9 milli-blog - what I learned in 2024 - do things with people
#update
parents:: milli-blog
daily note:: 2025-01-08
One of the best changes I made in 2024 was starting to climb with people. Rather than going at 7am to avoid a crowd, I go at 5pm with a friend.
Also, lifting with people, talking about and making music with people, writing with people.
In hindsight, it's pretty obvious. But easy can easily beat obvious. It's easy to just climb alone and out of sight of judging people. It's easy to sing out of earshot of judging people. It's easy to write without the potential of judging readers.
In the vein of it's easier to prune than to replant, I want to spend some time thinking about why this was a good change. As a mechanism both to reward myself for doing so, and to reinforce it and ensure that I don't regress.
Why
- As motivation
- As much as I wish I could be fully, completely motivated by myself, there really is something to having someone there yelling encouraging words.
- Theoretically it should all be the same, but when experiment seems to be inconsistent with Newtonian mechanics, maybe it's time to adopt (social) relativity instead.
- Doing things with people as a commitment device
- Commitment... my worst enemy.
- I'm worse at committing to things than most people. I'm also less social than most people. Maybe those aren't as independent as I might've thunk?
- Of course, conversely, there's the potential negative issue that this might make you hold onto something longer than is prudent. But... I don't think I need to worry about that for now
- As objectively good for learning
- Everyone does everything differently. Everyone has something to teach me. By watching someone else climb, I can see moves that would've felt impossible otherwise.
- Not wanting to do things with people often a sign of fear/lack of confidence in myself
Related
- life is about finding your marathon: that is, finding that crowd of people running for no particular reason except that everyone else is running as well