Creating habits

Almost a month that I haven’t written anything on my blog. It’s often the same scenario that keeps on repeating itself. It starts off in a burst of motivation, this time I really want to keep this thing updated to share my views on everything. But then there’s this one week where I really don’t have the time, or more accurately that week where I’m too lazy to find the time and instead waste my free time on the same redundant, empty habits of checking social media repetitively. The addiction is strong, and it is a vicious circle. I need to find a way to escape from it. A ton of third factors make it so that it’s not happening so far however. The old, slightly arrogant so called productivity experts rejoice as they find in my situation the perfect customer for one of their books that highlights best practices to become efficient at everything you’re doing. Just to realize three weeks later that you’ve failed to maintain the rigid routine you were supposed to self-impose.

Publication high

It’s interesting how sometimes you get that dose of dopamine from submitting, or publishing something. You finish writing something like this blog post and you share it with the world, which releases a tiny feeling of accomplishment. Of course it’s much better if it’s something actually valuable, as I imagine developers feel when they push some code live and see actual changes that many people will be able to experiment with, ultimately participating in the creation of something bigger, something that will make a difference on the long term. That’s why my current situation of writing a thesis tends to be painful. As I spend some days reading some articles, doing some research, I never really get to the point where I’m able to write something structured enough that will realistically feature in my thesis’ final form. But this middle work of chewing and regurgitating literature is an important one.

Time frames

Today I decided to write this post because it had almost been a month that this blog was left alone. It’s funny how certain time frames, like one hour or one day, one month, have a cognitive impact on what we’re doing. I tend to set goals based on those irrational measurements. That’s why when my friend told me she actually set her alarm clock to random times every morning (e.g. if she needs to wake up at 8:00, she would set the alarm at 7:53 or 8:04), I found that so beautiful. There’s surely a strong message in doing that.

Lacking purpose

And again, this is simply a collection of separate thoughts, which reinforces this sense of helplessness that I’m facing. It’s chaos inside my head. I divert from my objectives in a matter of seconds, I get distracted, I need my dose of social media awareness. I try many different approaches but something is not right, I’m still looking. I’m erring. It’s a privileged youth’s fancy problems, which is despicable.