Warning, this is a massive blog post, I didn't mean to write for this long, I started this at 1535 and am just now finishing it at 1745. Somethings just take much longer than you expect, I would have been in a panic over this a few days ago but now I've reached a sort of productivity enlightment.
The path to any type of enlighment are many and one way is always thru massive suffering. (Not the one that I would recommend, even to myself going forward).
What I accomplished in two hours
- Researching hardware [25 minutes]
- I've settled on the webcamera whiich is FHD quality
- I've almost settled on a microphone
- I've settled on lighting (tabletop)
- Praticed using OBS to record video lectures in different formats
- Myself in the top right corner
- Half and Half
- Just me
- Writing this massive post. [120 minutes]
What I did today for the minimalist game
Physical
- Unnamed object
- Strap that I never used
This was designed for camping and securing items to a camping backpack. However the camping backpack has all the necessary straps that I need. Meaning I don't need this one.
- Weird black t-shirt
- Two long sleeve shirts
- Sweater
- Swim shirt
- Rope
It's thin and was designed to be used for a close-line that never really happened. It kinda did but for a VERY short period of time. Furthermore, the close-line was setup once when camping many years ago. Why have I kept it? Because I thought 'what's the harm?'. However this when applied to a lot of items, causes me to be where I am now, needing to be rid of things.
- Gloves (yet another pair!)
I find these gloves in at least three separate storage areas, the fact that I have so many demonstrates why this clean out is necessary. However in each area, I only had a few pairs. Therefore in each individual case, I could be pardoned for deciding to keep them. However looking back thru all my gloves I have found, I could not be pardoned for keeping them all. When will I every need to wear that amount of gloves? When will I need that many backup pairs?
Digital
In the digital environment it's a lot harder to say "This is one thing" and "This is a collection of things".
Therefore in the spirit of getting rid of items if I'm getting rid of more than 9 items today it counts as nine items.
DIME was a project that I was working on but abandoned, having it sitting around made me feel guilty and that I should go back to it. However deleting it removes this unnecessary guilt and lets me use that energy for something else.
In case you were interested, DIME stands for Dark Internet Mail Environment and is a protocol designed by Lava bit. I was attempting to create the protocol in RUST so that any one could interface with DIME using the rust implementation. Why a separate implementation? Because it's very unlikely that both protocols implementations would suffer from the same mistake in protocol implementation (assuming the protocol is secure). Why does this matter? Let's look at Heartbleed, this was a error with the implementation of an important part of web communication, NOT with the protocol. Luckily since not everyone used that implementation, only 66% of websites were possibly screwed (for a short time only though). Having diversity in any field is important, it allows fallback and alternative implementations that may not fail in the same scenarios.
More importantly than what it is, we tend to really build up a lot of things that we wish to do in the digital environment and you have to be okay with saying, no. It's easier in the short term to make a lot of commitments to either yourself and others and not realize how draining overall the commitments are - even though each one may not take much energy) - only when you step back and see all of them to you realize you over extended yourself.
The four year sorrow
Introduction
Here is something I have learned that is really important that I wish to pass onto you. Only commit to those commitments that are extremely important. I really have dropped my life down to four commitments:
1) Sapphire Pack
2) Friends
3) Self
4) Job
Now this means that if I'm accomplishing Sapphire Pack, spending time with friends, doing what I need to do in my home and doing good at job, then I'm really acting in a way that reflects my innate goodness.
Wrong beliefs
I really used to believe that unless I was doing a lot of things, that I wasn't a good person. That I was somehow failing to use my time appropriately. That sleeping in, doing nothing, spending time with friends over a certain amount was BAD. That at the end of the day and my life that I would only judge myself and be judged by what I had accomplished that had raw cash value. This was a horrible way to treat myself, I stopped caring that I was hurting, that I needed days where I didn't do much. Days to hangout with friends and not feel that I was a disappointment because I hadn't put in 6 hours of work in.
Before hand, every day was a constantly loosing fight where I would realize that I had failed. I had failed to live up to my expectations of myself, because these expectations were unrealistic in the long term. I felt horrible, I felt like I failed. I kept jumping from one impressive project to another, each one I would burn myself out - usually before I reached 30 days - because every spare minute I would work on it. I viewed the weekend and time to catchup on work that I didn't owe anyone. I had weekends where I would churn out 14 or 16 hours of work and then wonder why next weekend I could barely churn out 2 hours. All the while getting angry and frustrated with myself, refusing to believe that I was good just because we all are. That our lives are not the sum of the monetary value of our actions.
I told those around me, that they needed to have time off, they needed to really relax. That as weird as it sounds, that having less time to work means you'll actually produce better content (that is up to a point). However I never took that for myself, I knew it was true but believes that I was playing catchup. First it was catchup for not seriously learning programming until grade 10 (even though I started programming in grade 7). Then with designing either this or that in software X. When I stopped believing those lies, I started to believe that if I developed this one amazing piece of software ALL BY MYSELF that somehow I would fix this gaping hole of lies, frustration, fear and sadness that I had. Sadness for unrealistic expectations that no one but myself that I held myself to. Fear that if I wasn't working, I was falling behind. Frustration that since I didn't know X then I wasn't ever going to find a job. Finally, the lie that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't every going to be good enough. I believed that if I had the world's admiration and cash that I would fill this lie.
Breaking the cycle
I was wrong and I ended up spending more than four years overworking and hating myself. I became calculating, I wasn't allowed to spend time with friends unless I got X hours of work done. I wasn't allowed to have fun, because my work is fun (At least that's what I told myself). I became ruthless, I had to do even better, put in more time, just try harder - because obviously working 20 hours a week OUTSIDE OF UNIVERSITY, while juggling a full course load, family responsibilities, friends and gym - wasn't good enough. I became destructive, I won't allow myself to read anything that I wanted to (Sci fi anyone?), because then I was wasting time on "childish things". I used this word a lot with myself, believing that if I called it childish that I wouldn't want to do it. That turned out to be completely false, I ended up binging on books when I went to the library or when I was on route someplace (who would have thought this was possible?). I was viewed as extremely smart by those around me, so understanding of this technology or that framework or this concept. However I didn't see that as good enough, I beat myself up for not knowing how to properly implement a cryptographically secure key exchange protocol, an operating system from scratch or some API. I accepted and even vocalized to my friends and those that would listen that "we should leave that to the experts" or "it's alright not to know that, it's extremely complicated stuff", however I never really took that to heart until today.
Why this change, how did I learn this about myself? Because I did something radical, something that every single person like me - a person whose is working extremely hard to fill a void that can really only be filled with self compassion and realistic - I told myself that I was only going to accomplish one thing for 2021, one thing only. I still have days, where I finished Sapphire Pack obligations for that day in the early morning and am unsure how to fill that extra time, I'm not used to being busy with nothing to do. I realized a few very important things:
1) That friends and close connections are what's worth living for.
2) That doing less is actually more.
3) Excess work is escape from responsibilities and self reflection.
4) Doing nothing is still something.
Warning signs
When you put it that way it sounds plain as day. That sometime you need to do nothing, or your body will do it for you. Here are some examples:
1) During January of this year, something that I had been really proud of accomplishing and maintaining I utterly failed and relapsed. The reason was that I had used up every picogram of willpower with my self imposed work, I had none left to prevent old self harming habits from coming back in. This habit which I detested, I tried getting rid of in several ways.
1) Adding it to my already impossible list of demands that I had for myself that I do every day. You can already guess that I failed.
2) Trying to live with it, however this proved to be difficult because of the nature of the habit. This habit is one that destroys self control, long term thinking and hard work ethic (the three things I pride myself most on). This lead to 3 that until recently was my sad cycle.
3) Pretending to fix it and maybe getting a bit of the way, and then completely failing. Beating myself up and then failing again and again and again. Some of the fixes was truly genuine attempts but without modifying my overloaded mental life, I was bound to fail.
4) I hit rock bottom, I decided enough was enough, I added critical things that I believed I wanted at the time as gifts for myself. I dedicated time to actually doing it seriously, I incorporated it as one of my priority goals of the day. I was succeeding.
2) During the summer I moved. However I didn't alter my routines for extreme work and as anyone will tell you (including myself) after a big change in work, place or friendship you should't expect much from yourself. I didn't allow that, I viewed that as weak, that I had failures to make up for, then I could rest. Here's what happened, I had two knockout colds - and I rarely get sick - that had me fully grounded and unable to do anything for 3 days apiece. This was my body wresting back the minimal offline time that it needed that I was refusing - because I thought something catastrophic would happen if I did - to give.
3) During the school (which was now remote), I didn't lower my expectations. In fact I pushed them further than I would have allowed anyone in my care to do. I started my school day at 0730 and didn't end till 1700. I usually woke up 0530 and as the semester went on that happened less and less, I began to have more and more really bad colds and issues sleeping. I pushed back my wakeup time to 0630, but still planned as if I was getting up at 0530. This meant I started the day already an hour behind, at that point I only had an hour before my self imposed start of school began, I would eat and squeeze in 30 - 45 minutes of self imposed work. My exercise slipped, my mental health slipped. However I pushed things, I would end my day at 1700 and by 1805 be doing my self imposed work until 2030, then I would read until 2230 or sometimes until 2300 unable to focus on reading, but unable to sleep and intolerant of just doing nothing. My sleep worsened, I - who prided on caring for myself - began getting up 10 minutes before 0730 and starting my school day still half asleep. This is something that I would say is stupid to anyone, yet I was doing it myself. It got worse, I began dropping critical transition routines (these are transitions that are designed to have you either enter or leave a specific mindset), meaning that I was fighting with myself more. I was getting more exhausted and still I kept pushing myself.
During the holidays, I realized that something was really wrong, but I thought it was that I wasn't doing enough. That I was being lazy. I was sleeping a tremendous amount of time (some days 14 hours) and then working harder to "make up" for the missed work. I felt guilty for not following any of my routines, believing that I was too time constrained to follow them. Each day I finished my work feeling like "maybe I did a good job".
The now
By dropping my expectations to the big four. I have had less to do each day and because of that I have more free time. Time that is currently spent sleeping. For example, today I ended up waking up at 1030.
I have realized the modern Maslow's hierachy of needs for truely feeling good about yourself.
Commit to less and commit less time than you think makes sense
1) Commit to less and commit less time than you think makes sense.
Committing 2 hours per day to Sapphire Pack I thought was going easy on myself. I obviously had around 4 hours I could spend on it during the weekday and more like 10 each weekend day right? However, something I'm not sure what but I'm eternally grateful for, got me to choose 2 hours.
This has actually been hard on a few days but each day I'm proud because I did the two hours which honored my inner and innate goodness.
Stop trying to fill every minute of your day with "productive" shit. That's what it is, you're friends really don't care what you're doing. If you're going this deep (or crazy in my own words), you're really running from something. For me it was the belief that I was a failure, and always will be. I know this is wrong so every time I think that I contradict it, it's hard because at first I didn't believe it really, but know I do and it's easier. You're not a failure, trying to prove to yourself that you're not a failure will ironically lead you right there (as it almost did to me). Imagine you were doing what I did for another 2 years, where would you be, who would you be, how functional would you be? Furthermore, remember that I continued doing this extreme during Covid-19, which meant even MORE stress, LESS connections and a host of other microlosses that we don't realize we needed until we actually loose them.
Sleep is first
2) Sleep is first
If you overwork yourself to the point of exhaustion day in and day out 4 years (1460 days), you're going to exhaust your brains work fuel, and it's backup work fuel and the emergency work fuel and so on. You're brain needs to rest in order to work, if you're not giving it what it needs, it'll take it from you as an extremely last resort and when it's desperate.
Let yourself sleep, allow yourself to actually sleep. I was able to do this because of reduced responsibilities and realizing that I could finish my entire day in about 3 hours. This would have scared me even 7 days ago, but having less work means that you have more time to do thing (or nothing as my case has been for many weeks). Along with willing to hangout with people more, spend time doing thoughtful things and really living in the day (not the work hour).
Routines
3) Routines are second
Once you no longer need to catchup on sleep (or your brain use sleep as a way to recover boredom or offline time), this is what you need to begin doing. Routines allow your brain to slip into a groove, what to do and what not to do during specific parts of the day, thereby using less energy overall.
If you find your routines slipping, don't do what I did many times which is drop the routine. Drop work, drop things that don't seem critical. If everything seems critical, then think again, dropping routines is your brain's way of trying to keep up with what you've asked of it. Don't allow it to do this "favour" for you.
Exercise
4) Exercise is third
This may seem backwards right? Why would we do exercise after setting up a routines? Shouldn't we do it before? That's exactly what I thought and look how wrong I was. I ended up only hitting 4/28 workouts in the last month. This was because I wasn't addressing the fact that I still was demanding too much from myself (in other words, I was drawing more from the brain than I was giving it). Now if we look back at February I was hitting 26/27 workouts in this month. This was because I wasn't so far in the over demanding myself (long story that had to do with having to spend my University break not being able to over demand myself, so I had partially recovered).
Once you stop demanding so much from yourself and you have more time to do everything, exercising will be the perfect way to fill up an hour of your day. Furthermore, you'll enjoy it more and not be as anxious to hurry it up or cut a corner because you'll have more "buffer time" built in.
Boredom
5) Boredom is forth
Once you've given yourself ample time to be bored or do whatever that is NOT work (even self work, that still counts as work), then you'll be ready to work. This is something that I am going to teach about in deep work, which before today would have been lip service. NOW, NOW it's not. I've actually learned and really feel it. I realize this day of doing nothing was actually the most productive day that I've had in the last 365 days. This boredom was what allowed me to begin deconstructing my self lies and deceptions, what I was trying to fill. This boredom allowed me to make this life saving (and I do not use that word lightly) change.
I am no longer running from whatever dark energy you need to over demand from yourself for 4 years straight. I am running using my own energy, with my own limits. However it means that I'm able to work ironically deeper and longer than I have before. Let me explain in a story:
Imagine that this dark energy is an evil wizard named Franklin. You are named Draco. Now you (Draco) want to use more energy than you have, so you go speak to Franklin. Franklin being a greedy wizard (like all evil wizards are) demands a payment (no not your soul) but a stock in your success. However Franklin (like all evil wizards are) is impatient and demands whatever success you promised NOW. You knowing you can't promise that success, beg for more of that dark energy in exchange for a more ambitious idea. This cycle goes on, until you miss a payment (which you will). At this point, you can go find another Franklin (in this story all evil wizards are named Franklin) or stop borrowing dark energy from these energy loan sharks (err wizards).
This is what was happening with me, I was launching more ambitious projects every time I had my energy wane, because that's how I could trick myself and my brain and body into giving me the ridiculously amount of energy I was demanding. Because these projects would make us successful in a very short period of time - therefore no need at all to worry about actually taking care of ourselves, we can do that once we're rich - over and over and over again.
Obligations
6) The last is obligations
Once you've paid Franklin in either success (or in alot of sleep and boredom, I guess I forgot to mention those payment plans). Then you are ready for obligations. Then you are ready for doing whatever you promised you'd be doing. Here's what Franklin doesn't want me to tell you, you can't pay Franklin in success, because success is never successful enough to pay off your debt. The only way to escape Franklin alive is to pay with sleep and boredom. Then never approach another Franklin.
Using this hierarchy of needs, you need to be more accepting and caring for yourself. But you'll run off you're own energy, be successful for much longer and stop fighting and berating yourself. Understanding that doing nothing is just as important as doing something.
