Lately, I’ve been thinking of ways to read more. Although I do spend ten minutes on my Boox before sleeping, it hasn’t felt that substantial. But also, I don’t feel like reading during breaks, because for me, it’s still an activity that requires brain power and isn’t relaxing. Not that I’m proud of scrolling Twitter during my leisure time though.
So, what’s this new thing I’m getting started on? Basically, I keep stumbling upon this idea – Obsession >> Discipline. That made me come with this idea of spending an entire week literally obsessed with something that even slightly excites me. Every time I have a moment, that thing should occupy my mind, not because it actually should, but because it’s exciting and fun.
Obsession is the opposite of discipline.
You don’t force yourself to start.
You force yourself to stop.
There are a bunch of things to worry about however. One, it’s often the case that ideas that sound cool and sexy from outside aren’t actually that interesting once you actually get started on them. A (bad) example according to me is designing. If I spend hours trying to make something look nice by shifting pixels, the work itself is kinda daunting, even if the end result looks amazing. And the problem isn’t that it’s challenging (it definitely is) but that it gets kinda annoying.
Secondly, one week is probably not enough to deeply learn about anything, obviously. The purpose of these pursuits are to get to the crux of the problem or concept as quickly as possible. It’s ok to skip details in order to that. The week spent on the particular idea should give an idea about whether the pursuit is worth going for or not. If it’s interesting enough, I can continue pursuing it for the following weeks as well, provided I have a concrete idea of what I want to achieve.
How will this work though? There must be a process to become obsessed with something, right? I think the best way is to have a constant feedback loop. A good way to create that is by reading first, and implementing it as soon as possible. In my experience, reading a lot can get boring quickly. It’s always nice to have a tangible implementation of what you learn. There are many ways of doing this – programming, solving problems, or building a mini-project. They’re also a great way to avoid tutorial hell – a phenomenon wherein we go through tutorials without hitting roadblocks, which paints an unrealistic picture of the problem at hand.
So, what do I plan to work on? I’m going to maintain a running list of ideas in this Notion doc. If any of these excite you, hit me up using the links on my homepage and we can work together. I’d love to learn and build something together! :D