AE's Journal Round 6 - Navigating the Liminal Space

[Jin+Guice]

The more you write and outline your issues the more convinced I am that you need to move. It seems like your number one problem is meeting interesting, fun and engaging people who want to form friendships. Meanwhile you live in an area where these people are next to impossible to meet, meaningful relationships are difficult to form and maintaining relationships has a huge barrier. I have a friend who just end a marriage level relationship to escape suburbs that are a 15 minute drive from downtown New Orleans because of the crushing loneliness.

I rarely think moving will solve all of someone's problems, bc of the "everywhere you go, there you are" issue, but in your case...


P.S. if you move to Longmont make sure you have somewhere for me to crash so I can come check out MMM HQ.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@J+G - That's the conclusion I'm coming too as well. I've just been driving around and trying new things for a year and a half now--which has been a critical step in overcoming some internal limitations--but I think I've reached the limits of my outer lifestyle at this point. I feel like holding out for the "perfect" location is holding me back, and I'd probably be better off to get a six month lease on an apartment in Denver/Boulder/Longmont and just see how it goes. If it turns out I don't like the location, a six month lease isn't that much of a problem. But if I love it, then I can sell my condo and buy a new one or make some more permanent move.

What I've realized is all the parameters in my life currently, like my job, house, etc, were all things I put in place out of avoidance rather than freedom-to. Hiding in my suburban house and doing the minimal at work protected me from some emotional issues I didn't want to face, but having now dealt with that, all these measures I built to separate me from everything aren't doing me any favors.

Incidently, if I do move to Longmont, I will totally host some ERE event at the HQ. Maybe we can recruit some FIREers that way.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Inner work update
I feel I have made some significant breakthroughs with some inner work lately. My practice has become:

1. Avoid the entire internet and streaming podcasts so I have to actually experience my own life.
2. Get depressed.
3. Journal about being sad about 2k+ words a day.
4. Spend enough time stewing in it that I recognize the cognitive error in my thinking and can correct it and then
5. Piece back where that behavior came from in my past so I can unlearn the things I'm doing that are causing me problems.

Largely this has been very unpleasant, but I'm actually making more progress than I have in years. I was drowning out my own feelings in distractions, and now that I'm not doing that, I'm making significant progress. The goal here is to just feel everything, accept it, then either make changes in the present or move on.

I'm not going to get too deep into my dysfunctional backstory, but needless to say, I picked up many dysfunctional habits as a child that adult me now has to surgically remove from my psyche. The biggest one I've noticed recently was this combination of shoving away my own emotions for years mixed with living in some personal fantasy instead of reality as a way of not having to feel said emotions.

This showed up in a variety of ways, but a big one was this unrealistic fantasy I had that went like this:

1. Oh boy this working for a living thing sucks.
2. I'm going to do the bare minimum so I don't have to experience the job.
3. Who needs work anyway when you can live in a tire and eat fermented lentil porridge.
4. >Proceeds to watch YouTube videos of how to ferment lentil porridge in discarded paint cans instead of working.
5. >Also proceeds to put zero effort into making tirERE a reality and instead plays Skyrim.

It all became an excuse not to have to experience my emotions in the present moment, and because I wasn't experiencing the present moment, I was also not setting realistic goals or trying to grow.

The two main areas this really showed up in was not trying at all at work and also not investing in maintaining relationships. Again, both of these tie back to some dysfunctional family dynamics, which was incredibly hard for me to see for a long time. It's not actually true that work and everyone in the world should be avoided. I was just never taught how to handle any of this and trained to shut down instead.

So what I'm doing about this
Moving is still a priority, so that's not new. I'm going to make it my single biggest priority once these classes are over. I've decided I'm going to rent out my current condo then just go rent an apartment in Denver. I will probably not stay in Denver forever, but it's pretty easy to move from one apartment to another versus having to downsize/landlord/everything I'm doing now. So I'm making this easy and realistic by just getting into a Denver apartment (and therefore having to eat the lifestyle debt of the condo now) and then later, worry about finding the perfect decaying tire in the remote forests of Pennsylvania.

However, there's a second part of this, which is forcing myself to actually try at work instead of doing the bare minimum. I'm actually doing this for myself more than anything. It doesn't feel good to constantly slack off and I was only doing that to avoid my problems. A part of moving on involves actually dealing with my problems instead of running away, and this means actually trying at work.

Now, I do think my current work environment is a little dysfunctional and I'm also underpaid. I was accepting both of these things out of laziness, but if I'm going to try, then dammit I need to try. So in addition to actually trying at work, I'm also going to take my time and find a better job. I have a long history of avoiding life by taking these low hanging fruit sad corporate jobs, but I really don't need to do that and continually shoot myself in the foot.

I really don't see myself staying in software much longer, but I am going to stay until I settle my housing situation, and I also feel like I have unfinished personal development tasks left for me in this career. I want it to be like a graduation when I leave because I felt I learned everything and not just running away without ever trying. Once I have my new housing figured out, a better social group, and my freedom-to/web of goals clarified, then I will reevaluate and maybe find a different job that aligns with what I want. But it's certainly going to be a hell of a lot easier to quit or change careers if I'm in the habit of actually caring, so that's the plan.

Note that the key with all of this (journaling, work, etc) is to train myself that it's okay to feel negative emotions and to learn how to manage them. Boredom, anxiety, anger, etc are not experiences I need to avoid, rather, I force myself to experience them in increasing quantities and therefore develop healthy coping mechanisms such that avoidance no longer drives my choices.

The future of this journal
I am going to try to report more on what I'm doing instead of just how I'm feeling going forward. I've noticed I tend to just gloss over what activities I'm doing when I write these, so I'm going to try to include more of that on top of the navel gazing. If only because it's easier to know where to go and be realistic with reality if I'm actually tracking some data.

[Crusader]

Interesting journal, I'll be following it! One question: what is SoloFI?

I relate to a lot of what you are saying. I like to experience and take in my bad emotions, and I usually do that through music. It is usually anger or melancholy or nostalgia or unrequited love.

Also, in my experience, when I started caring more about my job (and more specifically what kind of job I did instead of the deadend job that nobody wants so that I can slack off), coupled with getting rid of the fear of losing it (because whatever, I don't even like my job), it drastically improved my job satisfaction. I realized that that is how most people operate, and that's why they are more successful than me (not that I actually care that much about "success"). I basically started volunteering at my work to interview other people so that I can prepare myself. I started volunteering for random things that I didn't consider work, and eventually somehow people started valuing my contributions.

[ertyu]

I find your navelgazings and thought process interesting. If it's not what's useful for you to write about, cool. Way too many people think of this sort of inner work as somehow lesser, but the truth about transformation is that the inside impacts the outside impacts the inside and so forth. I'll be following either way.

[jacob]

I find your navelgazings and thought process interesting. If it's not what's useful for you to write about, cool.

Me too and three to those two points. TBH, I only follow a few journals and they tend to be the more theoretical/abstract/introspective ones.

[Jin+Guice]

I also find you detailing your emotional journey to be quite interesting, although it would also be interesting to hear about how what you are doing relates to that.

In the past few years I've also gone through an emotional journey. I wasn't experiencing any emotions except for anger, and for a dude who only has one emotion to outlet all the others, I wasn't even experiencing anger very often.

I've found, getting emotions back after losing them is like finding a new drug. Everything just IS more. Colors are brighter, the air smells better, sounds are more striking. I found that unleashing the negative emotions allowed me to feel more positive ones as well. And also experience my body and senses more, which I was very out of touch with (I block emotions through dissociation). Doing this has pretty much improved every aspect of my life.

I've also noticed that work is dissociative for me. I think this is because of excessive sitting and boredom. My job is also not mentally active like yours is, so I'm not sure if that has something to do with it as well? I'm much more prone to engage in dissociative activities (or over eating which is my other vice) if I am stressed out, tired or bored (work basically is my number one cause of all of these though) and can often solve the problem by sleeping or doing something relaxing.

[dustBowl]

Inner work update
I feel I have made some significant breakthroughs with some inner work lately. My practice has become:

1. Avoid the entire internet and streaming podcasts so I have to actually experience my own life.
2. Get depressed.

...

Largely this has been very unpleasant, but I'm actually making more progress than I have in years. I was drowning out my own feelings in distractions, and now that I'm not doing that, I'm making significant progress.

Ha! I experienced this exact phenomenon when I was really focused on un-addicting myself to the internet earlier this year. I think avoiding the entire internet is a key move. I noticed almost no subjective difference between 12+ hours / day on the internet (when I was working full time) and say, 2-3 hours / hours a day after I left. But I noticed a massive difference between a couple of hours / day and zero minutes. Cutting to zero illuminates the ways in which you're using the internet as a distraction to avoid all sorts of small mental discomforts that pop up throughout the day.

For me, the struggle has been, since I'm not working, I have a hard time filling 14+ hours a day of non-internet time. Pretty much the only time I was successfully able to stick to 'absolute zero' internet was during the period when I experimented with meditating 4, 5, 6+ hours a day. Other than that, I've never been able to do it consistently long-term because I just don't have enough 'stuff' going on in my life to fill the time. I know you're still working for now - do you think you'd be able (or would want to) stick to your no-internet regimen if you left work?

if I'm going to try, then dammit I need to try. So in addition to actually trying at work, I'm also going to take my time and find a better job. I have a long history of avoiding life by taking these low hanging fruit sad corporate jobs, but I really don't need to do that and continually shoot myself in the foot.

Hit me up if you feel like making a foray into faang-land. Based on what you've shared about your current job, I think it could actually be a significantly more functional environment than the one you're currently in, even though I didn't like it. And it certainly would fit with your goal of still-working-but-trying-now.

Note that the key with all of this (journaling, work, etc) is to train myself that it's okay to feel negative emotions and to learn how to manage them. Boredom, anxiety, anger, etc are not experiences I need to avoid, rather, I force myself to experience them in increasing quantities and therefore develop healthy coping mechanisms such that avoidance no longer drives my choices.

This is excellent. As someone who's struggled with a lot of the same stuff, I find your journal inspiring. You're on the path!

[AnalyticalEngine]

You all have convinced me, I will continue with the navel gazing. The thing I do want to add that I feel would be more helpful is getting really specific about my goals, and then reporting them here as a sort of accountability device and also to get feedback. An example is losing weight. "Lose 25lbs" is this ambiguous goal (one could even say strategy) that needs to be broken up into some actionable tactics to actually make happen, and that's where I'm going to need to get really specific. This is stuff like deciding what to eat, how to get the ingredients, how to prepare the meals, how to handle the emotional side like managing when the meals get boring, finding a replacement for comfort eating, or what to do when I'm really fatigued. So I think breaking up my goals and reporting on them in the journal with that level of detail is what's going to be helpful. Of course though, this can still include introspection. After all, a story needs a conflict, and it's a lot more interesting to read "I'm struggling to lose weight because I've developed a habit of eating my emotions" versus "today, I ate 1800 calories."

@Crusader - SoloFI isn't really a term anyone uses, I just made it up to refer to the fact I'm saving on a single income and will be supporting just myself in retirement (aka, I am single). It complicates the math somewhat because I can't rely on a spouse to cut costs like housing or transportation, savings are slower on a single income, and my social needs are higher because I'm not getting default socialization at home. Of course, being married would have its own, different complications, but I do find that FIing on just one income as a single person requires being more careful with finances because you don't have anyone to back you up in the case of mistakes.

Also, in my experience, when I started caring more about my job (and more specifically what kind of job I did instead of the deadend job that nobody wants so that I can slack off), coupled with getting rid of the fear of losing it (because whatever, I don't even like my job), it drastically improved my job satisfaction.

This is huge, and it's the mistake I've been making for years. It's not that I have to love work and be married to it or anything, but if I keep picking these shitty jobs because I think they're easy and I can do nothing, then yeah, it's going to be a work environment that sucks and I'm going to be unhappy because I feel like I'm sabotaging myself.

This is something I talked to @dustBowl about, but my work environment right now has the problem of being unsustainable high stress/on fire if I'm working on something with "visibility," but otherwise, I'm just completely ignored and assigned nothing. This is causing the problem of either being literally yelled at in Teams calls or in chat, or my skills are decaying for months while I spend all day trying to learn Russian instead. Also I'm now underpaid by about $30k due to all the inflation lately, so it's really not the best position to be in.

I'm trying to decide if I should just say "fuck this" and literally just quit right now or else hang in there until I move to Denver OR find a new job first then move to that job. Unfortunately, we're about to enter the slow hiring season, and also finding a new job is a job in and of itself. So I've got to think about all of that.

And honestly, I feel like working remotely is doing me no favors. Like sure, the no commute is great, I like being able to walk my dog on breaks or cook lunch in my kitchen, but it's so joyless, it's difficult to network, and I feel like it makes the work environment worse because no one cares about anyone here because you don't have to look anyone in the face. Of course, I've worked in office environments that are this bad too, so maybe the issue here is already getting into that slacker job that just already sucks because the environment sucks.

@J+G - That's been my experience as well. Actually anger was the first emotion I got back too. I think that was because I had gotten used to just letting everyone walk all over me because my default response (thanks to aforementioned dysfunctional up bring), is to just totally freeze and be extremely passive. So when I managed to start getting emotions back, the first one was anger, and it was about the only emotion I felt for an entire year.

This is getting better now, but it is still true I've had to learn to accept all my emotions in order to feel any of them, and most of them have been negative for a long time because that's what zoning out for years will do to you. It tends to make problems pile up that I then have to eventually deal with.

I find work is dissociative for me too, although this is mostly the stress for me, and that on/off cycle I talked about. Again, I have this freeze response by default, so any amount of stress I can't cope with sends me into dissociation, which can run the spectrum from internet browsing to full on DPDR-spectator-mode. I'm trying to learn to manage the stress better and act on problems instead of avoiding them, but as I am sure you are well aware, it's always a challenge to unlearn a lifetime's worth of trauma responses.

@dustBowl - You know, I think you have a good point here with needing to avoid the entire internet. I noticed that I do still use some of it when I reach the point of total fatigue, on weekends, etc, so maybe this is something I need to work at a little bit more. I'm still struggling with these internet activities that have some value but are probably not that great when I think about alternatives.

Like, I do have some internet friends, and I don't want to completely lose contact with some of these people. On the other hand, keeping up with internet friends usually involves having to log into Discord and type messages for an hour, and this is still getting me tied to the internet when I could probably just cut this out and focus on in-person friends. Hell, even the ERE forum can have this problem, so I was considering limiting my access to something like an hour a week on the weekends or something. These are things that all have some value, but like you said, it's got to be the entire internet because even 2-3 hours a day still disrupts my life. Also developing ways to avoid it without work is important too, as I notice my usage is more on the weekends.

One thing I need to figure out is a way to rest properly without these digital distractions. Because it's impossible to be "productive" 24/7, and I also have this added problem of having "fatigue hangovers" when I overexert myself on a given day. My tolerance for pushing myself can sometimes be frustratingly low due to the depression. So I need time to rest, but it's going to be better if that rest doesn't involve digital distractions. I have tried to replace some of my internet time with TV and books for this reason, which I find don't live in my head rentfree for days afterward in the same way the internet does. I think the internet was causing me to have reactions to things that have no impact in my life and then giving me no real outlet for that emotion in a way that TV shows do not. Hell, I think even just playing single player video games is a better use of time because I can just turn them off. The internet has this particular parasocial element mixed with addictive design that makes it basically just awful.

Also avoiding multitasing is huge. Like just watching a TV show or just playing a game is a much better experience than watching a show while browsing reddit or playing a game while listening to a podcast.

I might take you up on the offer to get into FAANG land, actually. I need to work out some web of goals stuff first so I can make the job hunt more strategic, but a more tech-oriented environment is probably much better.

[delay]

An example is losing weight. "Lose 25lbs" is this ambiguous goal (one could even say strategy) that needs to be broken up into some actionable tactics to actually make happen, and that's where I'm going to need to get really specific. This is stuff like deciding what to eat, how to get the ingredients, how to prepare the meals, how to handle the emotional side like managing when the meals get boring, finding a replacement for comfort eating, or what to do when I'm really fatigued.

One tip that worked for me is to limit when I eat. For a few days a week I have a 2 hour eating window from 18:00 to 20:00. Outside that I only drink water. It turns out that if you have not eaten for 8 hours you are used to not eating, and it's easy to keep it that way. Only when you first eat do you get hungry. I hear a 6 or even 8 hour window also works fine. Losing weight is easy this way.

[dustBowl]

I'm trying to decide if I should just say "fuck this" and literally just quit right now

DO EEEEEETTTTT

@dustBowl - You know, I think you have a good point here with needing to avoid the entire internet. I noticed that I do still use some of it when I reach the point of total fatigue, on weekends, etc, so maybe this is something I need to work at a little bit more. I'm still struggling with these internet activities that have some value but are probably not that great when I think about alternatives.

Like, I do have some internet friends, and I don't want to completely lose contact with some of these people. On the other hand, keeping up with internet friends usually involves having to log into Discord and type messages for an hour, and this is still getting me tied to the internet when I could probably just cut this out and focus on in-person friends. Hell, even the ERE forum can have this problem, so I was considering limiting my access to something like an hour a week on the weekends or something. These are things that all have some value, but like you said, it's got to be the entire internet because even 2-3 hours a day still disrupts my life. Also developing ways to avoid it without work is important too, as I notice my usage is more on the weekends.

I run into this same issue. Like, if you watch a YouTube video on some topic that you're genuinely interested it and doing research on, then that's different from just zombie-scrolling through whatever the YT algorithm happens to put in front of your face. Of course, the problem is that when you're done with that video, maybe you click on another video that's not quite as on topic... and then another one... and off you go down the clickhole.

That said, I don't think that going completely internet-free should necessarily be the goal. I would consider facilitating real relationships, like in your example, to be a 'good' use of technology. The problem is that 1) it's so easy for 'good' and 'bad' activities to bleed together, and 2) There aren't actually clear delineations between 'good' and 'bad' activities. There's a whole bunch of grey area where what you're doing is adding value to your life, but is it enough value to make up for the trade-offs?

I have tried to replace some of my internet time with TV and books for this reason, which I find don't live in my head rentfree for days afterward in the same way the internet does. I think the internet was causing me to have reactions to things that have no impact in my life and then giving me no real outlet for that emotion in a way that TV shows do not.

It's interesting to see that we seem to have come to a lot of the same strategies independently. This line of logic is what lead me to get off reddit and stop watching the news in general. My family seems to think I'm derelict in some kind of moral duty if I don't keep up with the news. But like... no one I know is actually making any changes to their lives based on what they watch on the news / read on reddit / whatever equivalent platform. They're just getting emotionally triggered and then going on about their lives, because that's all they can realistically do.

It would be different if consuming this stuff led to some kind of concrete action, but in most cases that's not how it works. The scope of all this is way past the level of agency that any individual human has. The net effect of consuming all this content is that people actually experience a decrease in their sense of agency, which ironically makes them less likely to take any action on the topics they're getting fired up about.

When you unhook your brain for a while it becomes clear how toxic it all is. The entire internet has turned into one giant algorithm that tries to keep your attention by triggering the strongest emotional reaction it can. Best to just purge most of it from your life.

I might take you up on the offer to get into FAANG land, actually. I need to work out some web of goals stuff first so I can make the job hunt more strategic, but a more tech-oriented environment is probably much better.

My experience has been that as a dev, working for a tech company is significantly better than working for a non-tech company. When I moved from finance to tech, pretty much every aspect of the job improved - the tooling was better, the processes were better, the management culture was better (all my managers were engineers who got promoted). The pay was better. Etc.

[AxelHeyst]

I've done a few no/low internet experiments and so far the one that struck the best balance between extracting real value and losing my mind *for me* was my one day a week thing. On one day/wk only I could use screens. During the off days anytime I though of some information I wanted to look up I wrote it down, so by the time I got to my Internet Day I had a list of mostly important, relevant stuff to extract. My experience was that after going through my list I didn't feel like going on a clickhole binge and so I just shut it down after a few hours.

[AnalyticalEngine]

DO EEEEEETTTTT

Don't tempt me! I already have this fantasy of quitting and moving to the lower-cost-of-living Grand Junction and opening a meadery.

@dustBowl, @AxelHeyst - You both have some good points here the internet. I do agree it's a struggle because there are legitimate. high value activities on the internet, but it's also an endless hole of life-sucking addiction. Nevertheless, this is making me thing I could be more strategic with what I'm doing here.

I like this idea of time boxing it to only one (or a few) days a week, and also being extremely careful with what I'm doing here and why. I think I still have a lot of Internet addiction to get over too, because even though I am doing about 100x better than I used to, it's still finding a way to creep back into my life. I think a mix of weekly time boxing and also doing the digital minimalism thing of cutting it all out then only adding small things back in might be the solution.

[AxelHeyst]

Another two cents - I think about my relationship with the internet now as a dynamic equilibrium. For a while I thought I needed to find the One Right Practice/set of rules for engagement with the internet. I now think that what's most appropriate changes month by month, and it's better overall to take it as a dynamic but intentional relationship. This takes the stress/stakes down a few notches. Is my one-day-a-week practice too little internet for right now because I need to plan and communicate EREfest/family holiday/am learning a new skill where all the info is scattered on random forums? mkay I'll use the internet more and change my rules for a while. Do I notice myself slipping into mindless use? Time to add more structure/rules/hacks like de-appifying the phone or putting a timer on the router.

It becomes a toolkit of workflows guided by introspection rather than a rigid sin + shame story we use to hit ourselves in the head with.

[AnalyticalEngine]

That's also a good point, and I feel like that could apply to more than just internet use. Like it's also a good framework for spending money or doing anything else deemed "bad." I do find it's important to avoid moralizing habits because otherwise it's too easy to become extremely critical of failure, which derails progress.

Of course, being very aware of one's goals makes the process easier. I suppose that's another reason to learn "freedom-to."

Unrelated but actually trying at work has so far made it about 20x more intolerable. I actually think this is good because it's going to make it easier to get my spending back on track and also then quit if I stay aware of the fact I hate this and don't drift off into complacency because dissociating makes work more tolerable.

[AnalyticalEngine]

October Wrap-Up
I definitely overdid it this month with the ~15 hours per week of classes, but those are mercifully ending in November. The reason I took so many is that I wanted to force myself out of the house so I'd stop stewing on all my problems, and they did help with that. Being so busy also helped me identify what is most important to me to fit into my schedule, so it was a worthwhile experiment.

From Depression to Burn-Out
I feel like the depression has improved enough that I would now classify it as burn-out/exhaustion instead, which is a huge improvement. I'm currently now trying to balance doing enough that I am properly stimulated without running out of energy, and this is a careful balance to maintain.

One problem I'm running into is that I'm usually doing things late into the evening because that's when I'm free, and so my schedule normally looks like leaving the house from 4pm-9pm. The problem with this is that when I come home, I'm still overstimulated from whatever I was doing, and so now I'm having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. I even tried simply staring at the wall for an hour before going to bed yesterday in the hopes it would quiet my mind, but it didn't work. And now this is causing me to be so tired I have trouble focusing until about noon the next day.

Actually, one symptom of depression is constantly having this negative monologue running inside your head 24/7, and I definitely have this problem, and it gets worse when I overfill my schedule. My inner work currently is focused on trying to get my brain's inner critic to please shut up. There's a specific type of meditation that's supposed to help with this, called zazen, which is where you simply sit with your eyes open and watch the thoughts come into your brain without holding onto them. I have done this a bit, and it does help, but it's also extremely boring, so it's hard to want to set aside time to do it. So what I'm working on instead is trying to substitute the negative monologue with a neutral/more realistic one, as well as journaling to get it all out of my head and then trying to remind myself what I'm feeling isn't the same thing as what's actually happening.

Cal Newport's Deep Life Stack and lifestyle design
I tried doing some reverse fish bone exercise for lifestyle design. These helped a lot with forcing me to think about what I'm doing and why, but then I ran into the problem where my life is too unorganized and I'm too behind on some major tasks that the reverse fish bones were too much detail for what I currently need.

So instead, I have started to implement Cal Newport's Deep Life Stack, which I'm finding more directly actionable. Now, fair disclaimer, I try to be somewhat careful with Cal Newport because I think he basically just teaches you to be a better knowledge worker salaryman, but at the same time, this is also the advice I need right now, so I'm going to implement it.

His stack has four components: discipline, value, control, and vision. The idea behind this is that it's hard to make major adjustments to your life unless you're on top of the smaller things, which is a problem I'm currently running into. So each of these steps is designed to lead you down the path toward more control over how you spend your time.

"Discipline" is about building the right mindset, "value" is about developing a reason for doing what you're doing, "control" is about managing your obligations so they don't consume your entire life, and "vision" is about making more significant overhauls in your lifestyle. In this video, he suggests you spend four months going through the whole process, with spending two weeks on discipline, four weeks on values, four weeks on control, and six weeks on vision.

So I'm going to attempt to follow this for the next four months, and I will report here how the experiment goes.

Discipline
Newport has you do two things for discipline: one, pick three keystone habits. He suggests one professional, one personal, and one health-related. These are things you should do everyday, so they should be non-trivial but also tractable. Then the second thing you should do is write out a list of your current obligations and goals and keep a copy on your desk or elsewhere where you can see it everyday.

The three habits I'm choosing are:
1. An hour of continuous, undistracted coding on weekdays and an hour of continuous, undistracted fiction writing on weekends (my professional goal).
2. Study Russian for 30 min per day (my personal goal).
3. Do at least 1 intentional session of exercise per day. This will be my heavier workouts on gym days, but on off-days/recovery days, I will instead do yoga or stretching at home.

And then my broader goals/commitments are:
1. Work - Be engaged enough at work and don't view slacking off as much as possible as the end goal.
2. Writing - Work on my urban fantasy novel. (I'm putting historical fiction on the back burner because it required too much research for the amount of time I currently have)
3. Learn - Study Russian and update my programming skills so I can find a better job.
4. Curtail - Continue to attempt to liberate myself from the damned internet addiction. (This is so much easier said than done)
5. Exercise - Run twice a week, lift weights twice a week, and try to fit in more exercise classes at the rec center so I can actually do the exercises right.
6. Diet - Cook meals at home, mostly vegetables and protein, and try to lose 20lbs.
7. Social - Keeping up with social relationships and activities.
8. Invest - Keep up with tracking expenses and decluttering/prepping the house to sell.

I'm going to attempt to do this for two weeks and will report back how it went.

Social Stuff
I'm trying to balance the reality of living in a bad environment for social connection with putting myself out there continuously so I don't go insane from working from home, while also setting aside time to get the house up for sell this spring. Since most of the classes ended, my current social environments are:

1. Russian class
2. Volunteering to teach ESL at the library
3. In-person writing group
4. DnD group

These are the routine things I'm doing. I'm going to try to fit in some more experimental, one-off, meetup experiences in between this so I can keep broadening my horizons. Also there's a tennis club by my house I might join for the sports experience, but I'm waiting on that because I feel like I'm already doing too much.

I've noticed a mistake I'm making is that I'm good at putting myself out there and talking to people, but I'm bad at getting people's phone numbers and scheduling things outside of meetup. Part of the problem here is living too damned far from everything such that I'd be driving 30 min to get coffee with someone, but also some of it is also an internal hangup from how I was raised. (You're basically taught in Mormonism that the outside world is evil and you should just hang out with only your immediate family/church 24/7, so actually doing the work to maintain relationships and realizing I'm allowed/responsible for showing interest in other people is a bit of a struggle). Again, trying to balance moving forward here with conserving my energy for more high-impact things, like moving.

Work
I'm treating work as if I need to stay here for at least five more years. The reason I'm doing this is that I'm saving up extra money to basically rent a nice apartment at this point, and also it's better mentally if I think of my career as something I'm actually doing rather than something I'm actually avoiding. This is opening up ideas inside my head of jobs I might actually not hate.

I have two networking conferences scheduled to attend in November, and my goal is to get a more tech or academic job where I'm going to have a higher caliber of coworker, thereby improving my personal network. I see myself eventually moving to either a FAANG job, start up, or academic institution. I'm going to take my time here and be picky so that I don't keep falling into these low-effort jobs out of desperation to get out of bad situations, which is a pattern that's plagued my career.

The risk I run with this plan is that I might just turn into a better salaryman instead of getting out of work, but I'm going to attempt to avoid this by making sure I always have my own goals for any given job instead of simply adopting their goals for me as my life goals. So the attitude here is "does this role fit into my life system?" and not "yessir I'll drink the kool-aid" or "I hate work so I'm going to watch YouTube."

[AnalyticalEngine]

Mid-Month Update
I've been trying to lean into the Orange/Achiever mindset lately because I feel like I still have lessons to learn at this level, and learning I certainly am. I'm realizing I've let my schedule get pretty chaotic/unplanned, and this is seriously impacting my ability to get work done. Cutting out the worst of my internet usage has helped, but I'm slowly realizing it has to be EVERYTHING if I want to get serious about this because even small interruptions, like deciding I need to go to Walmart to pick up a few items, seriously derails my day.

I think a problem I'm running into is that I'm doing too many intellectually demanding activities such that I'm always mentally exhausted, and so putting in more effort with work is competing with my bandwidth for writing or learning Russian. This has made the task of applying myself more difficult. I've also found that making a bunch of lifestyle changes is also cognitively difficult while I attempt to change the routine, which makes me think I can offload some of the burden onto habits and routines once I get better at this. I might also have to accept working full time means I have to drop something else.

I'm doing the Cal Newport/Huberman Labs thing of trying to preserve four or so hours a day for "deep work" then arranging everything around those sessions to focus better. This felt like pulling teeth at first as I continue to suffer from internet distraction withdrawal, but it's definitely getting easier the more I stick with it. Again, the lesson here is that it has to be EVERYTHING that I either cut out of my achedule or strictly time box because even rearranging spices in the cabinet is sometimes more fun than working.

The ideal schedule for me would be:
630 - Wake up and walk the dog
700 - Breakfast
730 - Meetings
800 - Deep Work Session #1
930 - Exercise
1100 - Lunch
1130 - Deep Work Session #2
1300 - Break (have tea, go for a walk, don't get sucked into browsing or some random tasks, it needs to be a real break)
1330 - Deep Work Session #3
1500 - Walk the dog again
1600 - Dinner
1700 - Night socializing session (Currently Russian class, the ESL class I will be teaching in Jan, writing group I run at the library, random meetup, etc. might rethink this because all these social activities require a lot from me but it's all stuff I really want to do. I do sometimes also just go watch television too if I'm particularly burned out)
2100 - Bed (I never stay up late because I do not function without sleep)

Then on the weekends, I'm doing chores, trying to batch cook and freeze everything for the week, or going to random stuff with friends/meetup. So even though this is a pretty rough schedule, I feel like I am at least making progress toward building and living a coherent web of goals without getting bogged down in making work the center of my life. Because even if I were to quit my job tomorrow, this schedule would stay basically the same, it's just the work sessions would change to personal projects and I'd be free from a few tremendously painful meetings and that's it.

Career
I realized I actually make $147k a year, not $130k, because I forgot this year I actually got the yearly bonus and inflation adjustment because I finally have enough tenure for it. I'm still underpaid but it's less than I thought. ( I could make $160k-$180k elsewhere)

I had a job interview with a hedge fund, which I did not get an offer for, not to my surprise. I didn't think that would be a good fit, but interview experience is always good regardless. The issue is I want to find somewhere a little more inspiring than my current role with better management, and this is proving actually kind of difficult. I think the problem is that places with better management usually except more out of you, so I'm faced with the decision between coasting some more and having time for hobbies OR dropping hobbies to be able to focus on furthering my career. Realistically, I think I'm going to stick with programming for five more years so that I can get everything I want to get out of it actually out of it, and then also have enough life built up outside of work so that quitting is no big deal. It's a difficult balance to strike because a lot of jobs seem to either be corporate soul death where everyone works two hours a day and no one cares OR start-up lifestyle grind where work is your reason for being.

I think the best thing to here is just interview a lot and also make new developer friends at meetups to get a better idea of what's out there and what I actually need to do to find the best role for my goals. This puts my social limit at Russian, Writing, Programming, with not much other time for sports or outdoor recreation. This might just be the trade off I make until I've got the routine down and my career networking in a better place.

[grundomatic]

From the orange playbook is "if you want something done, give it to a busy person". If you can truly embrace the achiever mindset, you might find yourself easily able to crush your after-work activities in addition to crushing your job.

Blending this with our mastermind conversation, also included in the achiever mindset is enjoying the fruits of your labor. If you get a new job with a better salary, just think of that money as going to pay for living in whatever fancy neighborhood you want so that you enjoy where you live. My housing requirements when I was in this stage was, no joke, "I want a view".

Also, don't forget the travel. I want a postcard from Cyprus telling about beaches and practicing your Russian.

Overall, I can appreciate the approach. There is a difference between telling yourself you don't want something or shouldn't want it, and having "been there, done that".

[AnalyticalEngine]

Overall, I can appreciate the approach. There is a difference between telling yourself you don't want something or shouldn't want it, and having "been there, done that".

I've been trying this for ~three weeks now, and I have definitely found it's an important strategy for me because it's covering a lot of gaps in my lifestyle that I was ignoring before. Specifically, Orange has a focus on a high level of competence and Getting Things Done. One thing I realized while attempting this is that I have a large gap between what I want and what I'm actually doing, and it's going to require actual, day-to-day execution to fill that gap.

An example is losing weight. A lot of people want to lose weight (the strategy) and the tactics are fairly straight forward (eat fewer, higher quality calories). But the actual execution is the hard part. So this Orange mentality is forcing me to actually confront the fact that if I actually want to lose weight, then I need to find a way to overcome my personal challenges (comfort eating, being too exhausted to cook, overfill my schedule too much so I don't have time, etc) with it and actually implement the tactics.

All this said, after trying this for three weeks, I think I'm actually trying to do too much and therefore failing at all of it, so I'm going to scale back a bit and focus on some fundamentals then work up. Cal Newport recently revised the deep life stack where he split it into two halves. One half is basically "get your shit together" and the other half is self-actualization, with the theory being that it's hard to control the big, meaningful things if you don't have control over the little things first, which I'm increasingly finding to be true. So I might go back to the drawing board here and primarily focus on diet/exercise/limiting screen time as my three core habits for now. When I feel like I have those under control, I can try to expand the Orange mindset to more things for greater gains.

[Jin+Guice]

I think the "getting your shit together" aspect of ERE is the most overlooked, mostly bc DLj is unconsciously competent at having his shit together so he doesn't write very much about it.

Most of the productivity bros recommend not actually doing that much each day and most useful productivity stuff I've read is about keeping the barrier to entry on projects low so you get excited about them and actually get to the deep work stage of the project. Even though I don't do it anymore, I felt like GTD was the most useful "get your shit together" tool I found, although I am a bit scattered so it helped a lot with that (I also hate logging things, which is why I eventually stopped).