More good/bad: didn’t do a workout yesterday or this morning, and most of my “computer breaks” were spent cooking rather than cleaning. On the better end of things, I got to bed early and got what passes for a full night’s sleep last night (~7 hours; although not uninterrupted, they were quite restful). My hope is that I can continue to go to bed early and begin to truly solidify some morning habits.
Anyway, more good news: I finally managed to get my future authoring document printed out (12 pages! I had no idea I wrote so much), so I’m going to be posting my working notes on that sometime later today – i.e., what my long-term goals will be/habits I’ll want to form and what my day-to-day work on them will be in order to meet my deadlines in the future.
The real issue here is that the majority of my schedule making and planning must be malleable rather than firm; the plan mustn’t be the Evil Dictator that will crush my will for the rest of my life. It must be the platform on which my actual current self must negotiate and trade with my superego ideal self so that, each day, compromises must be made to improve the old but satisfy my own laziness and need for leisure.
Something interesting comes to mind from one of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s lectures: ultimately, when one thinks about a guiding philosophy for one’s own conscientiousness, it comes down to a basic dichotomy: do you accept no responsibility or all the responsibility? One can choose not to accept any responsibility, and then only live in order to maintain the bear minimum aspects of their lives, spending all of their free time and inactive moments nurturing their own basic instinctual pleasures. Alternatively, one can say that they are responsible for the direction, energies, and outcome of every moment of their entire lives, turning every opportunity for action into an investment into their environment and the well being of themselves and those around them.
Obviously, the truly balanced person comes out as a combination of play and productivity, but being more weighted towards productivity generally lends itself towards a significant increase in life expectancy and lifelong success. It’s time to change my fundamental principles and get to work.