Have you ever sat around a campfire with your friends?
If you have, you’ll remember that for hours afterwards, whenever you close your eyes, you still see images of fire in front of you.
You can experience the same in other circumstances too. It happens to me when I play draughts a lot, or train parkour, or really anything. And it happens to you too.
Your subconscious mind simply starts thinking over thousands of possible scenarios, and learning for the future. It’s one of the reasons why when you stop training one day, and then come back 24 hours later, you’ll be much better than when you stopped the day before. (another reason is post-practice improvement.)
But this mechanism needs some time to kick in. It needs a certain degree of obsessed-ness.
If I played draughts for 20 minutes, and then went on to do something else, my subconscious would never think about them again. I need at least an hour or two of intense focus to kick-start the subconscious possibility-analyzing-mechanism.
Then again, you’ve probably heard of inventors coming up with brilliant inventions in their sleep (like Mendeleev and the periodic table). That’s what happens when you intensely focus on a single thing all-day long.
Which brings me to my point:
Why forget life balance
I’m a big fan of long-term life balance. But trying to keep every single day completely balanced will only hold you back. Because:
- Your amazing subconscious possibility-analyzing mechanism needs time to kick in
- Constantly switching between tasks costs you time needed to re-focus
- Balanced days get boring
So instead of trying to keep your days completely balanced, and spending time on each major area of your life daily… feel free to let short-term obsessions completely take you over. For days, or even weeks, you might spend every waking hour thinking about your new startup idea, or learning a new language, or anything.
In fact, you’d hardly achieve anything if you didn’t get obsessed from time to time.
And after those days or weeks, you’ll naturally get a bit tired of your momentary obsession, and turn to something else. Maybe another short-term obsession. And so the cycle continues…
Like an airplane flying towards its destination. 90% of the time it’s off course, but it’s constantly making adjustments, and moving towards its long term destination. And similarly, you can move towards your long-term goals by switching between fun and interesting short-term obsessions.
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Exciting news about my blog:
You might have thought I’ve dropped off the face of the earth – after all, I haven’t posted to my blog in almost a month. Don’t worry, I’m back now, and with a lot of exciting news, which I’ll tell you in a second.
A large part of why I haven’t posted anything is because of the principle of obsessions I’ve just described. I was at two week-long meetups of esperanto speakers, and I decided to spend all that time fully in the moment, without online distractions. So I didn’t post to my blog, and only checked my e-mails every 4-5 days to answer the most urgent stuff.
I actually planned to write some posts in advance to post during those two weeks. But I got lazy. And then I lost another week to procrastination. Ya, I know, Vlad Dolezal facing procrastination. Crazy :p
But I’m back now. And for the exciting news…
- I’ll be switching to polyphasic sleep in mid-September. I’ll fully document my experiences right here on Fun Life Development.
- I’ve got another fun experiment going on. I should be done roughly 20 days from now. I’ll post more details when the experiment is finished.
- My first e-book for sale is coming together nicely (though slowly). I’m tentatively scheduling it for late November. It will be a complete guide to learning new skills (so not learning plain facts, but actually building skills). It will include material from my popular articles on that topic (like this one) as well as a crapton of new writing about principles I’ve never publicly shared before.
- And finally… I’ll be posting to my blog regularly (once or twice a week) again!
I’m Vlad Dolezal, and that’s all… for now.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Mi ne sciis ke vi parolas Esperanton. Jen tre interesa! Mi ankaux estas matematikisto-esperantisto kaj interesigxas pri vivo.
Cxu vi opinias ke oni povas havi multaj obsedoj sinsekve sen pauxzoj? Mi cxiam havis depresiajn periodojn inter obsedoj. Dum tiaj periodoj mi devas havi ian simplan laboron por ne esti tute senaga.
Ankaux, mi opinias ke vi ne suficxe substrekas la signifo de dormo.
(Mi ekskuzas por malbona lingvo. Mi ne parolis E-on dum multaj jaroj.)
As a snap-decision, quick changing person who tends to do just this, I thank you deeply for vindicating my (heretofore completely baselss) practices. Warms my heart. Also, welcome back! woo-hoo for Esperanto! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Free Hugs sign to make and some Japanese to study. Or maybe Chinese…Or maybe Old English. Who knows!
@Mattiast:
Interesa demando. Mi ankaux ofte havas depresiajn periodojn inter miaj obsedoj – dum kelkaj tagoj, mi nur interretumas dum la tuta tago, sen fari ion utilan. Poste, mi trovas novan obsedon, kaj cxio estas bona
@Joe:
Ah, I love it when people tell me: “Vlad, I’m acting exactly the same as before I read your blog, but now I have a reason for doing so!” It’s nice to be making a difference :p
On a more serious note… ye olde english rocks
Awesome stuff. So true.
Unicycling and practically anything involves it.
My brain needs to do this kind of thing after every driving lesson so I can hopefully pass my test soon.
Great to hear, that you are going to change your sleep schedule! I tried it several years ago but failed to get “in the rhythm”. I hope you share some tips on your experiment…
I’m really interested in your polyphasic sleep experiment. I read up on it a while back, but could not try it, my daily schedule is random as it is. Good luck, I believe that if you’re abse to get into it, the extra hours that you have everyday will be most useful.
Oh, wait, it was on your blog that I first read about it