I have had “Methods” written on my planner on and off for the last couple of years.
I carry a small weekly Rhodia planner with me, and I write down tasks for each day on the lefthand page for each week. The righthand side of each week is a blank page with a grid printed on it. Here, I write notes for each week and I also keep a list of projects and long-term tasks to address when I have time.
At some point a few years back, I really did have time for these things. More weeks than not, these days, I stop work on Friday afternoon, look at the projects, workouts, and videos that need to be done for the next week, and plan out those days. I transcribe any weekly tasks, such as “billing” to the next week, and finally I look at my projects list, then copy the ones that still need work to the next week.
Week after week, month after month, “Methods” was written and rewritten, and I did nothing. At the same time, the need to put all of the methods down in one place grew. Why? Because most of my work is in the form of hundreds of articles and videos written over the course of more than 25 years. Articles that highlight ideas, evolutions, mistakes, and dead-ends. Articles that, over the course of my career and the evolution of our team’s practices, might not highlight practices we believe in today.
I envy the author of 1985. She kept a bunch of notes on paper (or a word processor), worked these out in detail, withheld her learning process from her fans, and eventually published a finished work. This work was a fixed point. A finished product.
For the past ten or so years, I’ve been behind the ball. I’ve cranked out projects here and there, have helped Ken grow the coaching team, and have continued to work “in” Climb Strong and the gym. I have not worked “on” Climb Strong in a very long time. Many times a year, I get messages from climbers who say they like my philosophy of training. I thank them, tell them to keep in touch, and more and more I have to sit back and wonder what they mean. What have they gleaned from my work that resonates?
It’s almost as if I feel the need to stop them and ask, “What, exactly, is this philosophy you speak of?”
What is my philosophy?
These past ten years have been spent trying to keep up with a production schedule, trying to compete in the growing world of climbing experts and coaches and wondering if my team and I had a place in it. We cranked out one or two videos a week the whole time. An article per month. A few books. A hundred-plus newsletters. Many dozens of live presentations. Not one of them my best work. Each one hurried at the end. Each one less than it could have been.
Time pressure is real. I have kids and a job and a wife that deserve my time. I have a passion for climbing hard routes even after all these years. I like hunting elk. Have friends. All of these things are excellent uses of my time.
And then there is the news. Social media. The garbage dump that is the internet. Television. These things creep in and take our lives. A cancer of time. A distraction. The opposite, literally, of traction. The opposite of getting shit done.
It came to a head in 2020 when I realized I was spending more than an hour a day consuming random shit fed to me by someone else. An hour a day. 7 percent of my life. And I look at my phone less than most. I made a decision, a word whose root is from the Latin “to cut off.” Despite what it might do for my position in the industry and my ability to get my name out there, I deleted my social media accounts, and purposefully limited the way I let media into my life.
Why? Because it’s a distraction, and I needed traction. I am not young enough to believe my best work is just waiting out there somewhere ahead. If I am going to consolidate everything I want to consolidate, it has to be now, and I need a clear head to do it.
So here, at last, is the best I think I can write. It’s the best and most complete training information I can assemble. It’s workouts I do with my athletes, what our coaches discuss and prescribe for hundreds of athletes that are thriving. It’s what I do myself. It’s what I wish I had started when I was twenty, chasing down the grades, and full of more energy than I have now.
This is what I can produce, can only produce, when I have a great team around me to take care of emails, of training athletes, of doing the books. I am grateful beyond words for the CS team.
The Methods Book never went to print. I can’t imagine it would have sold more than a hundred copies. But it’s been sitting here on my computer and I decided to try and share it with you all. It’s a lot of pages. I have broken it up into pieces, and am going to be releasing it one piece at a time, mid-month for the rest of 2025, starting next month. This one will be available only to paid subscribers as a “thank you” for supporting my typing habit.
Bam 💥