Super Habits

And unhurried work

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Updates

As we approach the final two months of the year, I’m trying to get a head start on year-end projects and tasks. Making tax-related decisions looms large this year as I have an extremely complicated tax situation across three states (last year it was across four!), W-2 income, 1099 income, rental income, and business income, as well as mixed use property complicating expensing and depreciation. Related to this, I want to set up a formal LLC for The Abbey Glass for 2025.

Another year-end project involves thinking about plans for the new year: work travel, family priorities and initiatives, athletic and leisure trips (maybe a couple triathlons for me, a couple long roller-blading trips for Kathryn), and other family activities.

Then there are projects or improvements around The Abbey that we want to do before launching into the new year and the ski season. We may build a bookcase and an indoor picture window that Kathryn put together. At some point we’ll paint. And then there are minor fixes such as recaulking fixtures, redoing worn counters, etc.

Writing

My letter to the editor for the Leadville Herald came out this past Thursday. I haven’t gotten any direct feedback yet. There have been dozens of letters favorable to the 4A tax increase initiative and only one or two indirectly critical (one of which is a different letter I wrote). In fact, in last week’s paper there were four or five more letters supporting 4A and none questioning it other than mine. Still, I think most people don’t know anything about how much the school district currently spends per pupil, nor do they know how much of that funding comes from local sources.

My review of Catherine Pakaluk’s book, Hannah’s Children, also came out this week. I shared excerpts from that review in a previous newsletter. My review of Good as Gold, which I shared excerpts of last week, is almost done and I sent off a review of another book (excerpts below) called Superhabits.

I have a handful of commentary op-eds and columns on the upcoming UN climate conference in the queue as well as a slightly longer piece about energy statistics and trends. We’ll see what other commentary-worth news items happen in the next week and a half.

Reflection

This weekend I returned from a short trip to Atlanta to attend a Hillsdale event. The ATL airport did not make any better impression on me this time around than it did a few weeks ago….There was a lot of food for thought at the event from the likely impact of differing presidential candidate’s economic policy proposals to the state of immigration and law to reflection on the state of marriage and family formation in light of cultural change and public policy. I was able to squeeze a little work in here and there, but I also had several conversations – some quite long.

I was reflecting on the ability to take time for long conversations while having a very full plate. I realized that my approach to life and all the different kinds of work I do – writing, teaching, running The Abbey, investing, writing this newsletter, cultivating intellectual and spiritual community, raising children, etc. involves a life full of relatively unhurried work.

By unhurried, I don’t mean slow. I actually try to work extremely quickly on most projects. Working quickly requires the confluence of clarity of goals/steps, proper tools and space, energy, and judgment of when a project is “good enough” to call complete. Sometimes deadlines make that work more “hurried,” but I find that regular planning and effort help me get most work done well in advance of external deadline pressure.

The “full” element involves having plenty to do at any given moment – on a plane (where I wrote most of this newsletter), in the car, when kids are asleep, and of course during normal working hours. But when the work is unhurried, you have the flexibility to put the work down and to pick it back up. I think people should work towards making their life more like this.

Part of having a life full of unhurried work means getting rid of time-wasting habits. It doesn’t, however, mean that every moment must be used “productively” or that you never have downtime, leisure, or even wasted time. But wasting a couple hours a week is very different from using “every spare moment” productively while habitually watching 6-12 hours of entertainment a week.

In my experience, you need to both intentionally pare back time-wasting habits and have something to fill that time with. One strategy involves setting in motion obligations on your time that make it more difficult for you to have time-wasting habits. Children have this effect – as do side hustles and ministry commitments. I don’t advocate going too far too fast here – burn out is a real problem for many people – but if you want to start using your time more productively, you should think about adding more meaningful activities and commitments to your life.

Which leads me to a final thought. Life seems to oscillate between patiently waiting for things to unfold and actively bringing things to fruition. I see this as an unresolvable tension in that we shouldn’t simply wait for things to unfold passively all the time. But we also shouldn’t (and can’t) force our circumstances to play out exactly the way we want and on our timetable. This tension seems analogous to the Apostle Paul’s comment in Philippians: “work our your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

Bookshelf

I just finished a review for another book last week, Superhabits: The Universal System for a Successful Life written by the dean of Catholic University of America’s business school, Dr. Andrew Abela. The book gives an excellent overview of Thomas Aquinas’ system of cardinal virtues. Dr. Abela frames the virtues as “super habits” that bring great benefits to individuals who practice them as well as to their organizations.

“The book begins with the super habit of Restraint. Personally, I thought this was a good choice. Restraint tends to be seriously undervalued in our modern culture that prizes desire and expression over everything else. But a little restraint can go a long way in improving most people’s lives.

Dr. Abela then offers six more chapters on super habits that build up one’s Temperance: Humility, Diligence, “Gentlefirmness,” Forgiveness, Orderliness, and Eutrapelia. While some of these virtues are well-known, others are scarcely mentioned today. “Gentlefirmness,” for example, is Abela’s term to describe meekness. The problem with meekness, he argues, is that it has come to mean “weak” or “passive” in modern parlance. “Gentle firmness,” on the other hand, captures the historic idea of meekness meaning quietly living out one’s convictions in the face of pressure and persecution.

The value of meekness comes not from negating our emotion of anger, but from harnessing and redirecting it. This ties into an important theme in Super Habits, namely that virtue should educate, rather than reject, human emotions and passions. The virtues properly channel emotions in productive and flourishing directions. This can clearly be seen in another practically unknown virtue: Eutrapelia. 

This virtue involves “playing” or recreating well. Dr. Abela argues that Eutrapelia is the mean between frivolity, “too much playfulness,” and mirthlessness, “the inability or unwillingness to relax.” He offers nice guiderails for how to practice Eutrapelia when he adds that besides avoiding an excess or a deficiency of playfulness, we ought to make sure that the leisure we engage in does not work against any of the other super habits. For example, leisure activities that undermine restraint or cut against humility or generosity, would not be right….

Although Super Habits will not go down in history as a profound book, it is well-written and aimed at an important audience: the everyman and everywoman. Repackaging the virtues with modern business and self-help parlance as well as using modern illustrations has its benefits. The barebones approach gives readers something to start working with, but not much to reflect upon. The power of the book comes from its simplicity and accessibility. It makes a simple but compelling case for why everyone ought to cultivate virtue to live happy and successful lives.

Laying out a clear system of virtues also has significant value. The book includes a poster, “Anatomy of Virtue,” created by the author. While it may seem overwhelming at first glance, after reading Super Habits, the poster makes perfect sense and illustrates the system of virtue beautifully. One could even call it a road map to cultivating virtue. I may use it as such when teaching my own children about the “super habits” that lead to human flourishing.”

Game Corner

I played a boardgame version of Minecraft a couple weeks ago. It was fun even though I’d never played the video game before. In the board game, Minecraft: Portal Dash, players cooperate to beat the “Boss” for the scenario. Initially you must fight off various monsters while upgrading your equipment and weapons and improving the map. There is a stack of cubes of four colors that you “mine” throughout the game. Each colored block lets you do a different action from healing characters to gaining better weapons to improving terrain to replenishing your used equipment.

Once these cubes are used, however, they go into a discard bin. When all the initial cubes are used up, players can only receive new cubes if they have specialized equipment that allows them to mine from the discard bin (this is a very important piece of equipment for at least a couple of players to get at some point).

Players also must contribute some blocks (rather than receiving their benefit) to a sideboard to “unlock” their objective and have the opportunity to defeat the Boss for the scenario. I played with a friend and our sons (six and seven year olds), so the strategy we implemented was a bit chaotic. We played the easiest level. Apparently they can be much more difficult and would require serious planning and coordination among experienced players to beat.

If you have children who play Minecraft, though, this might be a good option for engaging them in the real world rather than the digital one.

Have a great week!