Building Continuity

I often find myself waking up and meandering throughout my day as if the prior day had no meaning.

The goals I set for myself the day prior suddenly cease to exist the moment I wake up.

Ah, yes! A new day! W…w…what was I working on yesterday?

My days are connected by time, sure. But I want them to be linked by my ambitions. By my intentions.

My desire to learn pixel art. Lost. That intention to cook more meals. Lost. That intention to finish the last level of Celeste. Gone.

The thing is, this isn’t avoidance. I’m not choosing to abandon these genuine aspirations. They were forgotten simply because I went to bed with no intention for recall the day after. I threw those ambitions into the junk drawer of my mind hoping I would return back tomorrow.

Letting these aspirations crumble has consequence. We all know that most good things in life come from habitual progress towards a goal. Learning guitar. Learning art. Learning coding, etc. They require consistent progress, day after day.

Duh.

But when the efforts of yesterday are erased by the morning, there’s no opportunity for a continuous direction. Just meandering.

When we wander in this way, we lead ourselves astray. We sabotage our path towards the fulfilment earned from achieving our difficult goals.

You might look at a chicken running around with it’s head cut off and think “damn that’s sad.” But could someone say that about you? Standing above you watching as you wander mindlessly in a direction then seemingly turn around before anything good happens?

Herein lies the question we aim to solve: How do we build continuity throughout each day?

Collecting statistics on yourself can be extremely useful to know if you're keeping consistent.

The first tip is the most simple of the bunch: Keep note.

Without data you cannot mark trends. Period.

As of late I’ve sat down at night and answered two questions: What did I learn today? and What can I learn tomorrow?

Then, when I wake up and blast another energy drink praying for motivation and to ease this ever-growing tired, I’m forced to address the journal left on my desk, purposely putting it in a place where I can’t miss it.

I’ll be real, sometimes I don’t feel the same degree of ambition towards a goal when I wake up the next day. I can scream at myself all I want trying to be disciplined towards a goal, but truthfully I’ve never been the type turns those loud demands into action.

Instead I sit there and think about the version of myself that wrote those ambitions. I think about how I will feel if I don’t achieve them. Will I be disappointed in myself? How will I feel if I tackle today’s goal? Will I sleep well knowing I did something?

I’ve never been one to whip myself into action through harsh screams and ultra-hardcore mentalities. Instead I just sit there in full honesty and ask what type of person I want to become. I think about what actions I need to take to get me there and how today fits in to that grand puzzle.

My ambition heals when I meditate on this. I remind myself of the true reason why I’m chasing these goals, and that’s usually enough to inspire me towards action once again.

And as the sun sets and rises once again, you repeat this process.

Boom! You have a chain! The individual links of a chain don’t amount to much, but when you link them together, you have something strong. A weight you cannot ignore.

At it’s core, consistent, focused effort will (most always) get you to where you want to be. But the human brain is far more nuanced than just that.

Now for more complexity.

Another tool you can use to build continuity throughout your days is batching them into a chapter.

Saying “I need to go to the gym” usually implies “I need to muster up the motivation to go to the gym for the rest of my life because I know one day isn’t going to get me in shape. Ugh.”

But if you learn to batch your efforts into seasons—I’m in my video game era. I’m in my fitness era. I’m in my journaling era—it let’s you only apply discipline to a limited period of time as opposed to forever. (This is gleamed from Cal Newport’s writings, if you want to expand further.)

Hmmmm…should I do X, Y, or Z? Does it fall in line with my season? If no, no. If yes, yes.

What should you do today? Do something that lines up with whatever season you’re in.

Seasonality simplifies your decision tree and provides you with a finish line for the challenging-yet-necessary seasons.

No matter how much you hate a specific season, it will always pass. Summer will always turn to fall with enough time. The seasonality of our mind can indeed follow that trend. Providing yourself with an end date can sometimes push us just a little further than we would have otherwise. If you find yourself loving the season you’re in, it can always be extended.

This idea of seasonality toys with a bigger principle: What happens when we adjust the time scale at which we think?

We all do this to varying degrees. What does my future look like? Where will I live? What career do I want? Will I still be in this relationship? These are all examples of forward thinking. Most of our forward thinking ignites uncertainty in our minds. Is my future going to shit? Can I even find a job? Am I going to be single forever?

This uncertainty is something I wrestle with a lot. Especially as of late due to a new project I’m starting: Sprout, the video game!

I’ve started the process of making a video game and while I knew it would require a lot of focused effort, the sheer magnitude of things I need to learn is baffling.

And so now, when I sit down to work, I’m wrestling with anxiety about where to start.

This is where adjusting my time scale really helps.

Instead of placing the expectation to learn it all right now, I can extend this time horizon over the next couple years. This affords me more leeway to learn at a healthy pace rather than cram everything down all at once.

The question that was once “How do I learn animation, level design, Godot, Python, and everything else all at once?" becomes “I’m learning Python right now. I’ll get to the other’s in due time.”

This is a procrastinator’s dream. Pushing off so many things that I’ll get to later.

But that’s the thing about building continuity throughout your days. The “…I’ll get to that thing later.” is actually a true statement. We aren’t avoiding the work, we are understanding that the 300th link in this chain can’t be attached until we’ve linked the 299 before it.

And by reminding ourselves the origin of our ambitions, we gleam a motivation that’s resistant to external factors. By introducing a seasonality to our lives, we know that this necessary era of learning python will eventually come to an end despite how much I dread it. And by keeping track of it all in a journal, I can see the chain building itself. I see the role of each day as I flip through the hundred pages of journal. I can feel—no joke—in my finger tips, the progress made.

Detailed data collection. Seasonality. Reminders of my “why”.

And of course, doing the work. All of the themes we talked about, applied to my own current endeavor.

It is inevitable (as long as I maintain this pace) that I will end up learning the things I need to learn to develop this game.

Without continuity this can never exist.

People abandon their aspirations for so many reasons. Lack of self-confidence. Lack of ambition. Lack of idea of what to do. Anxiety toward the future. Uncertainty for if it will all work out.

The reasons to not are always seductive.

But may I remind you, the time will pass anyways.

Success is not guaranteed, true.

But failure is if you decide to do nothing.

Each day that passes is an opportunity to add a link to your chain. Is the alternative worth it?

Consistency is more than a means to achieve goals. It’s the basis of fulfillment.

When you abandon your consistency you’re killing things that don’t exist yet.

There are things you’ve never learned that will be so interesting to you!

There are friends you haven’t met yet that you will connect with so deeply!

There are successes you haven’t imagined yet that will become oh so apparent!

Damn, I guess it really was about the friends and lessons we made along the way.

Go meander your way through life and see where that gets you. If you’re not headed in a direction of your choice, where the fuck are you headed?

Ging from HxH said it better than I ever could:

“I want what I don’t have. But what was truly important came to me before what I wanted.”

I hope one day you have the opportunity to look back at the chain you’ve forged and revel in its immense beauty. It's worth its price.

Til next time,

sprout 🌱

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