“I am better now.” -Robert G. Ingersoll, American Lawyer and Orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought
There is an old saying/quote that goes “A failure to plan is a plan to fail.” I don’t know what the exact original quote is or even who said it but I remember who was the first person that said it to me and that was my father.
My parents were good, they raised me fairly and gave me tons of freedom. They gave me freedom and I showed them they can trust me. When I made mistakes, betrayed their trust, I lost some of that freedom but there was always a way to earn it back. One of the freedoms that I was afforded was incredibly important and a bit underrated. That was the freedom to fail. My parents allowed me to make my own decisions, plan out my life, classes, schedule etc without much input other than some advice if I asked for it. I made the decision to play hockey, leave home at 17, join the military, leave active service and go to college, study Computer Science, graduate and move to Europe and so much more. I was free to do so without any unwanted interference from my parents because they knew and accepted that it was ‘my life.’
The thing that my parents always pushed me to do, in relation to making decisions, was to plan. Look at all possible outcomes, the possible choices and options I had afforded to me. Think it over and make the best one. Throughout my life, I have adopted a specific, simple but important mentality. That was, As long as I made the best possible choice with the information I had available at the time that I had to make the decision, I couldn’t be mad or allow myself to regret my choice. No matter the outcome I would be able to hold my head high and push past anything negative because I had no other reasonable options. However, when I rushed, chose an emotional option without really considering things and just doing what I wanted and not what I needed to do, that was when I would be disappointed or annoyed at how things worked out. I would try to still never focus on the outcome, but why that outcome happened. What did I forget to look for? Did I choose too quickly? Did I let the emotions get the best of me and make my choice ignoring things on purpose or accidentally? etc, etc.
This being said, I am human and hardly perfect. I am good at being a bit hypocritical when it comes to my own personal life. I suffer from many of the same problems that other people do. You can look at other’s lives objectively and give some advice to help them out but when it comes to the exact same situation in your own personal life, you never seem to be able to see the same problems and take that step back you need. This causes me, when my life gets slightly out of sync with what I see as ideal, suffer from being unable to take a step back when moving into something to organize and plan.
I have suffered this at the beginning of December. Honestly, it started in November but didn’t get to the point of affecting my productivity until December rolled around. I had many things going on near the end of December that I was looking forward to. Football matches with friends, travel to Finland for Christmas, France for New Years then immediately after that, a trip for a weekend to London. All of this was taking place relatively shortly after moving to a new city and being forced to organize everything. I was getting into a new routine, figuring out how my life looks and what I need to do to be most effective and organized. I spent a lot of time with friends, exploring the new city and things associated with it, as well as general housekeeping things.
How does failing to plan effect you, Matt?
Not planning will almost guarantee that I will procrastinate. I will find things that are simpler and less mentally taxing to do. Whether it is playing video games, reading Wikipedia, browsing Reddit and just doing nothing. I am not a distracted person, for example, I’m not someone who can’t focus or has a short attention span. It’s more that my brain/focus has a solid barrier for everything to begin tasks. Luckily, when I make it over that barrier, I also have a similar barrier that contains me within that task to focus and work. Things like writing this blog has a higher barrier, it’s not massive, but it is higher than other things. Not because it isn’t enjoyable, it is simply because it is something that cannot be done during multitasking. I have to sit down, block many things out, my phone, YouTube, video games etc so that I can focus on my thoughts, what I am writing and what I am actually saying. Additionally, the barrier is bigger because of the time required. I will not start and finish this post in 30 minutes. If I could finish it so quickly, it would be a significantly smaller barrier and you would definitely have had at least five or six posts this year… I have released one.
How did you write every day in November but you have only managed to write once since December 1st when you said you would write at least twice a week?
It is because, in November, I planned and sacrificed somewhere between 30 minutes (for the simple, shorter posts) and 3 hours a night just to write. There were certain ones that I basically locked myself in my room and just wrote in silence for 2 or 3 hours. I didn’t plan any video games unless I was traveling and using my Switch to play Stardew Valley, I didn’t watch Netflix, movies, because my evening tv/movie time was consumed by writing and the only media I got to consume was some of my podcasts during work and music during working out/running and usually these were the simpler, comedy podcasts that are easy to have in the background while I was doing other thing and not something that is in-depth or educational.
When December rolled around I immediately learned how much I missed and how taxing it was. I missed many things that I am normally following relatively regularly. Be it YouTube channels, a large handful of my favorite podcasts, blogs and even some sports that I usually caught up with in the afternoon and evening that I sacrificed for writing here.
What are you planning to do with what you’ve learned?
Focus on reasonable goals primarily. I know I will not be able to achieve two posts a week, but most weeks, I should be able to achieve one a week. With me posting this right now I could possibly reach two but I will be out of town Friday-Monday so the most productive time for me to write, the weekend, is already completely committed to travel.
One a week is reasonable, some will be skipped because of life being regularly irregular and I accept that and will not get consumed with frustration if I am not able to write one.
I will more than likely not continue with the little fiction series I started in November. Not because I have no desire to do it, but just because I want to, if doing some fiction things, to be able to change it up and write about a bunch of different things to try and work on discovering and developing a few different writing styles and features to see what works best for me.
Finally, the most important reason that I will accept the possibility of not hitting the regularity of a post a week is that I would rather be able to write a higher quality, better thought out post once every two weeks than have a shorter, lower quality post once or twice a week.
I am committed to writing however not just to write things, but to write well to develop my writing style, share things that are important to me that might also interest others.