(The third part of this never materialized, but I might try to write a "3 years later" post when I've finished the importing)
So this part is a bit more general, about a few things that I’ve been reading lately, and how that’s made me think about what to do next. The key quotes are below:
The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination (MF - working on unimportant things), because it doesn’t feel like procrastination. You’re “getting things done.” Just the wrong things.
Any advice about procrastination that concentrates on crossing things off your to-do list is not only incomplete, but positively misleading, if it doesn’t consider the possibility that the to-do list is itself a form of type-B procrastination. In fact, possibility is too weak a word. Nearly everyone’s is. Unless you’re working on the biggest things you could be working on, you’re type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you’re getting done.
- Paul Graham, Good and Bad Procrastination
Ow. To be fair, GTD is pretty agnostic about what you should be doing. Dave Allen’s take is that he gives you a tool to make you more effective at whatever it is you choose to do. The interesting thing he also says is that if you do it for a while, most of the clutter in your life will disappear, leaving enough space for you to consider the question above.
Onto another one:
If you encounter difficulties in choosing a life purpose, the problem may be further upstream. Dive deeper into your understanding of reality. Question your beliefs, especially the ones you were taught never to question. What if you're wrong? My current beliefs about reality bear little resemblance to those I was raised to adopt. Through interaction with the real world, I found my initial beliefs to be inaccurate. And that led to more than a decade of searching for truth, one that still continues to this day but which has gotten a lot easier.
- Steve Pavlina, Deciding what to do with your life
There’s a lot more on living consciously on Steve’s site, and a lot of it makes good sense. Steve is either one of those scary people who can do everything and still be a nice guy, or he’s a brilliant liar. I’d bet on the former.
So I guess that’s the core of it. I’ve reached a plateau where I’m feeling good. Now along come Paul and Steve and say, “yes, but are you really pursuing your dreams? Do you even know what they are?”
I think those are very serious questions, and I don’t want to immediately start an answer of the form, “I can’t do something great because I have to code to put food on the table for my family”. Having said that, listen to Paul again for a second:
Some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them (perhaps taking friends with them). Others, like mowing the lawn, or filing tax returns, only get worse if you put them off. In principle it shouldn’t work to put off the second kind of errand. You’re going to have to do whatever it is eventually. Why not (as past-due notices are always saying) do it now?
The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don’t: big chunks of time, and the right mood. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a net win to blow off everything you were supposed to do for the next few days to work on it. Yes, those errands may cost you more time when you finally get around to them. But if you get a lot done during those few days, you will be net more productive.
This advice may be a necessary condition for doing something amazing, but it’s also going to make you a total pain to live with unless you are rich enough (as Paul is, I guess) to have a PA or someone who doesn’t get to blow off their errands.
The thing I don’t like is that it seems like only some kind of self-selected elite get to do “great” things, and the rest of us have to pander to their whims. Plus, by definition, you don’t know you’re going to do something amazing up-front, so it may be that all you’ll achieve is being really annoying for many years.
Perhaps this is a bit of Buddhism in me coming out, but I feel you’ve got to try to be a good person first, and then try to fit your passions in to what you’ve already committed to (although the Buddha is a pretty bad exemplar, as he left his family to seek the truth).
There’s a fine line between using your commitments as an excuse to not get things done, and accepting that you have responsibilities to other people that are not optional. I’m sure Paul Graham is lovely in person. I’m just saying that achievements are not everything.
So in the final part, I’m going to look at my own answer to Paul and Steve’s question, and try to resolve the tension between pursuing what you want with doing what you’ve got to.
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