I started this blog because I’ve always known the power of writing when it comes to organizing your thoughts and being accountable. Until now, most of my writing has been in the form of long-winded posts on reddit that no one reads, or perfectly detailed work emails that–more to my frustration–no one reads. But I know perfectly well that I write those things less to inform others and more to inform myself. Incidentally, that sort of writing can help people who put in the time to read it, but ultimately the motivation isn’t entirely altruistic.
So if I have these other media to use for writing (including personal journals, as mentioned in a previous post), why begin a blog? Accountability. At work I write detailed emails because I want people to know what I know, and I also want people to be able to say “well, he may have been wrong, but at least he was completely honest and thorough in his assessment.” (The more malicious side of me also enjoys quoting myself later when things go wrong, as a combination of I told you so and job security.)
Complicated thoughts invariably fail to be accurately received when communicated through verbal conversation, and I’m always wary of people who feel they need to come to my desk to share their discoveries or request any information from me. People grossly overestimate their ability to recall events or store large amounts of procedural knowledge. For example, when you speak your New Year’s resolution aloud, how many of your peers remember it six months later? How many times have you remembered it six months later? In the off-chance that you do remember it, do you bank on everyone else forgetting so that you don’t have to take responsibility for your failure?
The sort of accountability that’s only possible through writing is absolutely necessary here, because I have an objective: I want to be a better husband and father, and I want to be a more contented person. So it’s imperative that I’m absolutely clear in what I’m trying to accomplish even if I risk sounding redundant, because that’s the only way it’ll stick, and it’s the only way I can resist repeating mistakes. It’s incidental if it helps the reader, but I really hope it does!
The High Level
While meditating (read: lying in bed at midnight staring at the ceiling) on how I can feel more fulfilled, I realized that there are things that I love and there are things that I enjoy, and they’re not in sync. The more I do things that I enjoy that aren’t in service of the things that I love, the less content and more frustrated I become (and the more I frequent my midnight “meditations”).
The things that I love are my wife, my son, and myself, followed by my immediate family and my close relations, followed by good people in general. The things that I enjoy, however, are bad food, spending money, being intoxicated, being as sedentary as possible and, most of all, the bright flashing lights and the never-ending series of half-baked ideas that emanate from whatever screens are nearest in proximity.
So clearly there’s some misalignment of these two sets of things, and I believe all of the latter needs to go away insofar as it doesn’t play a role in support the former. You could argue that things I enjoy provide some sort of outlet and are thus in service to me, which is something that I love (note: like and love are not the same), but more and more I realize that we are just not wired that way. If I indiscriminately do whatever I enjoy most, then I will enjoy less doing that which is in support of what I love.
My entire purpose, in one line, is to maximize the amount of enjoyment I feel from doing the things that are in support of what I love.
Radical boredom
“Radical boredom” is a term that I thought I had personally coined back when “radical honesty” was the rage, but from Googling around, however, it appears I give myself way too much credit. But basically, the idea I had and which I’m finally going to formulate and present to the world (i.e., the one or two readers who may actually follow this), is that by practicing an intentional boredom we may be able to increase our enjoyment of things in a very deliberate and directed way. This is unlike asceticism because it doesn’t mean completely abstaining from any form of indulgence (whatever that may mean to you) just for the sake of abstaining. Rather, it’s about completely abstaining from certain forms of indulgences in order to restructure your indulgences.
There is a lot of research behind addiction, and I will not be going into any of it. What I have to say here is almost entirely based on my own subjective experiences of what it means to be hooked on something. But basically, when we do “rewarding” things we get hooked on them, and the more we do these things, the more routine they become. Then, because routine is itself rewarding, we’re basically screwed.
Since humans are so incredibly smart, we have been able to tap into this cycle and construct a sense of reward without having to be actually rewarded in any tangible way. Physical resources are scarce, after all: If we relied on the physical in order to feel rewarded, there just wouldn’t be enough to go around (given the human urge to always have more and more). Good thing we’ve succeeded in completely hacking our minds, right? But since humans are also so incredibly stupid, we’re now stuck, and we’re generally too oblivious to even realize it or its implications with respect to our happiness.
Summary
So I’ve attempted to clarify that my mission is to maximize the amount of enjoyment I feel from doing things that are in support of what I love, and then I went on to discuss this pseudo-psychology/philosophy that I’m calling Radical Boredom. It’s through this Radical Boredom that I’m going to attempt to maximize said enjoyment for what I love (though I may never use the term Radical Boredom ever again — I’m undecided on that point). Stay tuned, folks! It may be radically boring, but it’s also going to be radically awesome.
The Simple Coder 