Regret

The hard part isn't making the decision. It's living with it.

Jonas Cantrell, in "Law Abiding Citizen"

I think if there's one dominant feeling I have for this year, it's regret. I thought I would do so much more than I actually did. It's not necessarily what I wanted to do anymore, like when I was younger. It's that the quality of time I'm spending throughout the day doesn't meet my expectations. I'm spending way, way, way too much time doing things I don't enjoy, and not only does that cost me the time to do things I would actually enjoy, it eats into my heart and prevents me from enjoying things that I otherwise normally would.

I thought a reminder here would help, which is why I copied over a blog post I saw a few years ago to its own top-level page. I think it gives a very nice kick in the pants, to be used as needed.

Some deficiences I've noticed in myself are:

• An inability to follow to-do lists very well: I used todoist in the past, but I never built up the habit. I have a habit in my Productive application to write down a todo list for the next day, but I rarely follow through. Complex, multi-day endeavors (which are the most valuable things to do) are hard for me, for various reasons. I think some personal assistance will help, so maybe I will sign up for Boss as a Service.

• Perhaps the wrong mental model to approach problems: I love meditating and I definitely won't stop, but I think meditation is more of a salve rather than a cure. Working out of these problems and fears takes activity, not passitivity. I think I need to complement my meditation and Stoicism practices with something else, maybe logotherapy.

• Less detailed tracking of my day than may be required: A lot of times I spend 10 minutes on Reddit, which is really 2 hours on reddit, which is really an entire afternoon. With no interrupts at home to break me away from the screen, it's easy to spend too much time on my phone doing useless things. I have Screen Time enabled for Safari, but it's not much use since it can (and is) overriden regularly. Maybe a daily journal will help this.