An interesting realisation

Hey friends,

I had an interesting realisation this week.

It happened while I was at a shopping centre with some friends. I don’t believe in shopping, and so while my friends were (genuinely) browsing handbags, I sat in a cafe to do some writing for upcoming projects.

I managed a few solid hours of work, but thanks to the copious amounts of coffee I’d consumed, I needed a session in the little boys’ room afterwards. As I sat down to do my business, I felt a general undercurrent of dissatisfaction:

I didn’t give this feeling a second thought, because this is my default state. I often over-promise to myself and under-deliver, and therefore in the evenings I almost always feel a sense of “I wasn’t productive enough today”. This feeling has become so normal that I often don’t even realise it’s there.

But as I turned on my phone and opened up Instapaper to browse some blog posts that I’d saved earlier, I came across one by Neel Nanda called Your Standards are Too High.

It opens with the following:

Damn. That’s exactly me too. And I’m sure it’s a lot of you reading this.

Reading through Neel’s post made me realise (a) that my default state seems to be dissatisfaction-with-how-much-I-did-that-day and (b) that this doesn’t have to be the case.

I realised that I’d been looking at my work for those past few hours with a lens of not-good-enough. And that I could simply choose to change the lens, to change the story I was telling myself. I could choose to feel satisfied with what I’d done.

And so having realised this, for the rest of the day I had more of a spring in my step because I chose to think ‘you know what, that was a good day’s work, you’ve done well Ali’.

At the end of the day, the amount of work done didn’t change. But how I felt about it did. And that’s an idea worth sharing, as they say.

Have a great week!

Ali

1 - Short audiobook - I absolutely loved “The Original”, a short audiobook / audio drama / audio programme by Brandon Sanderson and Mary Kowal. It’s an audiobook, but with background music and sound design. And it was amazing. I did a lot of driving this weekend and it made the journeys incredibly entertaining. Here’s a 10 minute preview of chapter 1 (https://youtu.be/DjJDrjl-G4c) that you should check out. Especially if you’re new to Audiobooks, this one’s a great place to start. (And if you sign up to a free trial of Audible with this link, I’ll make a few dollars and you can download the audiobook for free hehe)

2 - Another audiobook - As you know, I love audiobooks. I thought I’d have a bit of change of vibe and started listening to Mythos by Stephen Fry. I’m a couple of hours into it and it’s pretty great so far.

3 - Tech - I’ve been trying out the Keychron K2 mechanical keyboard for the past 2 weeks. It’s a solid budget alternative to my usual keyboard (the IQUnix F96), and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I like the feel of red switches compared to the blue ones I’m used to.

From Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Resurfaced using Readwise.