Journalling 002 - Via Negativa

As it turns out, I’m way too impatient to wait a week for my next journal prompt. Today’s prompt is Via Negativa. According to AoM this term originally comes from Christianity where one explains their god by focusing on what they are not. This term, then, can apply to personal growth by a focus on not doing things. Ie avoiding bad habits. Today’s journal will thus be discussing a habit that I want to get rid of, a habit that’s holding me back, and how I plan to eliminate it from my life.

My habit, funnily enough, is idleness. Those closer to me may sound shocked by this, as I’m always dipping into personal projects; and I’m famed in particular for my early rises in order to undergo my morning strength training ritual. I’m generally thought of as being in quite early to the Lab, which is how I justify extending my personal evening time by leaving at 1600. However, as my training schedule has developed over 2016 I’ve begun training literally half as often as I used to. I now train two very heavy days (Monday and Thursday) whereas I used to include the Tuesday and Friday as well. This means I’ve not had motivation to wake up early on those days, and have used the time to “get myself some extra rest” as part of the catabolic phase of my weekly training/life. Don’t get me wrong, this has had some very good impacts on my training and I’ve continued to improve steadily. My problem stems from the empty space that has been left behind. I resort to laying in bed, watching YouTube or Netflix to “chill out” before work and inevitably wind up spending way longer than I want to and have thus developed an unfortunate habit of arriving into the lab a bit later than what I’d normally be comfortable with. This has been consistent since September at least, but I think it was creeping up on me beforehand.

On top of this, the non-habit of empty space means that I feel frustrated that I’ve resorted to consuming entertainment instead of working on my goals or projects. It’s not that I feel that I can’t enjoy entertainment at all, it’s just that I want a particular balance of production and consumption in my personal sphere that’s been thrown off-balance. One of my goals is also to read more philosophy and more fiction, instead of video. Provided that I go to bed early enough, I can still give myself extra rest by sleeping in until 0630 and then working passively and at peace that I’m actually doing something that has purpose for me (purpose being a key element in happiness).

Sorry again for another Guardian link. Of all the broadsheets that review things they’re often the first in my searches, and are at least not explicitly right-wing

I think the main steps to producing a blueprint of eliminating my bad habit is to replace it with a good one. I mentioned that I’m sleepy when I haven’t trained, so until I’m already in the habit of meditating then I’m not comfortable jumping in there. This also provides space for a greater variety of activities in my life, by using my mornings better. The goals that spring to mind at the time of writing are:

• Stretch more
• Meditate
• Read more, either philosophy / politics, or fiction
• Listen to more podcasts
• Get a better handle on dusting my bedroom (as opposed to expending the energy picking up after my flatmate)
• Write more code for Brimstone
• Journalling (meta!)
• Meal prepping

Since I’m a creature of schedule and habit, it’s probably best for me to produce a weekly schedule of these morning activities. They have to be completeble by about 0730 so that I can get into the lab nice and early to begin my day there; giving me more time in the evening (We’ll deal with idelness in my evening routines later…). Having a few weeks, or a month, of performing each of these activities on a daily rotation will give me a good overview of where my priorities are and what is sustainable (as well as which activities can be performed concurrently). Here’s my proposed schedule:

• Monday Strength Training (routine established)
• Tuesday Podcasts + Stretching
• Wednesday Reading and tea
• Thursday Strength Training (routine established)
• Friday Journalling

I’ve deliberately left of my Saturday and Sunday schedules, as they’re often dependant on a work schedule or how late my partner returned from work the night before. I’ve also deliberately left out certain goals, in order to really focus on the low barrier to access ones. All of them are really low barrier to be honest, but in terms of the physical or cognitive grinding; I’ve chosen the easiest.

What I need now, is accountability for these. I could check in with a close friend / colleague each morning; just by sending a message telling them what I was up to and what time I woke up? That’s the positive aspect of accountability. I need a consquence as well, and that’s the tough part. Conversations with colleagues before have resulted in them being uncomfortable with the idea of donating my money to a nasty cause, and there’s nothing else really they could do. I could ask them to walk over to my desk and yell “Shame!” at me?

I will need to reflect on this further.