Table of Contents

• Because you're not aware of what you are doing

• Let's consider how we (mis)spend our Lives

• By Understanding the Rules for how Systems Change

• So, how much has this helped me?

• The Rules of How You Interact with the World

  • Variation vs Selection

    • Let us look at both opposites in turn

  • Through Information Transfer

    • Habits and Desires are the Essential Categories of …

• From Dissatisfaction through Pain to Change

• Setting up your Own System

  • Below that, you write down Wasted Time.

  • Valuable Time

  • Habit Tracker

• Are you Still Reluctant to Do This?

  • Is it Worth the Time and Effort?

  • Is it Too Hard to Do?

  • Is it Not Detailed and Disciplined Enough?

• Let’s Recap

  • Now, Please do Both of us a Favor

Each day, you are wasting 3 to 7 hours. 

You aren't what you could be. 

Your life is meaningless.

You're aimless. 

Maybe you feel like you're supposed to do something else.

Yet, do you ever engage that feeling? Why bother? You could go on social media instead. 

Find another cute f****** cat video. 

And another one. And another one. 

And so, you've wasted another day. 

Convince yourself that you got something done. Shopping? A few work emails?

Repeat this. 

Every day.

Why do you keep doing this?

Because you're not aware of what you are doing

Most people drift through their entire life like ghost ships. Meals, appointments, and work are the currents determining their course.

Maybe they sometimes feel dissatisfied.

But do they ever act on that dissatisfaction?

Does it make them consider how to steer towards happiness? Rarely.

How, then can you become the captain of your life?

By running a logbook.  With it, you track the environment. 

How the sailing was in which waters. What winds you rode on your sails. 

Why? To see what happened. To understand where you journeyed. 

Captains learn to note the details that matter. 

This is your life. 

Why aren't you bothering to study how it is going? 

I will show you how to do this in less than 4 hours each month.

With that knowledge, you get to be the designer of your destiny. You can build habits based on this. Habits that will change your life. 

Yet, there is a prize to be paid. Distraction and self-deception make for a comfortable coffin.

Leaving them behind will be painful.

So why should you do that?

Let's consider how we (mis)spend our Lives

Some activities are necessities. 

Sleep, food, hygiene, housework. They eat more than half of your time. They are inevitable.

However, you can make them more pleasant. More optimal. More enjoyable. More efficient. 

Listen to an audiobook if you have to clean your room. Cook together with your loved ones. 

Be aware of this time. Most people just muddle through it. Suffer through half their life. 

That is stupid.

Next comes all your work. 

The job. Caring for kids and relatives. Volunteering for a good cause. Learning to have a future. 

You must make money. It is a necessity.

But could you do more by working less? Do you earn more than money? Do your values align with your work? Do you like the people you're working with? 

Finally, there is leisure: media, meeting friends, and hobbies.

Do you enjoy how you spend your free time? Or are you just following your addictions and habits? 

Does the core of your being enjoy binge-watching Netflix? Or are you just trying to forget the tragedy of your existence?

How would you spend your time If you had to relive the same week for eternity? Is your current lifestyle the fate you could love?

For me, it isn't. For most of us, reliving our last week forever would be torment.

This is closer to something I might be willing to embrace.

How far is this from your preferences? We are all different.

Some things are inevitable. The human animal needs sleep. Food, hygiene, and traveling are also necessary. 

Spending less than half your day on them would be impressive.

But what is the most valuable use for any time you are free to use? Consider this:

The pitiful excuse for what most people will call work is unacceptable. Cal Newport's idea of deep work is vastly superior. 

4 hours per day spent in pure, meditative focus on what matters. 

No b******* and social back-scratching. No meetings. No emails. 

The remaining two are your budget for all of that.

Consider how dystopian it is, that this vision sounds utopian. Striving for that must be enough for now.

Finally, my leisure time should be built around sports, meditation, and spending time with interesting people. 

You can even work with those people. Integrating your life further.

Now, how could you get to this life?

Let's look at how I have worked towards this.

By Understanding the Rules for how Systems Change

The dynamics determining your life's outcome are simple.

1. You move towards or away from things, depending on your desires.

2. Your habits automatically make you do most things. 

3. Through focus and awareness, you can filter perceptions and actions. Slowly, this will alter desires and habits. Alter you.

So, why did I fail to be useful based on this earlier in life? 

The Problem was that I did not give a f*** about my future during school. 

I wanted to read or play. 

My habits made me into a thing, which was optimized for that.

Deep down, I knew that this would not end well. 

Yet, walking in the tracks of desires and habits is the easy road. 

It is much more comfortable than being aware of where it will lead. More comfortable than focusing on cutting a new path through the thicket.

During COVID, I pursued my habits and desires to the fullest. 

And found they were leading nowhere.

Yet, this was only a high level of dissatisfaction. Which was quickly drowned out by computer games.

Then, I came across the Pomodoro technique. 

My mind latched onto the aspect of tracking time.

I got addicted to collecting the check marks.

Suddenly, I wasn't just vaguely dissatisfied with the day.

I was angry that I missed out on six more check marks.

I could see how I wasted the only resource that mattered.

Those two experiences are vastly different. 

The first one can be rationalized away. 

The second one is brutally honest. 

I put each week's tracking sheet on the wall. 

I could see how I was wasting my life.

Soon, I learned that you can track different goals. 

Do you want to hammer on a project? 

Do you want to hang out with friends? 

Do you want to work out each day?

How many days did I waste doom bingeing YouTube?

So, how much has this helped me?

I haven't reached perfection with this. 

I never will. 

Old habits stick to you like cancer.

Mental health issues aren't easy to solve.

But, while tracking my time, my awareness and focus are clearer. 

I know precisely how each week went. 

I see that I get what I deserve for my effort.

I see where I messed up. Where I lost or misused time. 

Yet, I also see what I did great. That I can play weeks perfectly.

And how that might extend itself.

A year ago, I struggled to use 30 hours a week productively. 

Now, I regularly get 80 hours. 

Even bad weeks have more than 50 productive hours now.

Knowing this gives me strength. 

Furthermore, I learned the importance of balance. 

The goal isn't to get as many check marks as possible. 

It is to get enough of the right ones.

Consider what a human needs. 

Consider what you desire.

Consider that there are only so many hours in a day.

To enact your desires, you must be able to act freely.

This is difficult. 

Procrastination holds most of us back.

What can you do to overcome it;

To be able to enact your will freely?

What must one understand to do that?

The Rules of How You Interact with the World

You are a system. 

Different factors, within and without, interact in various ways.

To produce YOU.

Any system as complex as you changes according to 3 simple principles. 

The principles of Universal Darwinism;

As discussed by Daniell Dennt in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.

Understanding them is trivial. 

Mastering them takes a lifetime.

They are:

1. Variation 

2. Selection 

3. Information Transfer

Within your mind, they break up into different functions. 

Those interact as seen below.

Let’s break down the functions into the context of us humans.

Variation is what happens beyond your body. 

Actions require the feedback of the world.

Events are often random.

Your sensations flood into your body.

Selection is your conscious control of how your mind works in the present.

The Focus of your Perception is what you have learned to see. And what to ignore.

Self-awareness allows you to take control of the automatic animal systems.

Desires a hybrid category. They are the means of selecting what to do and think. As well has a learned database of those preferences.

Information Transfer happens between you and others. And between your past self and you at the moment.

Habits are skills that have been learned deeply.

Desires are how you have learned to decide between options.

Agency is a particular category. 

It isn't part of the system. 

It emerges from it. 

At the end of this section, it should be clear how it does so and why it matters.

Variation vs Selection

Variation is change. 

In the world. In others. In your situation. 

Selection is the blade of existence - that determines what lives and dies. 

This fundamental dichotomy is what generates your existence. 

Systems as complex as humans must handle both.

You must cope with each new situation.

Yet, you must maintain a coherent existence. 

There is a tension here. 

A sandstorm forms once. It persists for a while. Then it settles. There is no longer a coherent relationship between all the dustgains. 

You form and maintain a coherent relationship with all parts of yourself. The de-cohering is what we call death.

The Sandstorm is mere variation; you must balance accounting for that against selecting for coherence.

Let us look at both opposites in turn

Sensations, actions, and events - make up the Variation you face.

Everything where you cannot know the outcome. 

Anything that might surprise you. 

Very little can be done against those. 

Yes, you might get better. 

But the unexpected is always lurking behind you. 

The best you can do, is to prepare your mind properly.

Selection, on the other hand - It is your most powerful tool.

It is what you decide to do. 

It is what you focus on. 

It is what you are aware of. 

What you ignore, what you invest in.

This is the filter that cleans away the chaos of the world.

The world screams an unfathomable storm of data at you. 

You ignore 99% of it. 

Notice the right things, and you win. 

Notice the wrong things, and there is no hope for you.

Balancing them against each other is a constant act of opponent processing.

Let Variation win; You decohere. You die - physically, mentally, or spiritually.

Let Selection win; Your mind crystalizes. Becomes brittle. Loses its flexibility. Stops being a living thing. 

Nihilism engaged in a tug-of-war against Fanaticism.

How could this be functional? 

Through Information Transfer

Each situation requires our setup to do two things:

Manipulate the variation of the world skillfully.

Focus the selection of information properly.

Each situation is a complicated problem. 

But you don't have to solve them anew each time.

You can recall how you or others solved them before. 

Thus, the two forms of information transfer are inheritance and learning. 

Inheritance are the genes and circumstances you get from your parents.

They are determined early in life. 

You cannot change them. 

Learning works in two steps. 

1. Find useful parts in other minds. Or reflect on your experiences.

2. Integrate them into yourself.

Learning is vastly more important than inheritance. 

You are primarily a creature of ideas,

not JUST of genes. 

In fact, you might be learning right now.

This is what makes humans different from animals. 

An inbred rabbit cannot overcome its genes. 

An impulsive wolf may learn patience from the pack. Nothing more.

An ignorant human can learn from 250 years of science.

Habits and Desires are the Essential Categories of Information for Us

Habits are automatic processes.

The games you have mastered. 

Procedural knowledge you can recall without mental effort.

The problem is that life is too complicated to think about. 

Habits solve this problem.

This is as useful as it is dangerous. 

If you have learned to use social media when stressed, you will do so without thinking. 

If you have learned that screaming ends all conflicts, you will start screaming in every conflict.

But, if you teach yourself to take the right path, you will take it without effort. 

You will just work. 

You will just be kind. 

You will just be healthy. 

But getting there takes effort.

Bad habits will kill you. 

Good habits will make you superhuman. 

Desires tell you what is good or bad. 

What is right or wrong? 

They tell you how you should act.

All decisions are made with the expectation of value. 

This expectation is built from your experience. 

You pick it up from the environment. 

For most of your life, you have done so unconsciously.

If everyone around you values sex and alcohol,

you would also value sex and alcohol. 

Likewise, if they value honesty and hard work. 

As you start to change yourself, your desires will change as well. 

That is why the Game of Life never gets boring. 

Unless you give up on growth.

Growth is the infinite game of life. 

You are the collection of your habits and desires. 

The “memory” of the system if we use a computer metaphor. 

The self seen as a narrative written in the book of your mind.

You act to change the world. 

This changes you, as you are part of the world, not separate from it. 

Now, you face a new world, allowing you to play a new game.

From this interaction, Agency springs forth. 

I will not comment on the issue of free will. 

Viewing it as a result of the system of existence I have laid out is more productive than seeing it as a cause. 

No matter the metaphysics of that issue, we can alter the world through our actions. 

Some people more than others. 

This can be learned. 

Learn this, and you will have a life that fits your desires.

To sum up the nature of The System;

All habits and desires are created by: 

• Focusing on the correct situations

• Using your awareness to shape actions,

• And asserting your agency.

From Dissatisfaction through Pain to Change

This leaves us in a problematic situation. 

Your desires and habits determine who you are. As well as what you do. 

Focus, awareness, and agency are actions you are taking as well. 

Thus, they depend on habits and desires.

What is the solution to this? 

Well, you have read it to this point.

So, either you desire change, or you're a critic who reads through stuff to disagree with it.

If you're the second kind of person, f*** off and do something with your life.

You’ve read to this point, because you already possess an initial desire for change.

It is a seed. 

Careful and persistent nurturing will grow it into a mighty oak in time.

How does this nurturance work? 

By cultivating your desires. Until you are deeply dissatisfied with your life. 

Only then will you be in enough pain. 

Only pain can overwhelm the opiates of the status quo.

Your awareness develops out of this pain.

Everything wrong you do will touch you deeply. 

Deeply enough for your agency to overcome your habits. 

Your focus is how you accelerate this process.

Don't start smashing your fingers yet. 

You only need a pen and paper to focus your perception. 

On it, you track what you most desire to change. 

There are three categories worth tracking. 

1. The time you waste doing meaningless s***.

2. The time you spend doing what you want. 

3. How often do you perform a habit you want to establish or abolish?

What those are precisely, everyone must determine for themselves. 

No one can, will, or should help you.

Setting up your Own System

In practice, your first tracker will look like this.

Let's break it down. 

Start by grabbing a post-it note. 

You will be able to carry it around. 

Our place where you will see it often.

Just make sure you can easily focus your attention on it.

Firstly, Note down which year of which week you are tracking.

Below that, you write down Wasted Time.

This is where you must face your failings, your sins.

Write down how many hours each period of procrastination lasted.

This will show you how often and frequently you are damaging your goals.

Did you binge-watch YouTube? Write down the lost time. 

Did you procrastinate? Write down the lost time.

Did you spend time in a dark mood? Write down the lost time.

Doing this is unpleasant. 

Yes.

That is the point. 

Only through focusing on your inadequacies can you fix them.

Valuable Time

Here, you track five activities that matter in your life. 

As you develop, you will add new ones. And remove old ones. 

That is progress. 

If you don't know where to start, try those five initially. 

• Focused Work 

• Administrative Time 

• Sports Time 

• Social Time 

• Personal Project Time

Feel free to adjust this to your needs. 

Consider the earlier discussion on how most people spend their time. 

And how you would like to spend yours instead. 

For example, I started with those categories shown on the left. 

Nowadays, I am tracking The ones on the right instead. 

Start primitive. Adapt towards sophistication as needed.

Add a dash to your tally for every 30 minutes you spend doing one of those activities. 

Be generous with yourself.

Habit Tracker

In the rightmost column, you track your most important habit. 

Pick something impactful. 

Something that is ruining your life. 

Something you must start or stop doing immediately. 

For me, it is doing regular mental health check-ins with myself. 

MHR means mental health routine. 

Escaping my depression is deeply impactful. So is failing to do that. 

Your most crucial habit will be something different. Make it personal. 

Change it once you have mastered it.

Master the next one. 

Here are a few suggestions:

• Each workout you finish

• Each time you eat unhealthy

• Each time you manage to control your anger 

• Each time you meditate

How does the tracking work?

Each time you perform this habit, add a dash. 

You want as many or as few as possible, depending on what you are tracking.

Try this system for 4 weeks. 

At the end of each week, sum up how much time you spend doing what matters.

How do you feel about this number? 

Next, put a blank poster on your wall. 

Here, you put every completed week tracker.

Seeing your progress over time is highly satisfying.

What will yours look like after a year? 

How much will you have improved? 

Who will have you become?

Are you Still Reluctant to Do This?

Do you wonder:

• Is it worth the time and effort? 

• If this is too hard to do?

• Is this not detailed or disciplined enough? 

Maybe you are correct. 

Maybe it won't be worthwhile for you. 

Maybe you are already a highly functional and productive individual. 

If so, why are you reading this? 

Is it Worth the Time and Effort?

Let's take a look at what I am getting out of it. 

Using the system requires less than 1 hour per week. 

Over the first 10 weeks on record, I spent an average of 28.5 hours productively.

Over the most recent 10 weeks on record, I spent an average of 66 hours productively. 

Not all of that can be attributed to this system. 

• More things were tracked

• I worked on myself in other ways 

• My life circumstances changed 

Yet, Even 20% of the gains are 7.5 hours. 

+750 %

An impressive return on investment.

Is it Too Hard to Do?

All you need to do is put some scribbles on a sheet of paper. 

And do a few minutes of thinking beforehand. 

It takes less than 5 minutes to set up.

Noting down a number or a dash takes seconds. Those are not worth considering.

Is it Not Detailed and Disciplined Enough?

No, it might be too detailed and disciplined.

Too much data is worse than no data. 

Tracking everything tells you nothing. 

Your focus and awareness are minuscule. 

The data in every single hour of your life is overwhelming. 

Choosing what to ignore is more important than deciding what to notice. 

Only track what matters. 

Extend the system after you learn to use it.

Over-preparation does more damage in most cases than under-preparation.

Because it justifies hesitancy - and “productive” procrastination.

Just start doing it.

Let’s Recap

You desire to change yourself.

For that, you need the following: 

• To understand the rules of changing oneself 

• The seed of a desire for change 

• A simple tool to initiate a habit of change

Recall the dynamics from this diagram.

You alter your focus and awareness. 

Through the agency you gain, experiences and actions will align with your higher self. 

Over time, your habits and desires will adjust themselves.

You must start with some desire for change. 

From this, you create unbearable pain. 

By making your failings vivid and undeniable.

Only that will initiate actual change.

The tool for this is to track what matters in your life rigorously.

It is trivial to do this. 

Track what you waste. 

Track what you do. 

Tracking is the crucial action you are taking. 

Or are failing to take. 

So, you have read through all of this. 

I'm impressed.

Now, Please do Both of us a Favor

Do set up the f****** system.

Invest the next 5 minutes into this.

1. Grab yourself a piece of paper. 

   Any paper. 

   And a pencil. 

2. Write down the current week and year. 

3. Write down wasted time beneath that. 

4. Below, copy and modify the five activities you want to track. 

5. Reflect on which habit you should develop or unlearn. 

   Write it down in the top right corner.

6. Start tracking your time. 

   For this week. 

7. Do this for a month.

How many hours do you use productively? 

Take a guess and see how it compares to reality.

See y’all next week.