Scaling Down

Learning new things comes at a cost. A mistake I often make is rushing too soon. Patience is necessary to get familiar and build a strong foundation of the fundamentals. My train of thought is usually a grand idea that would blow up the internet, even the world but rarely something even comes out of it. Mostly ideas die in their infancy, projects get shelved because of a sheer lack of time. I realized my mistake but I didn't know where to go to fix this. The older I grow, time management (or the lack of it) compounds, making it all the more frustrating to get things done.

Never enough time

A lesson I have learned is, if anything fails and the reasons for failure are:

1. Not enough time.
2. Inadequate planning.

Then the reasons of failure are lazy and dishonest. These have been my reasons for dead projects. I have since started asking alternative questions to myself:

1. What would I do if I had all the time in the world to set things on track?
2. What would I do if I only had 5 minutes?

The order of these questions lends to a refutable order of tasks. Refutability is important. It gives you better reasons for failure. Even a direction for improvement. This is where I have learned honesty to self is much more important than being the smartest person in the room. It takes a lot to be smarter than yourself, but it costs nothing to be honest.

Discipline

Once a genuine problem is identified for a failed objective. It would fall down into:

1. Lack of knowledge - Don't understand the problem. Little to no research of existing solutions.
2. Poor fluency. - Lack of experience of solving sub-problems or even simplifying the problem.
3. Poor Attitude. - Lazy execution, underestimating the problem, no accountability.

1 and 2 are solved by effort. 3 is solved by discipline. Often poor attitude is chalked up to lack of motivation. All it takes to get even mediocre results is consistently failing. Consistency is important. It is necessary to spend at least an hour to plan for an important objective. At least 3 hours of practice to improve fluency drastically.

I realized, my ideas and projects failed because of all three. To get ahead from here, it is necessary to do less.

More with Less

I realized in the pursuit of doing a lot of things, I got stuck with almost no proof of work and nothing to be proud of. To address the problems I have, I have to do less.

Instead of rushing for 100 push ups on a Saturday morning to never follow up because it hurts a lot the next day and then the next day is too busy, until the day the objective is completely lost. It is more important to do 20 push ups. 20 is far less than my physical ability but 20 is far too much for my consistency. It is great to be able to do 100 push ups everyday for a year, but if it isn't practical, even 20 would help.

The body would naturally get very fluent for 20 push ups that it wouldn't hurt the next day if an additional 10 push ups were performed. Expect yourself to faithfully do 40 everyday in 3 months and 100 by the end of the year. It is important to build a habit before it is improved.

Ambition is madness if it achieves nothing. Ambition that gets things done, speaks for itself.