Does It Square: The Only Honest Weekly Review

Show Notes

Brian closes the week by introducing the square as the tool that makes honest self-evaluation possible, and by redefining what virtue actually means. In Brian Mattocks's book A Mason's Work: The Operative Method for Daily Self-Development, virtue is stripped of its accumulated moral baggage and returned to its Latin root: virtus, meaning excellence, potency, and efficacy. A virtuous knife cuts well. A virtuous foundation holds the load. The square tests whether two things genuinely fit together, and when applied to the self, the question it asks is not whether you feel good about your week, but whether what you did produced the outcome you were aiming for. Did it work?

This is the weekly review reframed as operative masonry. Brian pairs the square with the treasurer's apron, a perspective that does not traffic in feelings or hedged maybes. The treasurer looks at the check register. Did the bills get paid? Did the pile get smaller? Did the behavior match the objective? The hedge, the well, maybe it did, maybe it didn't, is precisely what keeps people stuck, and Brian names it directly as part of the problem rather than a reasonable uncertainty.

The episode draws together everything from the week: the debt you carry from deferring to future you, the self-concepts you inherited from a younger version of yourself without testing them, the gavel swinging at fears that have no body, the plans that never become actions. All of it fails the square test because none of it is the work. The week closes not with a motivational summary but with a practical standard: small actions, virtuous test after, did it square?

• The square as an operative test for whether actions produce their intended outcomes
• Virtue redefined as excellence and efficacy rather than moral standing
• The treasurer's apron as a feelings-free framework for honest self-evaluation
• Squaring behavior against objectives rather than intentions or effort
• Why micro adjustments outperform wholesale overhauls for long-term change
• Pulling together the week's tools: level, plumb, gavel, gauge, and square in one review

The standard is simple and honest: not did you try, not did you feel like you were working, but did the effort square with the outcome you needed. That is the test the level of time will keep running regardless of whether you run it yourself.

Free Lodge Resource: Download the A Mason's Work Discussion Guide - a free, printable discussion guide for your lodge education night. No signup required.

Ready to go deeper? A Mason's Work - the operative method in full. Or bring Brian to your lodge: Virtual Lodge Education Session - $250.

Thanks to our monthly supporters

• Tim Dedman
• Jorge

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] We spent this week talking about the ways you work against yourself, the way you misapply
[00:05] the level of time, overloading tomorrow you with things that you won't do today, or carrying
[00:12] verdicts about your past that were issued under completely different conditions, or
[00:17] swinging the gavel at fears that don't have a body yet, or as we talked about yesterday,
[00:23] building elaborate architecture as a delay mechanism dressed up as progress.
[00:27] All of it has motion and texture of feeling like work, but none of it is the work.
[00:38] Here's where the square comes in.
[00:41] Before we go further, let's be clear about what we mean when we talk about virtue.
[00:48] Because when we talk about squaring our actions against the square of virtue, we have to understand
[00:55] what that means.
[00:56] Virtue as a concept tends to be talked about with a bunch of extra baggage, moral baggage
[01:01] that the word doesn't really need.
[01:04] The Latin root is vertus.
[01:08] It means excellence, potency, and efficacy.
[01:14] A virtuous thing is a thing operating sort of at full spec.
[01:19] A virtuous knife cuts well.
[01:24] A virtuous foundation holds the building up.
[01:29] There's no moral judgment here.
[01:32] It is a performance standard.
[01:35] It is a, in many ways, a true false condition, or a, does it work or doesn't it?
[01:43] And so when we square our actions against the square of virtue, that's the test we're running.
[01:48] We're not like, are you a good person or are you doing okay?
[01:51] Or, you know, none of this sort of cagey contextual forever spiral of trying to figure it out.
[01:59] When we square our actions against the square of virtue, did it work?
[02:05] Does it work?
[02:07] Is what you're doing getting the outcome you're creating?
[02:12] So in operative masonry, we test right angles, right?
[02:18] We are using the square to determine whether or not these two pieces fit together.
[02:23] When we do this for ourselves, when we look at our week, when we square our week against
[02:30] the things we've done and the things that we have left undone, or the stuff that we tried,
[02:35] and the outcomes we've created, we're beginning the process of evaluating using that level of time.
[02:45] Did I do what I set out to do?
[02:51] A great way to figure this out is to grab your treasurer's apron, your mental treasurer's apron,
[02:59] right?
[03:00] A treasurer does not have, uh, your treasurer might have feelings in your lodge,
[03:05] but in general, the treasurer application is not a feeling conversation.
[03:10] This is an emotional content.
[03:12] This is, you look at the check register.
[03:17] Did I pay the bills?
[03:20] It's not like, did I feel like paying the bills?
[03:23] Or did I feel like solving the problem?
[03:26] It's not even any of that stuff.
[03:31] It's, did the bills get paid?
[03:34] Did the problem get soft?
[03:36] Did it debit correctly from the account?
[03:39] The same thing's true when we look at our efforts.
[03:44] When we look at how we spent time on this one project or work on the pile,
[03:53] did the pile get smaller?
[03:56] Well, maybe it did.
[04:01] Maybe it didn't.
[04:02] And that hedge is essentially part of what's keeping you stuck, right?
[04:08] So grabbing that square, grabbing that treasurer's apron and getting to it, evaluating, did the effort
[04:17] you undertook solve the problem, uh, is really the beginning of, of meaningfully understanding.
[04:24] Are you being true to your objectives?
[04:26] Are you doing what you're supposed to do?
[04:28] Do these pieces fit together?
[04:30] Well, does the behaviors that I'm undertaking solve the real problem?
[04:34] So that's a hard place to sit, but the level of time demands that the work we do fit the overall
[04:47] structure that we're trying to create.
[04:50] If you want to make more money, how much time did you spend on that job?
[04:55] How successful was it?
[04:57] If you want to live a healthier life, how much time did you spend managing your diet,
[05:04] managing your exercise, finding the right decisions, doing the, doing the work?
[05:09] Has it been successful?
[05:12] A lot of these things that we plan for in life tend to move a little more slowly.
[05:15] So over the course of a life, some of these changes take a long time, but when we, as you
[05:24] saw over the course of this week, micro adjustments, micro behavior changes are the best way to ensure
[05:32] long-term outcomes here.
[05:34] You are not going to collapse an entire health regimen into a weekend and expect that it's going
[05:44] to create all of those outcomes.
[05:45] The body doesn't move that fast.
[05:47] You can't do it.
[05:48] It's not possible.
[05:50] And there's the little rebellion in you right now.
[05:54] It's like, but I could, but I could.
[05:56] And that's the voice of this misapplication of the level.
[06:02] Take your time, small bits, small actions with a virtuous test after did it square.
[06:12] That's the challenge.