A reader sent me this essay after I had written about midlife crises (and why we should want one)...
I think this piece helps encapsulate the need to continuously pick our head up, especially as we frequently go heads down into our different pursuits. A continuous cycle, back and forth.
I might add that a valuable process (at some point in here) isn't just recalibrating our activity with existing values, but recalibrating on the values themselves, too. i.e. "do we still believe what we used to believe?"
I appreciate the way you frame this as a habit and practice! And what you wrote about grief and perspective. I remember when my father died, I had such a seismic shift in what really mattered--but from the beginning I also knew that I would forget the feeling, and get angry about traffic and stressed over emails. And I have! But I like thinking about it on this small, iterative scale. Last year I bought a beautiful green half-hourglass for no reason, but I like the idea of using it to check in with what problem I'm solving and prioritizing my time with that level of micro- frequency.
The problem with this is the "should". Surely you "should" do with your life whatever you want to do with your life, and maybe this involves "wasting" time on the internet. IMHO a better "solution" would be an app that makes you fill in a questionaire after everything you watch. If you enjoyed it then it's hard to argue that you "should" be doing something else. If you didn't, as I suspect is usually the case with things like checking up on the news/politics, then ask yourself why you did it anyway because it sounds like a bad habit and you should probably be addressing the cause rather than just avoiding it by doing something that you "should" be doing.
Henrik, I love how you’ve highlighted the way our minds drift and offered a practical way to grab hold of them to redirect our actions. I’ve been doing something similar to try to understand why I drink alcohol. My experiment isn’t about mental drift, but habit changing.
The distant threat of increased chance of dementia worries me enough to think about lessening how much I drink, but not to completely stop. So, now I have to figure out what are my top priority reasons to drink and to stop drinking for lesser reasons. It’s been an odd exercise.
I still don’t know my priorities, but I do know that I turn to alcohol in mid-afternoon more times than I like to see on my spreadsheet. Studying the reasons for my column highlighted with blocks of bright red cells (my color code for drinking more than I think I want) seems to circle around either frustration with not being able to execute on a skill I’m trying to develop or a desire to celebrate.
You question is incredibly helpful because it points toward action. My tracking of my behavior shows that I have habits that lead to drinking more than I believe is good. The questions I now must ask myself when my habit for drinking is triggered are “Is this a good reason to drink?” “Are there good reasons to drink? “What would my best self do right now?”
Self-examination always reveals how much we can fine-tune who we are right now for an improved self in the moment. Why we don’t always choose the action that we are certain will lead us to a better self in the next moment is a real conundrum.
This piece helped me get my priorities straight right away. Thank you for that. I also appreciate the reading list. (And keep up the good work!)
Johanna for the win
A reader sent me this essay after I had written about midlife crises (and why we should want one)...
I think this piece helps encapsulate the need to continuously pick our head up, especially as we frequently go heads down into our different pursuits. A continuous cycle, back and forth.
I might add that a valuable process (at some point in here) isn't just recalibrating our activity with existing values, but recalibrating on the values themselves, too. i.e. "do we still believe what we used to believe?"
Thanks for a great essay.
I appreciate the way you frame this as a habit and practice! And what you wrote about grief and perspective. I remember when my father died, I had such a seismic shift in what really mattered--but from the beginning I also knew that I would forget the feeling, and get angry about traffic and stressed over emails. And I have! But I like thinking about it on this small, iterative scale. Last year I bought a beautiful green half-hourglass for no reason, but I like the idea of using it to check in with what problem I'm solving and prioritizing my time with that level of micro- frequency.
The problem with this is the "should". Surely you "should" do with your life whatever you want to do with your life, and maybe this involves "wasting" time on the internet. IMHO a better "solution" would be an app that makes you fill in a questionaire after everything you watch. If you enjoyed it then it's hard to argue that you "should" be doing something else. If you didn't, as I suspect is usually the case with things like checking up on the news/politics, then ask yourself why you did it anyway because it sounds like a bad habit and you should probably be addressing the cause rather than just avoiding it by doing something that you "should" be doing.
Henrik, I love how you’ve highlighted the way our minds drift and offered a practical way to grab hold of them to redirect our actions. I’ve been doing something similar to try to understand why I drink alcohol. My experiment isn’t about mental drift, but habit changing.
The distant threat of increased chance of dementia worries me enough to think about lessening how much I drink, but not to completely stop. So, now I have to figure out what are my top priority reasons to drink and to stop drinking for lesser reasons. It’s been an odd exercise.
I still don’t know my priorities, but I do know that I turn to alcohol in mid-afternoon more times than I like to see on my spreadsheet. Studying the reasons for my column highlighted with blocks of bright red cells (my color code for drinking more than I think I want) seems to circle around either frustration with not being able to execute on a skill I’m trying to develop or a desire to celebrate.
You question is incredibly helpful because it points toward action. My tracking of my behavior shows that I have habits that lead to drinking more than I believe is good. The questions I now must ask myself when my habit for drinking is triggered are “Is this a good reason to drink?” “Are there good reasons to drink? “What would my best self do right now?”
Self-examination always reveals how much we can fine-tune who we are right now for an improved self in the moment. Why we don’t always choose the action that we are certain will lead us to a better self in the next moment is a real conundrum.
Yours in self-experimentation!