Spent most of yesterday in our master tub/jacuzzi, which I built just for middle-aged moments like this: rehabbing my knee as I start back up on two-a-day workouts (Bowflex and Precor elliptical). Already dropped 8 lbs packed on during my enforced downtime. Targetting another 24 (aren't we all). Really spent time in tub working detailed chapter breakdown on Vol. III on white board (yes, the tub is that big). That was fun but brain-crunching. Couldn't turn it off last night when I tried to hit the hay. Taking weekend off from it, but will tackle first draft of 8-10 pager to Neil Nyren come Monday. Neil and Putnam have right of first look, so you do the simpler version for them (you know me, here's the idea, here's the sked, you wanna?). The fun part of the detailed outline is figuring where I want to slot everything in, especially all the big pieces I've worked on with Mark and Esquire since winter 05 (and those things I plan on trying between now and Vol. III's pub). Other thing I worked on yesterday was to generate a model of my thinking approach. It ends up being 7 stages long, but it's pretty much how I always work. I have a contemporary author/thinker/model that I use for each stage, or people I've consciously and unconsciously modeled myself on over the years. I'm going to have a lot of fun with that chapter (essentially, "Thinking as a grand strategist"), because I will deconstruct a lot of cool stuff from across my career in ways I couldn't in PNM and BFA, because there I was all content and here I aim to uncover form. So pay attention to that man behind the curtain! Got nice voicemail from Mark Warren about the prelim outline I sent him. He's really jacked (you can hear in his voice) and feels this book will be so clear and easy for us to structure and fill in (narrativizing wherever possible) as a result. My sense is that we have the character of the grand strategist down now after two books, so less translating this time and more pure, direct delivery of the how-to stuff, which I know will work because every time I've ever given interviews to that effect, people really like them, and as one comment recently pointed out, it makes sense for me to get this all out of me and down on paper at this point in my life. I'm finally starting to achieve serious self-awareness (aka, wisdom) in my mid-40s, when, quite frankly, I always expected it to kick in, so I never really worried about lacking it previously (a concept I want to get across in this book--take your time in developing your skills). I was quoted to this effect in a Newport Daily News profile a while back. I said something to the effect, "I'm not wise yet, but I'm in the same zip code." People took that as arrogance. I simply meant as ambition. I mean, shouldn't we all be in the wisdom zip code by our mid-40s? If you're not, when exactly do you plan on getting there? But really, I think what got to people was my sense that I could actually plot out, over my life, a journey to wisdom, and honestly, I've been plotting that pathway since I was about 12, since I saw Nixon go to China. I said to myself then, "I want to get me some of that!" It's taken me three-plus decades to finally figure out what "some of that" is.' And being a natural salesman, as soon as I figure that out, I want to sell it to everyone I can. No sense keeping the candle under the bushel basket.