30 Days of Stream of Consciousness
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30 Days of Stream of Consciousness
It starts with one...
I’m an insecure overachiever and I’m tired of letting that stop me from sharing things.
Photo (and vibes) by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
This is Part 1 of 30 days of writing stream of consciousness about things I think (I’m gonna call it SOC essays until I come up with something better). I don’t really know how Substack works, but other people have figured it out so I will too.
I think my basic rules for this are going to be:
I can’t stop until I’ve typed for 20 minutes.
I can go longer if I want, but once I stop it’s getting posted.
I can’t spend more than 5 minutes editing at the end.
Timestamp that shit to keep myself honest (and for the amusement of the internet) STARTED AT 0841 EST
Like many who want to do cool things, I spend too much of my time polishing and primping and worrying that it’s perfect. I’ve done some cool things before (ran a military training school for 600 cadets for a year, deployed to Afghanistan as a platoon leader, somehow got into HBS, cofounded an ecommerce startup that sold at a $240M valuation that they’re trying to erase me from, quit this startup, and be unemployed with no solid plan for the future, and some other stuff too), but mostly that cool stuff starts to happen when I stop trying to get things just…so…perfect. So I’m gonna try to be…less that way.
Don’t get me wrong, there are things that absolutely need to get nailed. Like rocket math. Smart contract permissions. Constitutions for governments. things like that.
These essays are not going to be that. These are going to be unformed thoughts that hopefully coalesce into something interesting and useful and won’t get me canceled in like 5 years when I (hopefully) start to matter to People On The Internet (is this an entertaining stylistic thing? or is it gimmicky and annoying? Looking for feedback here). We’ll see though.
So this morning I’ve been thinking about my Daily’s and my Weekly’s.
Daily’s/Weekly’s are the tool I use to keep myself accountable for stuff that makes me a better human being - both physically and mentally. For some periods of my life, I kept them on an index card. I think for now I’m going to keep them in my Workflowy (which if you don’t know about is infinitely recursive To Do Lists ← probably my favorite microapp). Right now my daily’s are templated (god I hate that I think this way enough to default to using this word) to be:
DAILY STACK - Not ordered by importance yet
Write and publish my SOC Essay
Tweet 1 thing ← although I’m planning on tweeting the SOC Essay mostly so this is cheating
Engage with 1 smart person on Twitter
Lift or Cardio (alternating days), Stretch after
Take 2 separate walks around the block (lol at future Cam during Boston Winter Walks)
Spend at least 60 minutes trying to meaningfully connect with my lovely life partner
Code something Web3 related for 30 minutes
Read a Web3 white paper for 30 minutes
Drink 5 bottles of water
Talk to someone smart IRL (Zoom or phone counts) for 30 minutes
Ok that looks like a lot - let’s do this math real quick. 30 + 60 + 30 + 60 + 30 + 30 + 30 = 4.5 hours a day. I think I can manage that and still do other productive stuff and like live life in a non soul sucking, work drone way. I’ll do another SOC Essay on “catching up” I think. I tend to fill my “To Do” Stack much faster than my ability to complete my “To Do” Stack which leads to my perpetually feeling behind while also being pretty damn productive.
I think it will require an exercise is rigorous and aggressive deleting of former “important” tasks that are actually just interesting things I want to read but not going to move me towards the direction I want to go. Like the classic “Good Procrastination” Essay from Big Daddy Startup God PG (I 100% just wanted to write that for the anchor text that will show up in SEO tools in the future), I am trying to only work on things that let me directly or obliquely work on the problems I really really care about. There’s too many to do it all unfortunately and I have to deal with that sadness and futility every day.
Weekly Stack - Not ordered by importance yet
Adjust Internal Narrative Crypto Theses & Rebalance Crypto holdings
Try 2 new restaurants in the Boston area with my partner (where I just moved back to ← hit me up if you want to do hoodrat things with your friends in Boston with me)
Do 1 thing that makes me super uncomfortable socially but in a productive way to get me out of my comfort zone like asking a stranger to take a selfie with me oh god this sounds horrible but leaning into discomfort is tried/true for growth.
Sub Note - It’s really strange how great I am at task or career oriented discomfort like pitching/selling/researching/etc (sounds not humble, but trying to be intellectually honest here), but how miserable I am at personal/emotional growth discomfort like just talking to strangers. More to follow on this
Do 1 Outdoors related activity with my partner ← like rock climbing/hiking/sightseeing ← I think I might let drinks on a balcony/rooftop count here though ← I can’t stop using arrows as a rhetorical device (also parentheses) ← send help (please)
Find 1 thing that lengthens my experience of life & time (positively). I’ve found that dense, new experiences provide a higher novel stimuli per unit of spacetime-slice which feeds the brain and improves quality of life in aggregate. My friend says this is an interesting way of saying “prioritize novelty”, yet the standard unit fraction helps me approach it more intentionally I think.
Meet 1 new, excellent person and have a good conversation
I think these are good lists to start. I’m excited to (vomit) iterate on them over the next few days.
I hope this added value to your day.
Please share this with someone who might find this interesting!
If you have any thoughts or questions about this essay - Let’s Chat
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I’m going to start the editing now (TIMESTAMP 0919 EST) ← 40 minutes that’s unexpected
EDITING NOT COMPLETE BUT STOPPED AT 0929 EST - 5 minutes really blew by fast. I’ll try to stay tighter to the timeline tomorrow.
gm and Godspeed everyone