Alright, time to do some catch-up work. Quarantine has definitely been a little stir-crazy for me, I shaved my head, grew out a beard for the first time, and had my birthday. Of course though, I had no party.
After a lot of navel-gazing, I’ve come to the thought that I require boredom, and a lot of it. The more stimulated and interested I am in something, the faster time passes by, and usually I’m interested in unproductive things.
Being bored slows things down, it forces my mind to stop trying to find a small hit of dopamine and actually focus on what’s important to me, which is admittedly uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable because I feel like I’m so far behind on so much, and I cannot help but feel bad for the time I’ve wasted. It feels difficult to try to begin something, because I feel it’s inevitable that it too, will just wander off.
A rigid schedule with workflows is what I require, but it’s so easy to get bombarded with information when you try to research that sort of thing. I always end up with 15 tabs open that I never end up reading because it just makes me too anxious, silly right?
I find that I can either act in the daily, short-term or I can act in the nebulous long-term, but I have extreme difficulty trying to converge the two. The act of taking a lofty dream-like goal and breaking it down into pieces just never seems to work. In truth, I never get close, I never make (what I feel) is like meaningful progress.
The only time I ever have a project finished is in hindsight. When I feel truly inspired to work at a single task for long enough, eventually a good product emerges that I’m proud of. But that’s rare. I’m so often wandering and jumping from one thing to the next.
When I really take a step back, the greatest of people are a distillery. The most talented and hard-working of people often produce only a handful (or even just one) of great work that they’re remembered for. Only the true fanatics hundreds of thousands of small pieces that were completed daily to work towards that great work. I just wish I knew how to properly propel myself to such a destination.
Systems Review
- Both /poetry and /courses require rate slow downs, as they both require more time and effort to do well.
- /gratitude had a daily entry that has gone from a digital to an analogue one, since writing (supposedly) creates better connections in your brain.
- /tweets to my surprise, has been an excellent way to do a daily review. Currently, my account is private and I’m not following anybody, so it’s more like a digital diary with a bunch of API potential.
- /duolingo is also doing surprisingly well, I will have to actually increase the rate soon, since I often skip days due to surpassing my current goal, and Duolingo punishes you a lot more heavily for not maintaining daily streaks.
- /sleep is just on the edge of derailing often, something else that caught me off guard. I feel like I’ve been sleeping way too much, but the data says otherwise. I need to figure out ways to increase the quality of my sleep, not quantity.
- /productivity derailed once, but that’s not a surprise at all considering that my lack of activity was unproductive.
- /fitness is going great! I’ve started biking a lot which has been enjoyable exercise that’s distant from other people. But sadly /weight has plateaued, I need to take calorie restriction a lot more seriously.
- /blogging really needs to up the ante. I’ve set it for months because it causes me the most anxiety because it’s the most important system to me. Isn’t that funny?