Really struggling with this right now. Too many interests, not enough time. I think I am just going to committ to studying zen/taoism more seriously this year. I need a solid spirutual foundation upon which to build all the rest.
I feel, after years, that I've slowly been crawling out of the scattered interests trap.
It's hard to attribute it to any one thing. Could it be slow improvement through on and off meditation? Going to the gym? Some frame of mind? If there's been anything approaching foundation for me... my bet has been taking things a bit more lightly.
Ok - taking things "lightly" is abstract. Could I point to one concrete aspect of this? Yes - one would be splitting my time into broad categories.
Some time is "free reign" time. Other team is "focus" time.
I find that doing the focus time - actual improvement work, actually apprenticing myself to reliably getting better - is not a state I always flow with. It takes months and years to truly get better. It seems hard me to just **do** that. So I give some room to the scattered-ness in free reign time.
From my example, chiseling away at a single Substack post is hard. So I do it for a time. Then, I switch to free reign time where I have a lil reward of jumping onto comments, posting a note, tidying up my writing system. As long as I don't do free-reign time more often than focus time, that's ok enough for me.
Almost sounds like (a surely-uneducated view of) the Middle Way.
Im juggling 3 different languages and I feel as though I waste a lot of time not just focusing on one for a season and then when it’s up to a certain standard, shoring up the next one. It’s hard though cuz proficiency starts to slip the longer u leave it alone. But then again progress is real slow when u spread your attention all over the place.
A solution I found to this problem is to layer my interests with decreasing amounts of time.
For example, if I had 8 hours in a day to explore my interests. I would assign a primary interest, which for me would be my writing, that gets say 4 hours out of the 8. I would then assign a secondary interest that gets say 2 hours. The next getting 1. So on and so forth.
Obviously it doesn't need to be so formulaic, but basically my time is split according to priorities; which can be moved around if need be.
I've found this to be a pretty reasonable solution to having a variety of interests.
Really struggling with this right now. Too many interests, not enough time. I think I am just going to committ to studying zen/taoism more seriously this year. I need a solid spirutual foundation upon which to build all the rest.
It would be helpful to ask yourself, "To what end?"
Why do you want to do this?
What do you hope will happen as a result?
And what makes this worth setting aside all other priorities?
I feel, after years, that I've slowly been crawling out of the scattered interests trap.
It's hard to attribute it to any one thing. Could it be slow improvement through on and off meditation? Going to the gym? Some frame of mind? If there's been anything approaching foundation for me... my bet has been taking things a bit more lightly.
Ok - taking things "lightly" is abstract. Could I point to one concrete aspect of this? Yes - one would be splitting my time into broad categories.
Some time is "free reign" time. Other team is "focus" time.
I find that doing the focus time - actual improvement work, actually apprenticing myself to reliably getting better - is not a state I always flow with. It takes months and years to truly get better. It seems hard me to just **do** that. So I give some room to the scattered-ness in free reign time.
From my example, chiseling away at a single Substack post is hard. So I do it for a time. Then, I switch to free reign time where I have a lil reward of jumping onto comments, posting a note, tidying up my writing system. As long as I don't do free-reign time more often than focus time, that's ok enough for me.
Almost sounds like (a surely-uneducated view of) the Middle Way.
Im juggling 3 different languages and I feel as though I waste a lot of time not just focusing on one for a season and then when it’s up to a certain standard, shoring up the next one. It’s hard though cuz proficiency starts to slip the longer u leave it alone. But then again progress is real slow when u spread your attention all over the place.
A solution I found to this problem is to layer my interests with decreasing amounts of time.
For example, if I had 8 hours in a day to explore my interests. I would assign a primary interest, which for me would be my writing, that gets say 4 hours out of the 8. I would then assign a secondary interest that gets say 2 hours. The next getting 1. So on and so forth.
Obviously it doesn't need to be so formulaic, but basically my time is split according to priorities; which can be moved around if need be.
I've found this to be a pretty reasonable solution to having a variety of interests.
Thank you for this 🙏🏽 as usual always bringing more clarity with your wisdom!