Project FixMe

I've been reading a lot about habits. Whoever said "we are creatures of habit" was right. Everyone has habits, good and bad, and everyone lives their daily lives on the basis of these habits.

I used to think that I'm a strong willed person, and I could do anything if I really wanted to. The more I think about it and observe myself, however, the more apparent it becomes that I'm a slave to my habits, just like everybody else.  I used to think that I could change all the bad things about myself in one shot if I really tried hard enough. Again, an illusion. Your habits are who you are, and its not exactly easy to change who you are overnight.

It takes concentrated effort to actually change something about yourself, and you're more than likely to fail at the first attempt. I now realize that becoming who you want to be is an ongoing process, and you may be successful after several iterations and changing yourself in tiny bits. And it will probably take a lifetime.

I've also realized that I tend to put things off by giving myself arbitrary excuses. However, the logical me believes that unless there's a strong reason for putting something off, there's no better time to start than now. 

In that spirit, I christen this effort to reprogram myself as "Project FixMe". I've opened a publicly accessible Google spreadsheet (link below) to mark my progress against some pre-decided goals, with the aim to achieve these goals and make them habits.

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Interesting reading on "habits" can be found here and here.

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My spreadsheet can be found here. My first goals are sleeping by 12AM each night, and getting 8 hours of sleep.

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"We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit"
- Will Durant

Logic and Emotion

How do I put it. Have you ever had that feeling when you know exactly what you want to do, exactly where you want to be, and even have a vague idea of how to get there? Sometimes I have these lucid moments in the middle of the humdrum of daily life. Moments when I can actually think, actually see. Even though these moments are short lived and I can't seem to remember the last time I completed my thought process all the way through, I often strongly decide that I want to do something. However, these moments are so fleeting that I would normally forget about them before the day was done.

Life is simple, yet complicated. If you think about anything logically, taking into consideration only those factors which would make sense in an ideal world, deciding upon a course of action isn't that difficult. But the world is not ideal, and lets not start on that topic. Even if you do manage to think logically, thinking is not doing. The human condition comes in the way. 

noteToSelf = "I wish I could just turn off the human condition and follow logic. I have a hunch it would lead to great things";

postScript = "I've been oscillating between unbearable dejection, apathy, escapism, white hot rage and rare (aforementioned) moments of lucidity these past few days. Again, I wish I could just turn humanity off and actually do what makes sense. Alas.";