Doing one thing a day

[droqen]

. . . if i'm happy i stay up too late bc stuff interests me, and if i'm sad i stay up too late to try to find the joy that i felt i was denied during the day. i basically only get enough sleep when i'm unenthused about life.

~ tweet

[droqen]

This resonated.
Recently . . . I felt like I could sleep well, but I was also kind of sad, and I was spending a lot of time mired in theory. Then I started to do things again, similar to droqever but without the constant self-imposed pressure to release something every damn day. It's started to become really good, tapping into my droqen @ EGW 2024 talk... the important part is not doing something productive every day, but the other part, the feeling that every day is not wasted. If I am going to make or do something on a given day, I have to

1. BELIEVE that it is actually valuable/worthwhile to do in the long run
2. DO THE WORK to ensure that it is, or at least has a reasonable chance of becoming, actually valuable/worthwhile to do in the long run

These things are c l e a r l y   r e l a t e d.
One part of this is... understanding what it is that I value.
The other part of this is putting in the work to have justified faith that I will follow up and create/find that value.

Something else gate said, which maybe I should not quote because it was in a private Discord (PARADISE) but I'll do it and if he wants it taken down (hi gate) then he can tell me:

. . . meaning isn't inherent -- it's assigned
i'm my happiest when i'm assigning meaning to things, rather than searching for meaning
. . . i do have to believe the meaning on like some deeper level than just choosing
but also i don't think meaning is imbued in certain things and not in others

[droqen]

It occurs to me that Chapman's meaningness might be useful here, especially "A rainbow is a three-way interaction among the sun, water droplets, and an observer. // A rainbow is a physical phenomenon, but not a physical object."

[droqen]

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. My trick, which I'll state despite a fear that speaking its name will cause it to dissolve, is to do work with the spirit of seeing/creating the meaning in it, and also to think in discrete terms, even arbitrarily and too discrete terms, of 'doing one thing' and to let myself feel satisfied with doing one thing.

This is where the droqever of it all comes in: I want to do one thing every day. That's my goal. If it's 9PM and I haven't "done a thing," then I usually have a 'thing' available to me that I have, for whatever reason, not been doing. So I will do it, even if it means I stay up until 3AM doing it. On the other hand, if it's noon and I've "done a thing" already, then I'll try to remind myself (gently) that I've already done my thing today. On the other other hand, actually forcing myself to get something done too early can have dire consequences. This isn't a game to minmax. If I treat it that way it's easy to trick myself into doing something that feels like it "should count" rather than something that genuinely satisfies.

There is something very reliable about this psychologically. For me, that is. As I say in my EGW 2024 talk, this is a process which I've developed for myself and for my brain's functional patterns. It is not general purpose advice, but operational instructions for my particular appliance.

P.S. Even as I write this of course I'm doing more than one thing in a day, but as I attune myself to the feeling of "doing a thing," I can tell that I've "done a thing" today and I could stop right away and feel very happy and satisfied, especially knowing that I'm currently operating under the influence of this habit and that tomorrow I'll get to feel this way again. That's really helpful for achieving the union of [Feeling good] and [Getting enough sleep]: I'm going to bed with trust in my heart regarding tomorrow-droqen's actions.

[droqen]

P.P.S. It's very important to note that finishing something that I started yesterday does not give me the good feeling of doing a thing. I won't say that it has to be something new because it doesn't, but 'keeping my word' so to speak is not enough. Following through is a good habit, but is not the root of my "doing a thing"-type satisfaction.