was reminded of one of my favorite stories of family tradition in their home:

In the days before children were relentlessly overscheduled by their parents in the hopes of (artificially) distinguishing themselves on college applications, my father’s generation actually left school at the traditional 3:00 hour – as did his parents, who taught a few miles south in the New York City system (the Bronx and Brooklyn, respectively). I imagine it’s the patina of history that makes it reasonable to think the trains ever ran this close to “on time,” but as he tells it, both of his parents were able to hop onto the subway (or occasionally drive) back to the suburbs in time to let the kids in by 3:45 or so. Each morning, a child would tuck away a few dollars from Mother or Dad along with a promise to stop at the market or the bakery on Mayflower Avenue, to “bring home a coffee ring, or something from Entenmann’s. And be careful.”

By five until the hour, the kitchen would be fragrant with fresh coffee and the kettle boiling away for tea. Dirty hands would be washing in the bathroom, scabby knees covered with play clothes (school clothes having been hung in the closet already), and at 4:00 sharp, at least one household in New Rochelle, New York would be observing the time-honored tradition of high English tea.

It sounds like a snobbish pretense, this bit of old-fashioned formality… but its purpose was clear. Paraphrasing my father’s oft-expressed thoughts on the matter:

We would eat dinner late, usually around seven or eight. And the dinner table wasn’t the place to argue or air grievances; my parents wanted us to have dinner in peace. That’d be the time to celebrate, to share good news, to talk about the things that were going well.

Getting together in the afternoon was where we let out all the stuff that weighed on us during the day, cleared the air about disagreements, all of that.

Oh, and heaven help you if you didn’t sit properly at the dinner table. Geoff [Ed.: My father’s youngest brother] once sat at the dinner table in his short pants with his feet up on his chair. My mother didn’t say anything – just stood up from the table and got a Magic Marker, and drew smiley-faces on his knees. She said “If you’re going to invite them to dinner, they might as well look presentable.”

(I couldn’t resist relaying the sense of my grandparents’ humor the last bit conveyed when I first heard it, whether or not strictly relevant to tea time…)

 Staying mindful of consequences

Thinking about my own upbringing, there was hardly a night when we didn’t have dinner together. High tea was an impossibility (and to be honest, dinner time was usually a no-holds-barred gripe fest, unless my father uncharacteristically clamped down on it). And I think we’re happier, better-adjusted people for the extra insight it gave us into how each other thinks, feels and acts when cornered.

So what’s to be learned from this?

Maybe nothing.

But whenever I think about it, it seems to me that life is decidedly less simple than others might have found it in years past. I’m not lamenting the fact, because it’s a sign of innovation and natural progression of a society…but it speaks to the benefits of bringing a commitment to routine back into the family. Even if dining together (once a day, let alone twice) isn’t possible, maybe setting aside up to an hour a day to talk through conflicts (so, at a minimum, they don’t get carried over into the next day) isn’t such an impossibility. Such is the stuff of night sweats, disturbed sleep, high blood pressure, premature aging and failed marriages.

I’m no psychologist (yet), but I’ve taken enough coursework (and lived enough life) to know that such habits easily become ingrained in the absence of alternative role models. Add impressionable kids to the mix, and you may be setting yourself up for another generation of needless anxiety or less-than-ideal conflict resolution skills.

In short, make stuff simple: have a piece of pie with your kid.

Your turn

How do you and your family (and friends) connect on the difficulties of your individual lives? If you’re a parent, how do you communicate to your kids that something’s bothering you and that you’d like their help to resolve it…instead of mistakenly causing them to think they’re the cause of it? If, perhaps, you’re the child of an aging parent, how does that change your answer to the above?

I’d love for you to share your thoughts on these (or any other related) questions, or your other comments, below.

Thanks.

“Simply, tell the story.”

The comma matters, because the admonition is two-fold: “Avoid complication, yes… but for goodness’ sake, get over the love of your own prose and just tell the damned story.” For reasons both practical and syntactical, that phrase changed me professionally.

It taught me to edit much more carefully, ditching the arch and academic vocabulary that made me a “star” in school but strangled my developing voice. Still, early on I had no concept of how to turn complicated, unpleasant messages into a “story” to which people would relate positively. Dual charges to get it right (read: technically accurate, forthright and clear) and also to “make it feel good” often didn’t wash. Try crafting a feel-good story about a pension plan elimination, for example. Benefits communicators do it every day – and those who do it well are my professional heroes.

Frequently I started “too big, too quickly.” I’d speed-read any background information and draw connections between obscure data points, trying to convince myself and others that I understood the core messages; understood my audience and what they would bring to the experience; understood what needed to be said and how best to say it. I’d then synthesize these ideas into something: a long voicemail, a face-to-face meeting or a draft that (in retrospect) missed the mark by a country mile.

Most of the false starts were the result of what I think of as “the Harrier jump jet approach”: I’d hover around a BSO (Big, Scary Objective) which was nearly always crafted by someone else and therefore ambiguous; attack it from one angle until that stopped seeming effective; and finally swing around a few degrees and try again.

(Big mistake.) 

If I was lucky, I’d have knocked a few holes in my Big Scary Objective (BSO) – but with so much time lost that it hardly seemed worth it. (And, I’d be exhausted.)

Just “make stuff simple.”

Thus came the second bit of sage advice from my first communication job, jotted idly on a coffee shop napkin as I empathized with a frustrated client on a conference call. Faced with a Board who insisted on forward progress (absent an actual business case), she exhorted our team to “just take the complex stuff, and make it simple.”

“Make stuff simple.” Laughably intuitive, right?

I figured I’d never heard that advice from my co-workers because they dismissed it as a wand-waving wish, or because they assumed I’d already figured it out. But the idea of "delivering “simple” probably kept them up nights, too.

I found strength in chucking the toxic Harrier approach. Early in the drafting process (and later, too), it’s really unhelpful because it’s fueled by a desire to please and impress others under intense time pressure, rather than to really understand something. Grasping a few superficial details and spouting them back at the right moments can make almost anyone look like they have all the answers – making it a tempting trap for a new consultant.

But it just doesn’t work.

What simple isn’t

I contend that “simple,” in the context of good communication (and creative work of all kinds) is not easy. Here are a few other things it isn’t:

• Condescending. Talk down to people and they might just punch you. Even if they don’t, they’ll certainly shop the competition.
  
• Simplistic. We can (and should) strive to communicate complicated and esoteric information without resorting to monosyllables, spin or the hard sell.
  
• Fuzzy, “New Age-y,” or intangible. A lot of great writing exists about the cross-pollination of creativity, productivity and personal development. But when its guidance is most needed (i.e., under pressure), it can seem too indirect or pseudo-spiritual to apply in the moment.

In his perhaps overly complicated definition of simplicity, Garr Reynolds probably has it right when he says, “Simplicity doesn't necessarily mean removing the complex; it means removing the superfluous.” And just as any two people faced with the same challenge will have different and highly subjective opinions about what is salient and what is superfluous, I think each of us needs to decide what “making stuff simple” looks like (including what to call it, if my term doesn’t work for you).

What it is (at least to me)

For me, though, this much is clear: it’s not a thing you obtain or a state you reach, but a process you undertake. Making stuff simple is the act (and the art) of doing whatever you must, to:

• Get clear on objectives…and make sure you believe in them (at least enough to find some enjoyment in what you’re doing).
  
• Break the Big, Scary ones into manageable activities, and weigh them against whatever set of selection criteria works for you and the project.
  I often refer to the criteria for SMART requirements: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound. If the activities and sub-tasks in my work plan fail on one of these, I can usually work around it – but two or more, and it’s still too big.
  
• Commit time carefully and specifically, and connect your commitments to larger personal or organizational goals whenever possible.
  Writing this post (at long last) may not be near the top of my current “five-year working life plan,” but it IS there…because at one point I thought it an important use of my energy, and after reevaluating it several times, it still connects.

These are not new ideas, and are really just reminders designed to help lengthen the time gap between “Great idea” and “Excuse #10,001 not to tackle said idea.” David Allen expressed it similarly in his best-known book, Getting Things Done, paraphrased here as shortening the interval between panic and thoughtful, committed action.

Hiding the keys to the Harrier

My most productive moments as a writer (and the ones that make me feel best as a consultant and a coach) are the ones in which I or my clients make our own stuff simple. We may decide to invest more time on the front end of an activity deciding what (if anything) its completion means to us, but then we make better choices about whether or not to commit time and energy to it. Over time, the habit of processing new input (again, read GTD) becomes more and more ingrained.

The payoff comes as we start to see the REALLY important stuff getting done, in small, simple chunks. Time disappears in a flurry of creative productivity. Or, a vague and impenetrable BSO breaks into conceptual bits, their interconnectedness clearer in the absence of the shadow cast by the whole.

Like nearly everything else, it’s a work in progress. And to remind me not to start “too big,” I keep my Harrier keys (just a ring of old, obsolete ones) on my writing desk. When a challenge awaits, I toss them across the room or hide them in the back of a file drawer… It’s harder to get lost in the fog when I never leave the ground.

Your turn

What do you do to “make stuff simple?”  If you call the process something else (or think of it differently), please consider sharing your thoughts.

With summer comes another annual pilgrimage to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, my third. I love the experience, not just for the reverie that comes from wandering the grounds of my alma mater again. It’s the ass-kicking my writing needs from time to time, especially in the summer when motivation to do the really difficult, rewarding writing work tends to flag.

At Saturday morning’s Orientation and Bad Coffee session they always ask, by a show of hands, how many repeat participants are in the crowd. Seeing many, many hands raised for “five or more summers” and not many fewer for “10 or more,” a fellow writer remarked “Why would you keep coming here for that long? Why not try a new festival?”

Good question, I thought – amused at the way this person could make the word “festival” sound like a complaint – and pledged to answer it for myself by Sunday.

Photo: Iowa Summer Writing Festival promotional artwork.

Recently-published novelist Kyle Beachy led the workshop I chose, entitled “Writing Beyond Realism, Even If Just Momentarily.” Beachy’s first novel, The Slide, continues to draw critical acclaim; if I wanted to sound high-falutin’, I might tell you “I don’t read an author’s works before the workshops, to avoid letting it influence my writing.”

The truth is, I just haven’t gotten to it yet.  (Sorry, Kyle. It’s on my list.)

That said, I’d recommend it on my impressions of the guy, alone. Beachy came prepared, stuck to a few reasonable ground rules, and responded to class input in a way that reminded me of the most effective writing workshops I took as an undergrad. Criticism was constructive, and If a comment was off-topic, inflated or backhandedly self-congratulatory, it was swiftly bypassed without comment. I know, because I erred in both areas and, too little too late, worked up a nice little (metaphorical) bruise on the inside of my (metaphorical) leg from kicking myself for it.

For our purposes, anti-realism referred to a skillful breaking-down of distinctions between the magical and the practical. (By Sunday, we had amended the term to “arealism.”) Why shouldn’t an author, Beachy asked, take liberties with so-called “objective realism” by breaking established parameters like the laws of nature and physics? Subverting conventions of realistic character and setting can be overt (as in ghost stories, Hamlet chief among them). Or it can be more subtle, a “reasonable use of the unreasonable,” as Flannery O’Connor described a moment that seems misplaced outside the context of the story but without which, the story doesn’t work. (I was reminded also of Addie Bundren’s first-person speeches in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying; she’s not presented as a “ghost,” per se, but she’s clearly dead, speaking, and central to the story.)

Photo: Ten brave souls daring to write about souls (and other intangible stuff)

But wait. Speaking of subversion – here we were in Iowa City, in what Beachy called “the temple of American realism,” where luminary American authors (O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Fred Exley, and on and on) celebrated objective truth and accuracy within specifically American legal and moral contexts…and instead, we’re rejoicing as a giant frog* muscles a fearful debtor into paying an outstanding debt?

Sign me up.

Dispensing with judgments of good and bad writing, or of good and evil characters, we focused instead on this central question of “How do you, as author, make anti-realism feel true – rather than gimmicky, a little too ‘cute’?”  And on Sunday, a related and equally important admonition: “Do you have a trusted critic in your life who will tell you when your writing is too precious, a little too carefully frosted? If not, find one.”

I may not have answers to these questions in my own writing, but the fact that I’m still thinking about them a few weeks on is, in part, an answer to my fellow writer’s question. I’ve not been this wrapped up in studying (and subverting) the physics of a story in a decade or more.

I bet Super-Frog wouldn’t get us lost on “the 80”

That’s nearly enough about the workshop itself. We had a great group of nine, a few of whom already have had success publishing, and I don’t doubt I’ll hear about the rest down the road a bit. I hope I’m on the same road, and not driving in circles cursing the GPS as I’m ashamed to admit I was for a while, in my own college town.

The east side of Iowa City, particularly Burlington between Governor and Dodge Streets (“…or is it Highway 1 here?”) is the Midwest’s Bermuda Triangle. Or, maybe I was just more of a west-side homebody than I remember…

Jessica (a San Diego-based writer and future MFA applicant) took a uniquely Californian approach to distinguishing state highways from interstates from regular streets: namely, she didn’t bother, just adding a “the” in front of it all. “Take the 1 to the 80 to the 6.” It may have bordered on a hip-hop lyric, but it got us there.

Read Jessica’s impressions of the ISWF here. ( Go ahead, I’ll wait.)

Up for air

During my second ISWF experience (in 2008), Iowa City and the surrounding area were still reeling from Iowa’s worst flood in years, said to be more locally devastating than the Great Flood of 1993. The best known class buildings (by alums, anyway) were uninhabitable, and even the quaint pseudo-tourist traps had abandoned “character” for a “flat-out mildewy stank.” But this year, signs of its rebound are everywhere. Temporary office spaces have been formally spruced up and made permanent (resulting in expansion, where it was sorely needed). Downtown is buzzing again, even with many students gone for the season.

I think of my visits here similarly. Through most of the rest of the year, exerting the self-discipline to write and following a good idea to a conclusion is like finding a rare clear day amidst cloying, persistent grayness or torrential distractions. But my summer weekends at ISWF might as well be April beach days: perfect.

They’re beyond the real, if just momentarily. That’s why I come back.

Your turn

So that’s my answer, but I’d love to hear others’ ideas. If you engage in a creative endeavor as part of a community (or even a pair), what keeps you returning to it?

Or, if you’re more productive or creative in solitude, what’s the promised treat that keeps you motivated?

* From Haruki Murakami’s story “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,”  published by Knopf in the collection entitled After the Quake (2002).