Way to free myself

Photo by Brett Sayles: Source:

The English version is tranlate by ChatGPT, I will fix it later.

During elementary school, what were you in such a hurry to get home for?

To do homework? Or was it because your family had prepared a special hotpot dinner for you, and you couldn’t wait to indulge?

I remember during my elementary school days, when I rushed home after school, besides the fried chicken wings waiting for me, my immediate goal was to turn on the TV and watch my favorite animated shows. The journey home was a race, and I always took the shortest route. I would hurry as fast as my legs could carry me.

In Taiwan during those days, there were cartoon programs on weekdays from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM. We only had free-to-air channels, so I couldn’t enjoy as many channels as my friends, but that one and a half hours of cartoons was all I needed.

Those days were quite special. I would rush home, eagerly anticipating dinner while my eyes were glued to the TV. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen, even during dinner. It was only when the boring news started that I would reluctantly shift my focus to my homework while keeping an eye on the TV for the 8 PM program.

Reflecting on those days, I remember them fondly. But as I got older, I became engrossed in video games during my junior high school years, which felt like a perfect balance between games and animated shows. After high school, due to the longer commute to school, these habits gradually faded away. After coming home, there was barely time to eat and focus on schoolwork.

This lack of self-arranged routine seemed to continue into my professional life as well. I have been searching for an answer – something I could do every day that excites me.

When I was young, I wanted to create games that everyone would love, which sparked my interest in computers. As a working adult, I aspired to perform on stage with my guitar and planned to make a lifetime out of it. Now, my hope is to have the chance to help others improve their lives, although I’m not entirely sure how to execute this vision and am still searching for a direction. However, one thing has become more concrete and fulfilling over time, my daily missions or challenges.

When I was younger, I disliked the idea of daily to-do lists, thinking they represented things I “should” do each day. I believed life was about having a general direction and then immersing myself in it. I cherished the notion of living “spontaneously.” However, as time went by, I gradually realized that achieving a life of complete spontaneity comes at a significant cost. I began to question whether this ideal lifestyle was more of a fantasy.

When I looked at my friends’ lives, or those of customers who frequented the board game shop I worked at for years, I often felt that many people were not entirely satisfied with their lives. They worked tirelessly on weekdays and splurged on entertainment during their days off. It seemed like the “ideal” peaceful life they were striving for was still far from being achieved. My own experience as a software engineer added to my anxiety, especially after reading an article titled “What’s wrong with wanting a stable life?”.

During these years of searching, I read two books about habits. From “The Power of Habit”, I started understanding the brain’s reward system and how to establish habit loops. This planted the idea that if I could improve my daily habits, it might lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.

A few years later, I read “Atomic Habits,” which delves into the relationship between habits and identity. The book explains that if you align your identity with a specific goal, you are more likely to achieve that goal. For instance, if my goal is to become a skilled guitarist, I should view myself as someone who loves music, someone who expresses it through guitar playing.

This prompted another question: What kind of lifestyle and habits should I maintain to truly achieve what I believe are my goals? In other words, if I want to feel happy and meaningful, who am I, and what can I do every day?

In the past few years, I have gradually discovered the following:

1) Having daily productivity is important to feel complete. I’m not sure if there are relevant research reports, and I’m not sure if this statement is accurate or if I’ve been influenced by society for too long. If I do nothing all day and lack productivity, I tend to feel uneasy. But completing work tasks during the day also makes me feel that life isn’t what I want. For me, when I used to come home every day and play the guitar, it was probably my way of resisting this sense of emptiness. However, in the end, I realized that this form of resistance was a failure because using hobbies to counteract the void would ultimately be consumed by that void.

During this process, I was also searching for more possibilities in life. To explore more possibilities, I embraced two habits: 2) maintaining a daily reading habit. Even when busy, I would usually read a few pages of a book or at least skim through a chapter, seeking insights I liked.

As these insights became integrated, I noticed changes in my thinking and speaking patterns after a few years. I genuinely liked these changes, as they made me more coherent, gave me more opinions, and gradually revealed uncharted territories within myself. In order to sustain the energy for continuous learning, and because I had a recurring nightmare of being a fat guy with three health issues who drove a red convertible, I added two more habits: 3) getting adequate sleep and 4) exercising regularly.

Due to the pressure, my sleep was easily disturbed, and I often lay awake all night, worrying about work performance.

Now, here’s something that might make you laugh. When I initially chose to work at a board game store, one of the reasons was that I could sleep until noon and start work in the afternoon. However, after working there for a while, I found that I would often wake up and have lunch right away, and then it was time to work. So, it wasn’t much different from an average office job. To avoid spending all my time at work, I usually set aside time to read books or play the guitar when I got home. However, as the workload at the store increased, I gradually shifted the things I wanted to do to the morning, and in the evening, I would prepare for running or exercising. I also played digital versions of newly purchased board games to avoid looking bad if a customer challenged me.

With these changes to my body and mind over the past few years, I realized that I could read about 10-15 books a year. As time passed, I read faster, and my understanding speed increased. In terms of playing the guitar, my progress wasn’t as significant because I often spent fifteen minutes playing, three days fishing, but still, I felt my learning speed had increased.

Afterward, to stabilize these results, I started 5) documenting my daily schedule. This began around three or four years ago after I read “Bullet Journaling.” The most significant change was that I transformed the daily tasks in my notes from “should” to an honest “record.” I no longer criticized myself. I began estimating and recording the tasks I expected to complete each day. If I didn’t complete them, I would draw an arrow in front of the task and postpone it. If a task was postponed multiple times without completion, I had to honestly consider whether I truly wanted to do it.

I must admit something here. When I first started with the bullet journal, I had gaps where I didn’t write anything for up to six months, or sometimes just one or two weeks. However, now, I rarely delay documenting for more than a day. I’ve gradually transformed the self-blaming mindset about incomplete tasks into viewing it as just a record.

Recently, I learned a relieving concept from “Teacher Yichen’s High-Efficiency Time Management Course”: blank pages in your notebook aren’t necessarily a bad thing. When your notes have empty spaces, it means you might be too busy, which could indicate overwork. On the other hand, it could mean you’ve had a lot of leisure time, which is a happy kind of blank. This realization has genuinely comforted me.

As I’ve continued to maintain my daily record of life, my notebook has become the centerpiece of my existence. Whenever I find writing in my notebook to be a chore, I flip back a few pages to feel the changes I’ve gone through. Through my notes, I’ve discovered the importance of consistency.

Record-keeping is not meant to be a form of self-punishment; it’s a tool for self-assessment. If a task is too difficult, you can reduce the difficulty. If it’s too easy, you can gradually make it more challenging until it feels worthwhile. The focus should be on celebrating even five minutes of achievement. If you persist for 28 days but still dislike that routine, you have the choice to let it go.

The key is to do it every day because the resistance to forming a habit is minimal, and it increases the chances of developing good habits over time. This has been my path to progress. I started as someone who didn’t exercise at all, to someone who enjoys the rewards of jogging. To create a meaningful and sustainable change in my life, I believe that consistency is the way to go. So, while I may have given up my childhood spontaneity, I have found freedom and self-expression in discipline, persistence, and the daily routines I have established.