I’ve lost touch with myself to the deepest level. I believe this is the result of a year-long nihilistic approach to life. Embodying an “it’s not that deep” mentality has created life on autopilot for me. Through the hard way, I learned about The compounding effect of lazy decision-making.
I am now taking time to peer through my life from first principles, to hopefully re-align my incentives and prioritize my time for the coming years. Firstly we will take a look at the things that truly matter.
The things that truly matter (joy)
The only thing that I will be optimizing for is joy. There are some key considerations here:
Joy in the form of fun
Optimizing for only short-term joy will lead to a lack of great memories, stories, and pride. These are essentials in my life. This is why I can’t watch TV and play video games for my entire life. This also means I can’t work a simple 9-5 and look to have fun afterwards. Maximizing the surface area for short-term joy means that all of my time should serve as “attack vectors” to having fun. That means that both my job and outside life should supply healthy of sponteniety and risk.
Optimizing for only long-term joy will lead to spite, boredom, ignorance, and loneliness. This is why I can’t turtle myself in my room and learn/build things 24/7.
Joy in the form of friends
Friends, both romantic and platonic, are a hedge against loneliness which is just a cause of sadness. This is quite a reductionist way to view friends though.
Joy in the form of momentum
I’ve realized that momentum is essential. In my life, I streaks of insanely hard work ethic and outcomes, and long periods of nothingness. It boils down to momentum. Without momentum, I become less action oriented, and get stuck in paralysis. It takes a lot of energy to create momentum, but once there is momentum in the system, it carries forward nicely. Momentum fuels pride and combats depression. I need to figure out how to create momentum flywheels for myself.