An attack of The Sads. Response: focused work. Result: I’m not beset by The Sads. Correlation is not causation, but . . . I have seen this movie before. Put your head down, tackle the things in life that are bothering you. It works.
Yesterday had a plan. It was largely ignored. Instead of my target plan I worked on another project (and put wildly too much time into it). I think I am preventing it from going off the rails. Preventing emergencies is better than dealing with emergencies. My future self will thank me.
Today, I am alone in the house again — all weekend. Time to get shit done. Coffee, shower, go. I’ll work in the garage but I’ll have to fire up both heaters.
Act your way into right thinking.
You pay the price for every action you take. And you pay the price for every action you don’t take.
OODA loop your life. That’s the essential element. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.
Your ideas about life and how it works will generate predictable actions. Those actions create predictable results. Those results, if you detach and observe, tell you something about your ideas and whether they are good ideas or not. Adjust your ideas as necessary. Take action. See what happens.
It’s not that fucking hard.
We are currently engulfed in a tsunami of propaganda aimed at all of us all of the time. Almost everyone I know is eager to accept the propaganda as truth. The ideas-actions-results chain follows. To their utter shock the results are an anomaly. So they double down and believe the lies harder.
This is where Taleb’s Lindy principle is so important. Where the Stoics are so important. Where any ancient wisdom is important. Hell, read The Art of War and learn some truth.
The Stoics focus on the self: what is within your control and what is not? I can’t help the human trout mindlessly biting the shiny hooks of propaganda. Why is this wiggly worm floating in front of me? Who cares! It’s lunchtime! Ouch! Why am I being pulled and who is pulling me?
The oxygen masks have popped out of the ceiling and are dangling in front of us.
Time to put on my oxygen mask. Then and only then can I put the oxygen mask on my traveling companions. And if they reject my offer of assistance, so be it.