Easy come, never go

In elementary school I developed a strategy for doing my homework. It carried me through junior high, high school, college and grad school. Simply, I'd evaluate all of my assignments on levels of effort and do them in order of easiest to hardest. My 3rd grade self reasoned that this was a good strategy because I was doing things that needed to be done while also deliberately putting myself into a corner to force myself to face the assignments I didn't want to do. I could avoid writing that essay (Paragraph? Series of individual sentences? Whatever 3rd graders did in 1997) by doing math, then science, then history, etc. I'd feel productive by being productive on low hanging fruits and, under the time restriction of a due date I'd corner myself into doing whatever assignments remained.

Procrastinators, hell, anyone can see where this is going.

(Related: Seth Godin - What Is School For? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXpbONjV1Jc)

As assignments scaled in length and difficulty through my education career the deadlines for those assignments were made longer and longer. And school never stops so when one lower hanging fruit was plucked another three came in the next day. I never did get to the point where I'd start a writing assignment well in advance until my master's thesis.

The more life I've lived the more I've appreciated being preemptive. Mainly because when I complete a thing, "close a loop", it frees up the mind share it occupied. Like taxes, finally buying that thing online I only remember while taking a shower, and so on. I find it easier to close loops when there are fewer to keep track of. The trap I often find myself in is that I “open a loop” right after I’ve closed one.

With that in mind, lately I have been examining the way I start new things soon after I have completed something else. It appears to me that this deals with managing commitments both externally and internally. It’s easy to open another tab “to read later” while on the toilet. Or say to myself, “I need to remember to get duct tape/mouth wash/new towels/allulose.” It’s also easy to tell someone I’ll reach out to them tomorrow, schedule something with them next week, or go climbing with them “someday soon”. As far as I’m concerned, those are all their own open loops that sap away attention and mental energy.

I am afraid of my potential. I am convinced that I've lined up the low hanging fruit in my adult life to distract me from that fear. Keep going, keep doing, keep track of this and that, don’t let that person down, and don’t question what letting them down even means. My potential is still hanging out in the background waiting to be tested on something that it actually wants to be tested on. On what it was made for. Meanwhile my ego keeps finding other things to preoccupy me that feel productive, worthwhile and necessary.

Adult life has its own form of "homework" and, without nit-picking, most of it is voluntary. Things just may not feel voluntary. So, I've been closing more loops than I open. I've engaged better boundaries around time and expectations. And, I've vocalized my priorities to myself and others.

From these actions I've found myself with more space, more slack, more capacity.

And, honestly, more boredom.

Right now I’m moving forward believing that the boredom is a good thing. It’s boredom that I’m choosing instead of compulsively avoiding by lining up and knocking down ego driven tasks. For now, it’s a boredom I’ll protect.