14 milli-blog - kill one bird with ten stones
#update
parents:: milli-blog
daily note:: 2025-01-13
Update Canvas
I often have this tendency to want to do too much at the same time. For instance today, I struggled with starting this post more than usual. Part of it was indecision over what to write about. What fed into this indecision is that I wanted to do too many things with it: I wanted it to be a post exploring an interesting question, but also to be something to help myself figure out what I'm doing with my life/PhD/career.
Maybe it was a question of audience. Writing in public (even though it's effectively private given how many people are reading this) has the benefit of forcing me to process my thoughts more than I normally would, in order to turn it from a bucket full of offal to something more palatable (but barely so) like a foie gras or something. However, it also adds these implicit constraints. I don't want to write anything too personal. I don't want to write something that could get me fired in the future, or that could offend someone.
And so, maybe the point is that this blog isn't going to be the panacea for me. It's helped me a lot already in processing my thoughts and questions and ideas, mostly in terms of motivating me to do said processing. But it serves one particular purpose and should seen as a tool for bird massacre.
If a bird is really worth killing (why do we love killing birds so much?), it's not going to be one that falls to just one stone, let alone half a stone. Instead, it's a process of doing a little damage at a time.
Okay, maybe killing birds isn't the right metaphor. Let's talk about raising birds instead.
Ah, now I see that this is circling back to the question of motivation from the post yesterday I was supposed to complete today (if I were a responsible human being)!
Let's take climbing for example. At first, all I have to do is mindlessly feed it worms and insects and even an occasional peanut or piece of rice. Anything I feed it makes it grow at this point--and quickly at that! It's so satisfying, because I can just mindlessly go and climb and, since I'm bad at everything, doing anything will help me improve.
But then, the hatchling turns into a fledgling, and things get harder. Sometimes he just won't eat. His growth has stopped. He starts telling me "he's going to the library with his friends" late at night when the library's closed. I keep climbing regularly, I keep trying hard, but I'm stuck at V4. This is the point at which several times in my past I've gotten unmotivated and taken an indefinite pause in climbing. Because I'm addicted to easy progress.
(Thankfully, nature ensures that, like it or not, it's hard for parents of any K-selected species to abandon their adolescent children.)
The difficult part, but much more rewarding, part of the process is figuring out how to keep going when the easy progress runs dry. By this I would've usually meant how to keep making progress. But that's not necessarily the case. I think the first step is actually just accepting that progress is going to be slow now, and still finding ways to enjoy. E.g. for climbing, that's meant a shift in mindset where I approach my climbing sessions as just ways to have fun with friends and help my friends improve, rather than a highly structured session that's only worth it if I improve by X amount.
Maybe the point is to make it like running: something I do because it's a part of me, and that I enjoy just for the sake of doing it, not for the sake of being able to brag that I achieve XY or Z.