Owl of the Waste

Below is how I would like to spend my day. I’ll of course make adjustments to is later. It’s a list of things I want to do every day, in the order I would like to do them without deviation. When I do that thing, I put a fat, satisfying X over it in red sharpie.

• Rise with the sun
• Drink a tall glass of water
• Mark accountability log
• Run outside and pray
• Check email
• Mark tasks: work, personal, creative
• Shower, shave, get dressed
• Eat breakfast
• 4 Pomodoros: Work
• Break (30-45 mins)
• 4 Pomodoros: Work
• Break (40-45 mins)
• 4 Pomodoros: Personal or Creative
• Love someone
• Evening prayer
• Go to bed when tired

Here’s the deal. It’s a given that I will often fail at doing any number of these things. That’s okay. I’m considering the day a success (in a sense) if I manage to fill out the checklist and mark the things I did as I go along, regardless of which things I succeed at. I need to establish a better rhythm of the day, and until I get there, the best thing I can do is to keep that goal in front of me consistently.

I don’t think I’m happy, but when I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve met very many people who are happy. I’d like to meet the person who finds their average day fulfilling. Who doesn’t suffer a dull ache of feeling like nothing they are doing really counts for anything, except (perhaps) for the rare exception when something unexpectedly meaningful happens. Those rare bits of meaning are a blessing, but one would hope someday I could feel like my life, in general is meaningful and my work nourishing to my spirit, instead of feeling like my spirit is living off scraps.

I figured out what to do with my life. Only it’s not very specific. They’re so general they might be considered cheating as goals.

1. Love God with heart, soul and mind
2. Love people
3. Make ends meet
4. Create beautiful things

Aside from resting to recharge, I don’t want to spend any significant effort doing anything that does not contribute to one of those goals.

Over the past two years or so, I’ve found myself slowly losing interest in video games.  Seems like that should be a good thing, and perhaps it is, but I actually found myself almost worrying about this. On some level, it bothers me that I find it harder to enjoy something I’ve enjoyed all my life.

A lot of people criticize video games for being mindless wastes of time. But that criticism is a bit disingenuous, and seems to (for some reason) come from people who watch sitcoms and read celebrity gossip blogs. When I was a kid, my dad used to say in the evenings, “Turn off your video games so I can watch the news.” Which is fair enough, but even as a kid I felt that it didn’t seem to serve any purpose beyond entertainment to hear some newscaster reciting the dry details of about how another person was murdered in another alley. As I’ve gotten older, I’m only more convinced of that. “The news” is mostly pointless, monotonous, gruesome, and sedentary–the same criticisms leveled at games.

It seems obvious to me that video games can be an artistic medium like any other. I think the monotony of video games is what really gets me.  Some games are built like a skinner box – built to keep you playing, to reward you for a string of mundane tasks. The natural drive to accomplish things, to overcome obstacles to achieve goals, is harnessed by video games instead of real life. The downside is it prevents you from putting that effort into real life.

But… let’s not draw too much artificial separation between video games as a medium and other forms of entertainment. Chess players are always respected as sophisticated and intelligent people. But it would be hard to argue that chess is really less wasteful than, say, Starcraft–a video game that’s all about strategy, tactics, reading your opponent’s actions and thinking on your feet.

After a long while away from videogames, I find myself enjoying a newer one: Portal 2. There is no monotony. Every second of the game is interesting and uniquely challenging. None of the obstacles are boring because you almost never do the exact same thing, and every obstacle requires a fresh approach and nonlinear thinking. The atmosphere is unique, the characters memorable, the puzzles are mind-bending and awesome. My brain is probably growing new pathways as I play it.

So, maybe I’ll never be done with video games, but I think I’m done with 99% of them. It’s only a rare gem that gets my attention. I don’t just mean games that are good with respect to their genres — I mean games that offer a worthwhile experience, where afterward I’m glad I have played them, instead of regretting the time wasted on them.

I’m taking more steps to improve my workflow. The goals, even more than efficiency as such, are discipline, focus, and simplicity. For those who know how disorganized I am by default, the following might surprise you. In a way, it surprises me.

Almost a year ago I started using the pomodoro technique, which is basically work for 25 minutes and then break for 5 minutes, and do this 4 times before taking a longer break. Repeat until everything you have to do is done. I’m using it right now, in fact. A kitchen timer is ticking away as I write this post. I use it for just about everything that’s task-oriented.

I’m also trying something new with my workflow today. I start with 12 stones on the desk, which represent half-hour segments of work. Every time I finish one, I put a stone in a bowl. When all the stones are gone, I can relax.

Recently I started posting sticky notes on my wall about things I have to do. I did this in college, as sort of a to-do list. But now it’s categorized into columns of sticky notes of things I have to do in the various spheres of my life. Work, personal, creative. A column for ideas, and a column for other things/people I’m waiting on before I can move forward. The upshot is that when I look at my wall I see what’s going on in my life at a glance. It’s everything that needs to be on my radar.

A couple of days ago, I converted all of my text documents from various formats to plain text(minus old college work and things that must be in Word for work). Not PDF, not ODT, not .DOC or .DOCX, not even .RTF or Google Docs. In fact, I even exported all my google docs as .TXT. That’s plain old, invented at the dawn of computers plain text.

Why? One reason is I’m tired of all the different proprietary formats and webtools, which can cause compatability issues and take forever to load. And then there’s my aesthetic obsession with simplicty and minimalism.

Formatting is for chumps. I hate writers who overuse italics, bold, different colors and fonts and all the other frills to make them feel better about the rubbish they’re writing, which will only prevent their files from opening properly on other peoples’ computers. If your writing is any good, it will pop on its own, and it will be obvious what you’re trying to emphasize. I think more people should learn how to write instead of dicking around with all the pointless features of bloated writing software. Instead, I am using a plain text editor called Writemonkey. I’ve only spent one day with it, and I don’t think I’ll go back to any other program.

Now I have about 600 text files, some of them very long. Everything is in one place, everything syncs almost instantly with both my computers and the internet via Dropbox. It all takes up a whopping 4.1 MB, and any file opens in <1 second. MS-Word and its slow open-source clones can suck it. Plain text. I’m never going back.

I’m going to attempt to post something every day throughout all of January. It’s not the first time I’ve tried that, but it might be the first time I succeed. As a result, my posts may be boring, but it’s a goal for me, not for you. I want to live more consciously, and with less pointless independence. I just don’t have the desire to appear cool anymore, or to give any kind of flattering impression, even in regard to my google hits. I just do not give a shit anymore. I want to be a good person, not to appear to be a good person.

Tomorrow I’m going to fast. In some ways, I started off the new year totally wrong, and I would like to recalibrate myself. Fasting is a way of reminding myself I need God more than I need food. That’s just for tomorrow, but as a permanent practice, I’d like to pray in the morning before eating, as a daily resetting of my priorities.

Over the next year I would like to develop a more monastic mindset. By which I mean one that is focused, prayerful intentional, less focused on entertainment and consumption. And I want to learn to become the type of leader God wants me to be.

Since I started working from home, I’ve realized just what a huge problem it is that I am not disciplined with how I spend my time. I already knew I was undisciplined, so that much should have been obvious. What I find really surprising is how many people identify with the same troubles. When I tell people I work from home, they often say, “I could never do that.” What they mean is they would have the same problems I do. Constant distraction, laziness, difficulty in separating work from play.

Because of these problems, I’ve considered dropping this freelance thing and getting a normal 9-5 job. But it occurs to me that the people who say “I couldn’t do that” are simply content to go on without ever having mastered the skill of managing their own time. But it is a skill, a virtue, that is important to me, because it applies to my entire life. In short, it’s difficult, but I’m not just trying to make money. I’m trying to become a better person who is better at life.

I deleted it today. Not deactivated. Deleted. No rants about privacy or friendship today, just the mild satisfaction you get when you take out the garbage.

Not going so great the past couple of days. I’ll probably be up late today, but I plan to get back on the horse tomorrow and rise early in the morning once again. I will not be defeated by my own laziness!

Also been thinking about leadership today. My friend Lizzi said a good leader is the person who is the first to make a sacrifice when a sacrifice is needed. Amazing how different that is from the standard picture of a “boss” who simply makes others do his bidding. Being a leader is not a glamorous thing.

No problem waking up this morning at 7:00. Now it’s 7:00pm and I am braindead. Time to pay my debt.