On habits

I made a point to write 500 words everyday, unless I really can’t, yesterday. I will post them; barely edited, completely free for anyone to read on the internet. My goal, to write 500 words everyday and marking it done. You might be asking, but what is the goal? The idea generally is to get better at writing and maybe save my mind. But the problem with such a goal is that, it is an unclear goal, and arguably a big goal. There is no clear metric for measuring the quality of writing. Hence, there is no point in saying that I want to get better at writing. What I can say though, is that I can produce 500 words every day. It is clearer; and 500 words is not that much to be unmanagable.

I will also try to not edit too much; I even thought about creating a writing software where I could not delete. But creating a text editor is a non-trivial task. Once I reach 500 words, I can move to with my day. It almost does not matter what I write. I am thinking of writing chapters of a micro-novel. It is possible that I give up and move on to something else. I don't think I will make anyone read what I write, writing something in this fashion is not worth reading. But for me, it would like working out. With LLMs abundant, it even harder to start a blank page and write 500 words. So a lot of it will be sloppy, and in the end, I might not even solve any of my problems.

But that's the really nice thing about habits, is that, once they are there, they are reliable. Take my grocery habits, I have made a point to visit the grocery shop every day, even though I don't need anything. Or, at least, walk past it. This way, I have solved the problem of having things to eat at home. It's a reliable piece of my personal infrastructure that's reliable, built on the predictable nature of my lifestyle. I don't even think about doing groceries, I just end up going there. It is similar with working out. It usually takes two weeks worth of doing to make something into a habit, in my experience. And once you have a habit, it is yours. Habits are powerful, because they are reliable, and take very little mental or perceived physical effort. Speaking of last night's words on productivity, what one should really be doing is creating habits.

Habits are also generally much easier to handle in terms of planning. If I now want to start a new habit, for example, going out for a run every day, it would be much easier for me to see that I do not have any predictable empty spot in my day for a run.

It is somewhat funny, that I actually have this idea that I should be planning out my day ahead, as if, I am doing so many important things with my day. I am not even a parent, neither do I have a job that requires shift-work, and I am definitely not making the next Banksy. But like I was saying yesterday, I don't do anything worthwhile with my time, at yet, I do not do things I enjoy doing enough. Part of it, of course, is the endless snacking of entertainment. The other part of is the made-up idea of being on top of things that I think I should be on top of.

Maybe tomorrow, we can talk about the beauty in being at the bottom of things, like Don. Knuth wrote.

my role is to be on the bottom of things