i want to write something before i go to sleep. i’m thinking, as i often do, about behavior patterns, behavior change, decision-making, movement, strategy, dynamism.
the first post on 1000wordvomits is about gamification. even in that post in 2012 i talk about the importance of baby steps. i’ve always been bad at project management. i’ll have to be honest with myself, it’s straight up an ego thing, an arrogance thing. at some point i read ‘the checklist manifesto’, a book about how checklists literally save lives in medical scenarios, and yet weren’t always adopted, pretty much because of the egos of medical professionals who feel that they shouldn’t have to stoop so low as to rely on such primitive tools. experts need help, and progress depends on experts having the humility to concede that they need help.
humility. facing the truth of one’s circumstances. i have been trying for a long time to get better at this. i’ve made some progress, but not as much as i had hoped.
i used to hate the idea of routines. then i realized that i had a subconscious routine that i fell into when i refused to consciously design routines for myself. then i would overdesign impossible routines that i couldn’t possibly follow for long, and fail, and get disheartened, and suffer in that loop. nothing seems to work.
i believe in my heart that i am capable of writing a word vomit a day, making a youtube video a day. each of those things takes about 20 minutes to do. there are 24 hours in a day. 8 are for sleeping. suppose i actually only get to be productive and smart for 2 hours a day. i don’t even typically make use of 2 hours well each day. i think. i’m not sure. because i don’t really measure what i’m doing. i have a contentious relationship with measurement that i think is due for some rehabilitation. this isn’t the first time i’ve said or thought this. i suspect i’ve been here about a dozen times already. and maybe i will be back here dozens of times more. i’m beginning to make my peace with that possibility. playing Hades definitely helped me with that somewhat. watching expert Hades players helped, too. it’s cool to keep a streak going, but even the pros mess up their streaks. the challenge is not to never break a chain, but to recover quickly and cheerfully from a broken chain.
how would i like to spend my 2 hours a day? well, i would like to wake up and do a braindump of whatever’s on my mind, before i engage with anything else. i used to do this on my commutes to work– i wasn’t super strict about “before I engage with anything else”, but it was a sticky routine because i had no choice but to go to work every weekday. and also i had the strong motivation of wanting to make sure that my creative spirit would be kept alive. i no longer have an employer, and i’m no longer genuinely worried about losing my creative spark. so i need to reorient.
the most important thing in my life right now is that i move out of the neighborhood i’ve lived in these past 12 years, to one closer to my family and my wife’s family, for a list of reasons i won’t get into right now. even thinking about this is tiring because there’s so much emotional baggage tied up in our current house, and in the failures of our past attempts to try and do something to change our living situation. part of me feels like if i work harder or smarter, this might be less difficult. another part of me feels that there’s really no point caring about my career if i’m still living in my old ‘halfway house’. having written that down i can recognize that it’s not a very smart thought, it’s really just a strong feeling.
i just felt the impulse to switch tabs and check on twitter. because twitter is a reliable source of pleasant distractions for me. i don’t really mind getting distracted in general, as long as i get my priorities taken care of. but when my priorities are unclear, everything else starts to go bad. so… i think i need to return to a blank slate protocol, where rather than think about my career in a big picture sense, i should challenge myself to write consistently for 30 days just to demonstrate to myself that i’m still capable of doing that, and to get into the habit of it. yes, i’ve done it before. no, i haven’t done it in a long while. sometimes it’s worth challenging yourself just to experience your own strength. i used to feel bad about this. i’ve definitely written about this before, about the importance of letting go of yesterday’s nonsense and silliness and face reality afresh, anew. if you had just stepped into your shoes for the first time, how would you act? if you had no sunk costs, no assumptions, no history of failure, just an opportunity to start from where you are, and do whatever is good to do. well, i would try to make slow and steady progress on all my fundamentals. that means writing everyday, exercising a little bit everyday, reading a little bit every day. cleaning up my notes a little bit everyday. updating my calendar every day. a regularly updated calendar, i think would be a good centerpiece to all of this, because looking at my calendar will make me think about what i’ve done recently and how i’d like to fill out my time.
yeah. time is precious and limited and i would like to use it well. right now that means finishing this and going to bed. what shall i do tomorrow? ideally, a wordvomit in the morning, a bit of reading that might start a new draft, and a bit of tidying up some old drafts and notes. i used to stop making new drafts because i felt like i hadn’t addressed my old drafts. i see more clearly now that this is a mistake. those should be two entirely separate things. i try too much to do everything all at once. this requires cramming too many things into my head and any accident or distraction etc will have me dropping everything. now that i have a child, i have to assume that i’m going to be interrupted frequently, and i have to redesign my process to accomodate this.
this whole post took about 15 minutes, maybe 20. time very well spent. one per day please, visa!