On their Bear blog, tiramisu writes about their family:
it doesn’t matter what he thinks or feels about things like family vacations. He does them because they’re things he should do, and moments like that illustrate how differently our brains are wired.
This cuts very close to home for me. I am a father, a husband and everything else first before I am an individual. That’s just the way I am. Whenever we do anything it is more important for my kids and my wife to enjoy things than I. Fulfilling my desires comes dead last to everything, and that’s ok.
This isn’t a sod story. Nor is it an inditement of other people getting things over on me. It is simply the way I want to live my life. I enjoy making them happy, and I am always here for other people before I am there for myself. Doing the things I enjoy, like playing the odd game, writing, or exercising is after everyone else is happy. I think I speak for every man with a family when I say my personal enjoyment starts when the kids are tired and my wife is content doing something else, I can then relax.
This is enjoyment for me, and just one of the things I ‘signed up for’ when I became a father. I put the whole world first, and I am ok with that.
Cory Dransfeldt writes in a way that feels like it’s aimed at me, because everything is a checklist:
Check, check, check, clear the queue, close the rings, get to zero. I know this looks neurotic; it is neurotic because I’m neurotic. I always have been, or at least as long as I can remember.
My wife and I have joked for a long time about the fact that if an event isn’t in our calendar, it doesn’t happen. We’ve built up this rigid structure around hospital appointments and kids' activities, that now is an unwavering bubble of organisation. There are always things to do, events to go to, and people to see – but my life neuroticism goes much deeper than this.
I have no idea where it comes from, but it seems like in life, there is always something to check off the list. Ten thousand steps, five fruits and veggies a day, eight glasses of water. Check, Check, Check. Don’t forget the smartphone app to log it all in too! Otherwise, you’re not getting the best out of life, and you’ll never be successful without these five things in your life. Just Stop.
Every so often, I end up here, in a place where every task completed is met with a few more added to the end. As the list grows, so does my anxiety about trying to reach the end—an end that is never in sight, let alone becoming any closer. At this point, I try to remind myself of a mantra picked up from Oliver Burkeman: “There will always be more work,” but it still gets a bit much sometimes.
You see, most of these books on productivity come from places of privilege. They are authored by people who either control their task lists or, quite often, occupy positions where they are no longer burdened by one. The problem is that most of us, the mere mortals who consume these books, do not sit in this graceful position. We often do not control our never-ending task list and must forever contemplate the idea of getting ‘too much done’ for fear of being given more.
There are a few golden books out there. Earlier this year, I read Make Time, which came from a more understanding place. The two authors, although afflicted with the tendency to talk about themselves too much, wrote the book from a more realistic position in working life. I am sure there are more out there too, but the books, podcasts, and YouTube videos all talk about very simple things: scheduling your work (in a myriad of different ways) and being dedicated to completing it.
You can time block. You could plan ahead. Mark one task as your priority. It doesn’t really matter. What none of them talk about, save for “4000 Weeks”, is the stress of it all. Looking at your task list and never seeing it get shorter is one of the best motivation killers imaginable. Having no breaks in your workload to think, plan, be creative, or complete a task you find more fulfilling is a passion killer—a surefire way to burn out and throw in the towel.
As I said at the start, there will always be more work, and that’s a good thing to keep moving and stay motivated. However, there comes a point when it becomes too much, the plate is piled too high, and there is no room to breathe. Drowning in tasks is a terrible way to go.
Brandon encouraging more people to blog the way he does:
It’s easy, blog about what you like. Talk about the things that you are passionate about, things you find joy in, or document your day-to-day.
I really enjoyed this post, despite disagreeing slightly. You see, we both come from a place where blogging is pretty easy; we write about all sorts of things. However, it isn’t that easy for a lot of people.
Thinking about the motivations behind why people would 1) set up a blog and 2) post to it consistently often leaves me confused. Despite all the positives I get from mine, I can appreciate all of the barriers to starting one, and they are too high for most. The motivation to overcome them is often met with the realisation that blogging will cost you time and effort for very little to no reward.
Part of this is due to the framing that writing online has. The constant bombardment of advice from content creators to ‘do this one thing to get loads of views,’ among other such nonsense, leads people who would otherwise blog for the fun of it to begin worrying about stats. The reality is you will not make a living out of writing online. That should be okay. For most people, it’s not, but it should be. With web ad revenues being disappointing, your hard work being scooped up by AI, and a million other people out there doing the same thing, I can’t figure out why people would start blogging in 2024.
To be honest, I am only here because it’s a habit, and I like playing around with my website. It’s fine to write about your life and other such interests. My favourite blogs to follow do exactly that, but it’s absolutely understandable if you don’t want to do that. Blogging isn’t easy, and no amount of rose-tinting will change that, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Put some value on your words, and join in.
Cassidy writing about the missing human curation:
When algorithms determine everything we should see, the internet becomes much less personal. The “For You” pages of the world are accurate—I am interested in that content, but I’m not seeing it from my friends, or that one author I like, or that random blog I stumbled upon while learning about an obscure hobby.
I stumbled upon this post while searching for cross-posting options for my blog. Due to its precise hit on the internet’s head, I’m now seriously considering personal curation.
While I still believe that algorithmic sorting on a large scale is better for users, the effectiveness of these systems ‘depends’. Almost all are designed to keep you engaged, manipulate your cognition, and then serve you ads. I’ve never encountered one tailored to show you things from your friends, and that’s the real issue.
The finger of accusation can’t be pointed at ‘the algorithm’. It just doing its job. It’s the companies that took all the personality out of the web for their own benefit. Manipulated us into thinking we needed them, remove all the quirkiness from our websites to rank higher and changed the way we post for internet points.