Thursday, September 01, 2022

More on Habits

Mike sent me an email and asked a perfectly reasonable question: what's stopping you from making the full-time switch to long thoughts mode?

That was an interesting question, and it made me think more deeply about my habits and what they represent. 

I realized that my "short-thought" habits represent my life, really. They deeply embedded in me over a period of decades, and it's not easy to pull them out by the roots. 

Sports on television (55 years). Gaming (45 years). The Internet (35 years). Plus, the world itself has become much more short-thought, hasn't it? From written letters to emails to texts to Twitter and Instagram. 

So when I try to be in long thought mode, I'm fighting not only my past but culture in general. 

I can do it, when I'm writing (or programming, poorly). It takes a few weeks to transfer over, but I've done it often enough that it's not difficult. 

Trying to be in that mode all the time, though. I don't know what that would take. A calm, thoughtful partner, for one, so I would be in an environment that would encourage long thoughts. And more of a commitment from myself as well, because I could do it now if I had more discipline. 

I don't know if that I want to be that person all the time, though. I like being goofy. That's still a big part of who I am. What I do want to do, though, is weed out some of the static and focus more on the signal.

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