Today was one of those days, coincidentally it also happens to be a Monday. It's the very same reason, I take Mondays off instead of the weekend. The weekend has a good feel about it, I do some of my best work over the weekend. Monday definitely has a feel, even when you are self employed. It's not a nice feel, not sure why that is. Probably from the years of dreading Mondays. Yet around 1300 I was completely bored, went outside for a bit and ran out of things to do at 1500. So I decided to just sit down and do something. Lately, I've been working on my typing speed and it has turned into a warm-up before I do any actual work. Today, I got 90.1wpm at 99.6% accuracy. It's my best score yet. It's pretty neat considering it was around 40wpm just a month ago. So after the warm-up I opened up my terminal and immediately realized that I was kinda stuck on how to proceed on a problem. Probably why I've been pushing it aside. So I called up my friend, he inspired me to keep it simple and just like that I did quite a bit of work. It was 1849 when I checked my clock next. It's one of those days, when you think you're gonna get nothing done and out of nowhere shit gets done.
This morning I saw a post of HN about wanting to write more. I thought I was bad, but this guy only managed to write one post a year. His solution kinda reminded me of my past efforts to write more. It's a trap we all fall into. Thinking that the problem is the amount of effort, and thinking we can somehow magically start putting more effort. There are exceptions of course. They only prove the rule. A few people pointed out that it's just laziness. It's true, but I'm sure he was aware of it too. The challenge is finding out why. Luckily, this is not a hard challenge, we know why we are lazy. It's either perfection, ego, not knowing how to proceed or some combination of these. There are probably others, find these out first before anything. The solution will vary based on this fact.
The thing that I found works best for me is to do the absolute simplest version of the task you can. If it does not sound comical when you say the simplest version out loud, it's not simple enough. The first step is the hardest. So make it as simple as you can. The next steps are not easy but once you start, things happen. Don't ask me how or why. They just do. So even on your worst days, you can do the simplest version. The momentum builds, kinda like compounding interests. You can turn things in you favor. A comical example that I use daily, is to write one line of code. For the past two months I've written code almost everyday. On most of those days, I've written way more than one line. You can see for yourself here. Some days life just gets in the way, you fall sick, someone you know falls sick, etc. Getting back is not that hard because the simplest thing is still, simple.
I've used the same strategy to write more too. It works with everything. The answer literally to the things you want to do, is to not be too hard on yourself. Might sound like some soft pillow talk, but if it works, does it matter how it sounds? I'll let you know a year from now, how effective this has been.
Be honest
On the days you really don't do the simplest things, make a note of it. Don't try to make excuses or workarounds. This will only confuse your internal signals. It's okay to miss the mark, even on the simplest things. Lying to yourself however, even on the most harmless things can be quite harmful. Also, not revelatory information, but quite effective. As one Mr. Jordan Peterson says, have the adventure of truth. Even though I disagree with him on a few things, he is absolutely right about this. From my own personal experience.
Now go do something simple.