I Gave Up On Being More Disciplined for 6 Months

For a few years I've been using dedicated Notion space to capture all the meaningful parts of my life. Goals, books, tasks, plans and ideas.

For the first year I felt it gave me freedom. For the second year it felt like obligation.

For last 6 months I haven't opened it.

It might sound more conscious than it actually was, and less responsible than it felt. But that's been my way of giving up on pretending to be who I'm not.

Giving up on being productive, effective, curious. I had to survive. Another day, another week, another year. Surviving is what I've been doing my entire life. I finallyl had the coureage to stop pretending I wasn't.

Leaving The Past in the Past

I've opened the Notion, and it felt like someone abandoned their life. Plans. Stale tasks. Unfihised ideas.

Before I went any deeper, I did a fast cleanup. Outdated tasks and records that had been stale for more than a year went straight to trash. Not because they weren't meaningful. They were done, consumed, or avoided for too long.

Surprisingly many items were actually done. They went to trash anyway.

Because one of the first things I've learned during The Journey is to leave the past in the past. It made me better. It helped me survive. It taught me somethings.

That's it. Done. Leave it there.

Learning From Courses Doesn't Sound Like The Future Anymore

Then I went through my main board. It has content ideas, books, tasks and courses. Courses are the most painful.

It used to be valuable to learn more about coding and building software. A new language brought new perspectives. That's been my way to advance for a decade.

Today it feels like a mix of missed oportunities and a different branch of reality. Despite being able to learn faster than ever using AI - learning languages or frameworks has low value these days. I think it might be a hobby now, rather than a career development.

We used to build, experiment and share our knowledge about the smallest parts and gears. Now everyone believes AI can do all that in seconds. Probably that's true for many cases.

But I think it makes software to become another area of engineering where we gradually give up understanding the things we use. It started with consumer electronics in the 90's, then cars in 2000s and now it's software's turn. Because it may become easier and faster to build a specific tool from scratch, rather then to develop and improve an existing one.

Books VS Short-form

This year I've read less than any previous year. I can barely finish a book.

And this is not an easy trade. Short form videos became a trigger for many of my posts. Books gave me deoth, but I still ned an external trigger to expose what's already inside.

I've been thinking about this need for external trigger since 2018. Yet it feels much better to join the discussion that to self-isolate with self-censoring my own thoughts. That makes me belive progress is happening.

I just need more time.

A Stale Board Without Meaning

That's the main problem I keep oscillating around.

What makes sense to me? Why does it makes sense? Those questions hit me hard as soon as I opened the board.

The courses. The books. The tasks. I haven't even touched most of them. And if I'm honest with myself and with you, 99% of the items on that board have no clear answer to one simple question:

WHY?

Why do I need to read this book? Why do I need to publish that thought? What's the point fo doing this course?

And now I think it might have been a mix of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Ouit) and an attempt to brute-force my wayt through life.

Learn everything. Know this and that. Because it might be useful. Because it might let me survive for longer. But what's the point of surviving?

Is it the possibility to mee a bright day somewhere at the end of it? I'm afraid with such a mindset, I won't even notice when it comes. And therefore it has no point.

At this point, I feel like obsessing over the question won't get me anywhere. This isn't something to be inveneted. It's something to be felt.

And that's the hardest thing to do. Because at some point I decided no to feel. It helped me survive. Now getting it back is the painful part.