a donkey, hay, and water
004
Heyo!
We’re back for installation number 4 of my 52 week newsletter challenge.
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about reflections. In particular, I’ve been thinking how I measure where I’m at in life 🤔🤔 and how to know if I’m on pace for the summer/life I want??
All too often I look back at my journal and find goals that I mentioned or things that I want to do, only to be forgotten at the very next journal entry. I think this is a dangerous game to play, as the more goals I set and don’t complete sets a subconscious precedence in my brain - that I don’t complete the things I want to do.
Often times though, it’s just a random thought that I want to jot down at the time, not necessarily something I commit to. I think about a Denzel Washington quote:
Dreams without goals are just dreams, and ultimately they fuel disappointment. On the road to achieving your dreams, you must apply discipline but more importantly, consistency. Without commitment, you’ll never start, but without consistency, you’ll never finish. - Denzel Washington
Part of my struggle in the summer is that without the world telling what to do (namely, pass my university classes), I find myself floating in a vacuum of my aspirations.
I feel like that parable of the donkey that is thirsty and hungry, who is halfway between a stack of hay and pail of water, and dies in its indecision. I don’t want to be the donkey.
It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, but I do remember him arguing that successful people, Essentialists, are the type to explore many ideas, but ultimately settle on what is essential (hence the name) to focus their efforts. This, McKeown argues, is the vehicle of a life of fulfillment and success.
To this effect, Tiago Forte has a more concrete interpretation of the Denzel Washington quote earlier:
A project without a corresponding goal is known as a “hobby”. If you’re not committed to or haven’t fully articulated the outcome you want, you must be doing it just for fun. If you have a goal without a corresponding project, that’s called a “dream”. You may desire it with all your heart and soul, but without an active project, you are not in fact currently making any progress. Define your projects, or they will define you”
I’m looking at the next 8 weeks of my remaining summer and wondering: just what is it I want to focus on and commit to for 8 weeks? It should be noted that there are many things that should be kept hobbies: not everything needs to be worked at. Atelic activities are also amongst the most important in life.
pretty shitty how baseline human activities like singing, dancing, and making art got turned into skills instead of being seen as behaviors
so not it’s like ‘the point of doing them is to get good at them’ and not ‘this is a thing humans do, the way birds sing and bees make hives’.
But I mentioned in my last post how in summer, it’s the adventures and projects that define the summer. Should I read more books? Go outside? Build my strength? Develop a game? Make more art? These are things I want to be doing and completing, yet I know my time, attention, energy, and focus are limited. I need to prioritize.
The fact is, I can’t predict whether any of these things will be “helpful” in the future. The point in doing an activity shouldn’t always be capitalistically driven. It’s like that calligraphy class that Steve Jobs took.
So focusing on something doesn’t mean to strip out everything fun out of my summer to focus on the grind (I don’t think summers are the season for that, especially since I’m still in school), but rather mitigate the possibility of a summer where, in dabbling in too many things and not committing to anything, I let the summer pass without anything memorable or ‘defining’ happening. I want to be the donkey that survives.
Really, I want to move big and fail big while I have the time. While I have the perspective, before full time work sets in, while my eyes are fresh.
Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. - Marcus Aurelius
So I’ve boiled it down to two core pieces of advice that seem to stand out at this moment:
- Much in the same vein of starting this blog, action is the antidote to overthinking. I think it always surprises me how much of this vacillation and hesitation disappears once I take the first step. There is a search cost to deciding what to do, and the more time I spend waiting the more it racks up.
- Start with the end in mind - using inversion and envisioning where I’d like to be at a certain time in the future, and then working backwards on the details of what it takes to get there.
The only thing I have consistent right now is this newsletter, which I’m pretty happy about. I shared my first article with my friend (and thus, my first reader!) this past week - that was honestly so motivating and encouraging :D
I have been more keen on recently is focusing on doing something in the real world. I spend my workday looking at a computer screen already, and when I inevitably forget to take breaks throughout the day, the last thing I want to do at night is to code more (I’m getting myopia. It’s so over). So drawing, going outside, working out, reading books, etc. Navigating my energy after a 9-5 has been a new challenge. But each week I’m hoping I can do a play-by-play analysis on the previous week and make the correct adjustments to make each week better (and more enjoyable) than the last.
That’s it for the week! I’m just reminding myself that I gotta stay the track and that my life is ultimately the sum of its projects and habits.
So don’t be the donkey and make like Nike: just do it.
Stay tuned hahaha, Evan