I am two posts in and I already feel that I have nothing interesting to write about, or no particular direction to work on or think of. Maybe just choosing a topic and soldiering on is the solution to this. But isn’t this blog supposed to be something that is more spontaneous and brings joy to my life? But the lifehackers and creators online say that consistency and sticking to a schedule is more important than motivation and creative ideas. Hmmm, tying myself in complicated knots seems to be my favourite hobby…
Fucking social media will be the death of me. I do all the hard work and block the facebook feed1, and my monkey brain starts searching for alternatives and settles on linkedin. (My younger self would laugh at my face if I told him about this development. I’m browsing linkedin???) The feed makes it look like everyone is either killing it in their career, or talking to their uber drivers and getting life changing insights. Shit makes me feel like I’m losing out in this race to the good life. So the obvious thing to do would be to cut it out, optimise my input for usefulness2. Also the reason why I do not consume any news. Unless I plan to help with all of the world’s bad shit what’s the point of knowing any of it.
As an aside, the (algorithmic) social feed must be the most disturbing thing to come out of tech/social media. Venmo, a payment app, has a feed, who is paying whom how much. I used to sit and browse that sometimes. I, more often than I would like to admit, go onto my whatsapp chats and start scrolling, clicking on profile pictures. I do this for a few minutes before realising what’s going on. Thank god I have avoided instagram like the plague, not sure I would survive their algorithm. The other big things I need to cut out are youtube, hacker news.
So let’s say you do manage to escape the hairy tentacles of social media and other mindless browsing and get down to business. Sticking to one idea or direction or whatever is so difficult. Every idea seems better than the current one, until you start working on it and then the original idea doesn’t seem too bad. You come across one good exercise regimen, but then you browse them all, get the infamous analysis paralysis, and say fuck it and go back to netflix. Should you play the piano or the drums; keep your head down and grind at your day job, or quit and launch a business; keep thinking about these ridiculous (first-world) problems or practise meditation and daily gratitude.
I do not have concrete solutions to this, only lots of overlapping ideas 🙄:
Actually doing it helps. You can daydream or optimise all you like, but there is no substitute to actually trying out and seeing if it’s a good fit. Helps eliminate a lot of fluff. Anyone who has given up on their childhood dream after trying it can testify. If standup comedy is something on your mind go for an open mic and do a minute set.
Start small. This lowers the barrier to trying anything new. Especially relevant for trying to lose weight by exercise/nutrition or any new habit or skill-based activity.
Stick to it for a defined time period. There is no getting around the fact that incessant jumping around won’t lead anywhere good. For better or worse, you have to make decisions and stick to them, ignoring all the distractions. Something like trying to start and run a small business for 6 months before re-evaluating?
I have not even come to decades-long careers or interests. I envy those who find something and stick to it for years. Maybe that is the way to go about it. Not sure if there is a good answer to this…
I have installed a browser extension called Kill News Feed which gets rid of the facebook feed. So whenever I login I just see the notifications, search bar, etc. Has saved me countless hours, highly recommended.
reading blogs is not a complete waste of time I guess :)