Append Only

Maybe the overwhelm is just a symptom of the constant pounding of the modern deluge of the infinite or maybe I have a restless mind.

Append-only

Append-only is a style of a data store where instead of editing anything, you only add a carriage return and write some more. This is useful for software systems that need an audit trail, such as a financial ledger, but I find it can lead to a perpetual unmooring if used for your life.

Unmoored

I have written often about a kind of daily battle with opportunity cost [2], the trade-offs of explore and exploit [1], good reasons for procrastination [3] and ultimately how to patiently trudge through long haul challenges by punctuating them with daily wins [4]. And with all that self awareness, I still find it hard to reliably hold on to solid earth without also keeping my eyes open, looking ahead in front of me.

Haha it is even hard to hold on to the right analogy. Seafaring felt right, with its use of anchors and all, but I can’t help also think of crampons and ice axes. You are only getting a good foot hold with one leg so that you can safely raise the other.

Protec

Meme culture has misspelled protect as protec, but this is therefore meme-orable. Cal Newport recently also noted [7] the benefit of protecting at least 20 minutes of his daily time, for tasks not projects. So yes sweat the small stuff. To me this is also the Jeff Bezos paper-cuts. The long-haul stuff [4] can wear you out, so you can really benefit from paying attention to the smaller things to maintain stability as a friend of mine likes to say. Stereotypically this is like making your bed [8], but it is really more about all of the small stuff that nags at you. Like I keep putting off fixing my leaky shower head, but I know I will feel so much better once I get to this.

Trust and Accretion

And I think if I can trust myself to do the little things, then maybe my brain will trust that I don’t need to clear the decks – as Oliver Burkeman puts it – and I can feel comfortable accreting to the big stuff. And in order to know what the big stuff is, you do need to moor it, preferably in markdown. And look at it again and again. Preferably once a week. And edit it, don’t just append to it. Be okay with crossing stuff out and rephrasing what you wrote. This is your base and it belongs to you.

Overwhelm is a heavy feeling to get stuck under and I think it doesn’t really go away. You have to keep proving to your mind that you got this no matter how many times you managed to get it done before. But it really helps to consistently remember how freaking amazing it feels to build on top of something you have started, getting to see it grow, shaping it as you go along.

Append-only#

Unmoored#

Protec#

Trust and Accretion#

References#

Append-only

Unmoored

Protec

Trust and Accretion

References