New Journal

Today I've decided that I want to start journaling, I think it is going to be a good way to keep myself accountable. Recently, I've been reading books as a means to lower my screen time. Currently, the book am reading is Atomic Habits by James Clear, and I am enjoying it thoroughly. Quick backstory, fell sick and became addicted to social media, I had reached an average screen time of 15h 39m in one week. So I decided to delete the apps that were distracting me, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok etc. I cutoff all shows, movies and entertainment on my phone, unless I was out with people watching games, I wouldn't watch any form of entertainment on my own (besides music). In a month I've decreased to 4h 17m, which is as 72.6% decrease. I'm trying to make those small marginal gain's wherever I can.

Here are a few things, I've learned.

1. "The most powerful outcomes are delayed."

This is true for both positive and negative outcomes. The most resonating example was that of a stone cutter hammering away at rock 100x without a single crack, but on the 101 blow it splits into two. It was not the 101 blow that split it into two.

Likewise with work, small gains accumulate. 1% better everyday -> 37x better in a year.

Likewise as well when people react a certain way, it is likely they reached a melting point after several interactions. Therefore, be mindful of how you interact with others, and understand that most of the time reactions aren't based of a single action but an accumulation of actions.

2. "The score takes care of itself"

If you completely ignored your goals and focused on your systems, you would still succeed. Why?

Because systems are the way to make progress, the processes that lead to results (your goals).

Successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, so it's not the goal that separates winners from losers. This is called survivorship bias: concentrating on people who won, mistakenly assuming ambitious goals led to their success.

3. "True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking."

This is CR7 mentality, at first it sounds counter-intuitive. Why would you work towards nothing?

But actually the idea is that long-term thinking is a cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. The goal now changes, from I want to achieve X to I want to be the best version of myself, and as long as you are alive there will always be something to improve.

4. You box yourself into a narrow version of happiness once you have a goal first mentality.

Either you achieve the goal and are successful (happy) or you fail and you are disappointed.

It is unlikely that your path through life will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out. It makes no sense to restrict your happiness to one scenario, when there are many paths to success.