Overhauling the engine
Is it too rusty to be repaired?
The last two days have been still a monotone repeat. My routine is typically Sleep, Eat, Meds, Idle, Walk the dog, Idle, Eat, 30-minute walk, Idle, Walk the dog, Shower, Eat, Meds, Write these posts, watch TV, and then back to sleep. What’s missing there? Action on anything else beyond what is on that list.
The only actual action in these is the daily posts I write. And perhaps the fact that I walk more each day and stretched my walk to 45 minutes and reached 8,000 steps today. And that’s mostly it.
Two days ago I started planning each day. But, now it is indeed an improvement to before that I have a plan each day. But yet, no action on it. And without action, plans are useless. The gap between “What I am” and “What I want to be able to do” is still there each day. An extremely large chasm.
Why is it that I write these blog posts each day without fail and not give up, but unable to use the same or similar techniques to jumpstart my other action? Why would I rather talk about the inability to get to doing things, rather than doing these things? That is the million-dollar question!
Now, there are options. I could get therapy or help. I could get meds to jump-start my action. And I have been through these approaches several times in my life and have stopped them for various reasons. So, what am I going to do about it? What’s the road ahead from here?
Each day now, I have a plan. All it requires is action. But, most of the work required is totally based on boredom and monotony, I am unable to get to them until there is pressure to complete, a deadline with a consequence, bill payment due date, etc., etc.
Of course, one thing I did do is create time. Not time specifically, but emptiness. I have taken away all the distractions that stop me from doing things (for the last six days) so that I am able to actually start doing something with my time. But, yet it is stagnant and no real action.
Over the years, I realize that to kick start my metabolism, I start things ass-backward. An incorrigibly odd order to the sequence of things. So, I downloaded the Toggl app today. Why would one download an app to track the time when they clearly already know that they are doing nothing with it?
The ass-backward way back to work concept comes from something similar that Andy Clark talks about in the Extended Brain (see links below). In my case, it helps me when I develop the extended brain first (in this case a system for tracking the metrics of the work done) before acting on the work itself.
Well, the answer is that the app is part of my alternate external brain. The Horcrux’s that I talked about. With the combination of emptiness and idleness each day and an app showing me a report that I did and logged nothing, I believe will lead me to do something with my time. And I hope that action will start soon. At least with something like the unsubscribing to the newsletters that I talked about yesterday for a start.
Resources:
The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/the-mind-expanding-ideas-of-andy-clark
The Mind at Work: Andy Clark on our brain’s endless entanglement with technology - https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/work-culture/the-mind-at-work--andy-clark-on-our-brain-s-endless-entanglement
Where Is My Mind?: An Interview with Andy Clark - https://iai.tv/articles/where-is-my-mind-an-interview-with-andy-clark-auid-1162
THE EXTENDED MIND by Andy Clark and David Chalmers - https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/concepts/clark.html
Your phone is an extension of your mind - https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/361-blessing-robots-extended-minds-and-more-1.4168944/your-phone-is-an-extension-of-your-mind-1.4173241
During my most recent burnout cycle, I kept hitting a wall. I felt I was "recovered" and back to 100%, but in truth I was closer to 60%. The difference was I was capable of doing _something_ instead of nothing. So I took that as a sign that everything was back to normal (when clearly it was not... hence hitting the wall).
The thing that made the difference was artificially restricting myself. Capacity at 60%? Act like it's at 30%. And that creates space. Space for trying things. Space for doing nothing if I needed to. Space for building a more sustainable way of being.
So in my view, managing the emptiness well feels like an extremely powerful move. 💪