Doing Less
I've historically been the type of person that was fixated on productivity - setting up complicated note taking systems or coming up with habbit tracking that filled every moment of my time. When I stop and really slow down and then think about why I was so obsessed with these systems I can't honestly say why. At the time, I would have said that these strategies were 'cool' and helped me transend into the person that I want to be; however, now I am not sure. I think there was a second layer to it. There is this need , requirement to be 'more-than' and if I can assembled a connected knowledge graph of notes and the perfect balance of habbits a kind of humucelous of myself is created - not the version of my self that is alive today but a different version that when achieved would result in happiness. Because when it really came down to it , I wasn't happy with the current momement and re-writing my future self let me do something about it now. The underlying desire was to find a manner to create enough change in myself that my happiness and satistication would change as well.
Now, the problem is that I don't think change is bad or looking for growth in your life is inheritly problematic. But, there is/was something problematic with my relationship to notes / todo list / and habbit tracking - the motive came from soemthing externally broader and internally deeper. There was this kind of fever related to these items and a desperate need to have the perfect composition of items that would result in the perfect future. Alongside the desire to have the pefect set of habbits , routines was a deep fear of what it meant about me to not have the perfect list. If I didn't have a habbit list that others looked at and were inspired then my value and how I 'spent' my time was wasted. This kind of obession with the future and needing to make the perfect list that sets me appart from everyone else and allows me to be soemthing down the road that everyone will be inspired by and then finally I will be happy is so so so very toxic. Nearly ever aspect of it is empty and dishonest and not actually related to finding 'true' joy. So, what I've been doing recently is removing habbits , killing systems, aspiring for less. Even writing this feel scary ( "but what if doing less results in me being less, what if I don't accomplish anything"). However, I know that what I was doing before was an endless treadmill of needing to do more and more and more in some fragile attempt to placate expectations that I've interalized so strongly that it is hard to tell what brings me joy and what just pays the toll to consumericim and the false gods of productivity. Doing less causes me to slow down and slowing down allows me to appreciate what is in front of me. As silly as it sounds , this act of doing less feels radical. You should try it. Find calm and appreciation.