Month: November 2019

So over the past month or so I’ve made an effort to do more of these blog posts and also focus on improving some of my habits. And it works!

Lately I’ve been sleeping better, getting up way earlier, being way more productive, and just generally doing better.

I’ve said before that the blog is the most important thing I do. The reason for that is it’s the only place where I put down some introspective thoughts and then follow-up later to track everything.

Focusing on it helps be focus on growth and self-improvement and holds me to things that I’ve resolved to do. Without it, I feel like I don’t really improve at all, I kind of just limp along.

Specifically it leads me to trying out things that really help me improve. For instance, I’ve been working on establishing a new habit lately. I would say that I should always be trying to establish a new one at all times, and I really hadn’t in a while.

The one I’m working on now is to get up after the first alarm without snoozing at all. For many, this probably isn’t a challenge. But I’ve been doing it for like 20 years. Breaking that habit (which I think is basically the same as creating one) is extremely difficult.

But I’m like a month in now. It was extremely difficult at first, but it’s getting easier and easier. And only good things have come from it.

And a few days ago I did something that isn’t really a habit, but I should have done a long time ago. I tend to waste a long time on the site imgur.com, and I realized that I don’t even really enjoy it. So after years of wasted time, I installed an app on my phone and blocked the website.

Problem solved!

The interesting thing is that this one doesn’t even really require willpower because it’s blocked… There’s no choice there. That’s a good subject for another blog post, but it’s quite fascinating.

So now I instantly have a lot more time each day because I’m not on that site. I move on to other things right away instead of wasting my time.

I’ve even started doing Spanish studying on Anki again. When I’m twitching on my phone and bored, I don’t really have anything else to do now so I just do it! It’s great.

In conclusion, it’s really important to keep doing this. Keep it up.

I’ve only just started to realize as I get older how much of self-idealism is really just arrogance and ignorance.

When you’re young you think you’re always going to have perfect self-discipline in all areas and that where all other falter, you will succeed. And that was me for most of my life. And probably to a large extent still is.

But over time you see that you keep failing in the same ways. That you can’t just overcome all of your own natural instincts and desires and accomplish whatever you want whenever you want.

And finally you realize that you were just arrogant and ignorant. Arrogant because you thought you would succeed where everyone else repeatedly fails. Ignorant because you hadn’t learned the full extent to which we are all animals who, in many ways, are still just slaves to our biology.

You only have so much willpower. You can only push yourself so far. You will sometimes give in to temptations. You will fail yourself in countless ways that you haven’t even imagined yet.

To think anything else, and especially to plan for anything else, is to be like an arrogant and ignorant child.

It’s simple enough, and it seems like you’re sort of tricking yourself… But it works!

I’ve realized that it’s much easier to plan your work and actions — and, by extension, actually do it — if you know you don’t have to do the work right away.

I think the reason for this is that, let’s say you know you have some large task you’re going to do. If you decide to come up with a quick plan to get it done, and then immediately do the work, it seems like a huge investment of effort. And I think that’s because you’re essentially committing a project that is unknown (because you haven’t planned it yet), and you kind of just assume that it’s going to end up being the worst-case scenario.

Whereas it’s super easy to just commit to planning. Especially for something where the planning isn’t going to be that complicated.

You just set aside a few minutes, write it down, and you’re done! There might be some tricky decisions in there but it doesn’t take much time, so you can commit to it easily.

And then when it comes time to actually do the work, you already have your plan and you know exactly what it’s going to consist of. It’s much easier to get started and just go and finish it.

So I think going forward, it’s important for me to create plans for most tasks ahead of time. If I plan it, and I have a set of steps to complete, I know that I’m going to do it.

And it’s almost always okay if it doesn’t happen the same day.