Agnoiologist

People have commented on my last two facebook statuses. This either means I’m a comedic genius, or that people spend way too much time on facebook. Oh.

It looks like Texas Tech versus Oklahoma is a shootout… but only one side is doing the shooting.

I have been lazy.

This is just a reminder that one must actively manage one’s decisions, in order to make any changes. I have to remind myself to be mindful.

The previous day, I finished every item on my to-do list. I don’t know when’s the last time that happened. I felt pretty damn good about myself.

I awoke relatively early this morning. This was a good sign, I thought to myself. Then, I proceeded to do nothing for several hours straight. I had become complacent and completely forgotten about industriousness. I have to remember to put success behind me.

In the end, the day wasn’t entirely wasted. I got some writing done. My e-mail inbox is getting much closer to 0.

Tomorrow, I’ll make sure to write down “Are you being industrious?” on my hand.

By the way, I’m making a list of possible virtues to concentrate for other months. So far, I have compassion, honesty, positivity, initiative, detachment, and cleanliness. I’ve also been thinking about taking things down to a weekly basis (as Franklin actually did), but I do like this several-week endeavor with industriousness.

[Note: Today is actually day 10, but I'm writing this late at night for day 9.]

I found this extract of Gladwell’s new book via Quad. I also saw Gladwell’s book discussed on Slate, and somewhere else. I want to highlight this section:

This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

“In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, “this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years… No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

So… 3 hours a day for 10 years to achieve expertise. That’s very practical advice. That’s a lot of time to spend in a day, but I do watch a lot of TV and I could easily cut most of that out without having lost anything. The real question is do I want to put in the work to master oratory or writing? It doesn’t seem as if I can do both. I guess that leads to another question: Which one will be more useful to me? Or maybe which one do I value more? If we look at past experience, it may seem as if I already have a penchant for writing. Yet when I imagine myself in the future, do I see myself as a writer or as an orator? If I want to be in front of crowds, I guess I have to work on my speaking skills.

I’m not backsliding. I finished up almost everything on my to-do list for the day. In fact, I finished most of it before lunch (short list, haha). Still, I feel good. I woke up around 9AM after waking after consistently after 10:30 for the past several days.

Also, I finally launched the Chalkboard Manifesto blog. That project has been on the backburner since summer. Now it’s off the backburner. Things are looking better for me.

I looked at my hand today and said, “Fuck this. I’m taking the day off.” I watched the Ravens game on TV.

Shouldn’t I be industrious all the time? Don’t I need to work out and out-hustle everyone to get ahead in life? Was this a terrible idea?

I still think industriousness is a mean, and that you do have periods of relative inactivity. There are probably weekly cycles, and maybe yearly cycles too.

I just worry if I really needed the day off, or if this day was an indication of some slippage. Hm.

Five days isn’t that long. I’ve read that it takes 30 days to develop a habit. I’ve also read that that statistic is total bullshit. Regardless, it isn’t too surprising that within five days, I haven’t turned into this amazing industrious machine. At this university, I’ve tended to cultivate an image of not being a hard-worker. I live on the edge, writing essays the morning they’re due and then getting an A- anyway. I don’t do half the reading I’m supposed to. I’ve never read Immaneul Kant, despite it being required in two separate philosophy classes. That’s the image I’ve given, and sometimes I actually live up to it. (Confession: I have actually tried to read Kant. I’ve frustrated myself reading and re-reading certain passages, comparing them with my notes, until I finally understood them.) It’s unsurprising that I’ll have to work hard to change this aspect of my character, which I’ve been practicing for almost 3 and a half years now. I have to cultivate a different image. See even now, I’m embarrassed to admit all the hard work I put into understand Kant. On the one hand, you want people to think things are easy for you. Yet at the same time, you don’t want to cultivate the image of a slacker.

Now where was I? Ah yes, five days. Yesterday, I woke up at 10AM. I didn’t do anything productive until after 1PM. Most of that time was just surfing the internet. However, I kept looking down at my left hand and I felt guilty. This didn’t stop me, but I think it’s an improvement. At least now I’m mindful of being a lazy bastard, instead of feeling guilty after-the-fact. Actually, my hand didn’t even have anything written on it, but I still was mindful. It wasn’t a completely wasted day, in fact. I submitted a story of mine to a digital magazine run by some students at this school. Who knows if it’ll be selected, but at least I’m putting things out there. I also read an RFK speech aloud, in order to work on oratory.

Today, I turned on the television after waking up at 12PM. All the college football games looked uninteresting. This does not normally stop me from plopping myself on the couch and watching football all day. I managed to do some laundry and finish a book, Revolutionary Characters, about the Founders.

I’m encouraged. I think I’m making baby steps towards my goal of changing my character. In my journal, back when I just started this experiment (day 2?), I was very discouraged. However, I know that focusing on the negative cannot result in a change in character. Keep telling yourself, “I should stop being lazy,” but you’ll never actually stop because all that’s on your mind is how lazy you are. You have to praise your positive activities, and not harp on the negative actions. So, after reminding myself, I wrote that I did a good job focusing on reading my book when I turned away from my computer. This from doing reading that took three times as long as it should’ve been. I chose not to focus on that and focus on those moments when I was able to be productive. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing, using this weblog as a tool to keep myself on track.

I’m going to keep up this experiment at least until the end of the month. That means 15 days more to be more mindful about industriousness.

As I reflect back on my young life, I see that I have no accomplishments. If I were to write an autobiography, there would be little to note. In fact, why the hell would I even write an autobiography? I have a couple of pieces of writing in college publications, and I have a relatively obscure webcomic. No fame, no glory.

I can’t help but think of what young people have done. At age 20, Alexander was already king. Newton was inventing calculus in his twenties. Goodness, I don’t want to be accused of being arrogant, but I am ambitious, and I want to emulate the best. (Of course, I don’t want to be a warmonger like Alexander.) I just want to use these people as examples of how far I have to go, and it appears as if I’m not making any significant progress to doing significant things.

Then, I read this about Thomas Paine: “Paine’s campaign on behalf of the excise service collapsed, and in 1774 he was again dismissed from the excise service and compelled to declare himself bankrupt. The future scarcely looked promising; at the age of thirty-seven he had failed at everything he had ever tried” (Revolutionary Characters by Gordon S. Wood). Okay, so I’ve still got a little more than 15 years — I’m almost 22 — to mess around before I can make my mark on the world, and then die in obscurity and be maligned as a dirty atheist for a century. Just kidding.

If I even want to be in a position to do anything, though, I’ll have to practice writing and speaking. I have to be ridiculously prolific when it comes to writing. I don’t have to do it all at once, but I want to at least put myself on the right track. I can’t wait for inspiration. I have to produce and produce, and in that time I will hone my craft. In 2 years, I want to look back and be proud of that body of work, even if it’s not all published.

I’m trying to be more mindful of being industrious. I’ve only been doing this experiment for a few days. I already have doubts. Is industriousness really what I want? I’ve thought up different goals. One question: “What are you building for tomorrow?” Another: “Are you being prolific?” To me, industriousness conjures up an image of plodding. All these different things race through my mind, but I resolve to keep with the original experiment for at least another week.