Picking up from before

Crazy to think that it’s been half a year since I last posted––time flies, huh.

I’m not going to lie, a big part of why I suddenly remembered about this blog is due to being stuck in quarantine during this COVID-19 pandemic, but there are definitely worse ways to spend time (and I’ve found many of said worse ways). The story goes, I decided to go outside for literally the first time since I’d returned from college (weeks at this point), and my memory of my blog’s existence suddenly came back to me. Evidently, slow walks are good for idea generation––Paul Graham has mentioned this before, but now I believe it.

As for what happened before, gauging from my last couple posts, I had been struggling to maintain well-written blog posts along with school (ah first semester Alex, how little did you know). But, in all seriousness, pumping out essays daily about random pseudo-intellectual ideas during school was not entirely realistic, and I had tried to adapt by decreasing the quality of said posts. I tried to change my inner resistance to putting out flawed work, but that meant I had less and less fun posting. Maybe if I kept it up, I would’ve been able to change that part of me (the one that hates not being “good”)––in any case, what’s done is done. Furthermore, with daily posts and few new experiences, I didn’t feel like my thinking was changing all that much, and the topics I was writing about seemed less and less novel to me.

Without the “productive thinking” section of my blog, it would’ve only been a “accountability” section, which, in my opinion, isn’t super impactful and wasn’t worth keeping the blog going.

But, clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m back.

Changes

I think there will be some changes to how I write on this blog. Currently, some productivity things that I’m trying including three “2-day Rule” challenges, where I essentially put calenders on my wall, each for a specific habit I want to build. Specifically, I currently have “Workout,” “Finish to-do list,” and “Start day Productive.” Every time I do the habit, I check off the day on the calendar and I am allowed to miss the occasional day (life happens), but the rule is that I cannot miss 2 days in a row. I got this from watching Matt Davella, and it’s pretty simple––except I’m having trouble doing it.

For working out, it’s pretty easy since I can normally squeeze that into my day. Finishing my to-do list is more of a whole day kind of challenge, and messing up an early part of my day means it is impossible to complete the habit. In response, I added the “Start day Productive,” but that’s somehow proving to be the hardest to do.

So, in regards to this blog, I think I’m going to start each day off with a walk in the park, where I’ll get to think and reflect on what I want to do for the day. Then, I’ll just write whatever I want here in this blog, and hopefully, this’ll mean I have at least done something productive with my day. Often, the hardest part about stopping a procrastination streak is just that very first task (which is the motivation behind that habit).

I’m hoping that the less rigid structure of the posts will make them feel a lot more casual, so I’ll be able to not put a lot of time into my posts without feeling guilty. It’ll also just make content generation way easier for me, which should also help with making these blog posts a much smaller time commitment when things get busier.

I’ll write about some more updates about my life in the past half year in the next couple days––I’ve been working on some cool stuff that I want to show you guys.