Sharpen the axe

Plan each day in order to optimize each of the other time blocks.

When we FAIL to set our agenda, something else will. When we’re addicted to material SHIT or someother kind of fritterware, we might as well be a junkie or crack addict.

Optimize means embrace the daily grind

How Do We Overcome Tedium?

It’s a VERY SERIOUS question … we might even say that it is a deadly serious question. There might not be ANY question that is more important.

Tedium drives an exquisitely subtle behavior, something that many can/do hide, something that has been around for a very long time … but maybe only recently picked up a popular name … that something is the OL’ quiet quit.

As much as people want to strenuously deny this, most and maybe ALL people have a VERY LONG HISTORY of quiet quitting on their goals and new year’s resolutions … in fact many, or maybe even most people, no longer go through any kind of process of making new year’s resolutions OR writing down their SMART goals because they know that it doesn’t work. A lot of people regard things slight Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-bound goals as even worse than just a waste of time … they feel the same way about New Year’s Resolution’s … I’m not going to do that crap; it’s all just a bullshit self-delusional mindgame.

People are actually plent SMART already about these things; they know ALL about good intentions … just like other good, gung ho souls, they are more than familiar with the endless array of different mnemonic devices for goalsetting … they have been to more self-development seminars, bootcamps, retreats than they can count … they have listened to decades worth of self-help audiobooks as they commute … as they go for their daily run or walk they listen even more podcasts to augment their storehouse of time-proven, old reliable ideas from DaleCarnigie, NapoleonHill, TonyRobbins, StephenCovey, JohnMaxwell, Eckhart Tolle, RobertGreene, JoeDispenza … people are more than SMART when it comes to double-down on their attempts to mentally program themselves to have better habits or to break the bad habits of being themselves.

There’s no problem with goalsetting … it’s fine … it’s not bad for you.

But the TEDIUM of the daily grind will persist

JUST STAY AT IT

And people have REALLY REALLY REALLY tried … and they keep at; they keep trying … they still keep going to the gym, because this year they are not going to quit going to the gym, but the same old tedium is alway there lurking around every corner … and the tedium get’s a LOT worse with age, by the time anyone is 60, they are completely on their old games.

Even though SMART people will know damned well that they shouldn’t give in … they know that they should use the 40% rule in training to push harder when they feel exhausted to develop the displine of giving things extra effort … but the same old tedium does not EVER let up, so one day they sort of quiet quit in way that nobody can see.

Maybe some people can even fool themselves some of the time … they can keep telling themselves that at least they kept at it, that they hung in there, keep going through the motions, even when they didn’t feel like continuing … EXCEPT that the subtle quiet quit is there … meanwhile, their creative superpowers of rationalization take over as the subconsious works 24 hours a day, even while people are sleep, to craft an exquisitely profound excuse, eg perhap an old injury flairs up, and multiple levels of watertight alibis and plausibe deniability for any kind of introspection which eventually gives them permission to full quit.

The ROOT CAUSE is the basic TEDIUM of a goal which is something that is only another Nice To Have or something that we do to impress others that are still trying make the high school football team or some other youthful dream … but the goal is not really an essential Must Have for our existence and we can’t really fool ourselves indefinitely. The activity to support the nice to have HAS TO become tedious … because our subconsious is smart enough to figure out that we don’t NEED it … the thing we’re trying to do becomes tedious [and inevitably leads to the ol’ quiet quit because it is not a MUST HAVE because we have not concretely mapped the goal to the singular, unique, fundamental BIG WHY of our existence.

Yeah … it might sound like a tired old cliche, but we know damned well that cliches get to become tired old cliches because they are survivors … because they NECESSARILY, FUNDAMENTALLY and ALWAYS true. We cannot escape the essential TRUTH that we MUST understand the singular, unique, fundamental BIG WHY of our existence.

When we do not KNOW our WHY, our goals will inevitably become tedious chores that are driven by something we thought would be nice to do … and when tedium sets in, it does not take long long before the quiet quit HAS TO happen.

So the answer to the “How Do We Overcome Tedium?” question is that we need to work harder to refine our understanding or improve our focus on the BIG WHY of our existence, and then map our goals to that BIG WHY.

There are things that get in the way of the introspection necessary to really understand the Big Why.

A lot of idiots will tell you that you have to pursue your passion … fuck that nonsense. Fuck passion! In fact, you can fuck that old whore of an idea and never feel guilty about looking back if your passion is some sort of pornography or erotic passion … if your LOVE of something is not genuine, nobody is going to care … knock yourself out … passion does not really produce anything but an ultimate divorce. Fuck passion all you want … hump on your passion blowup doll until you are RAW from pounding on your passion … without a WHY driven by genuine LOVE, the results are not going to be any different than what you get from too much time watching porn.

Fuck motivational speeches! The motivational speakers are like doctors … they are not there to CURE you … their whole game is about keeping you slightly sick, requiring regular checkups and pharmaceutical prescriptions. The same thing applies to PROFESSIONAL pscychologists … they’re no different than motivational speakers, except you will typically find that psychologists, therapists, pastors and the like typically succumb to either something like an tawdry affair with a divorce OR some sort of pill addiction with requisite cycles of rehab and more rehab and rehab after that … because, deep down … motivational speakers, medical professionals, psychologists, therapists, pastors are not exactly all that well-balanced and mentally healthy themselves, ie one symptom of their own internal psychodrama addiction is their insatiable desire for the stage or spotlight.

And … even though it might be enormous fun … it might be entertaining … it might be a good bonding experience for your team … but, as a general rule, fuck that tired old bullshit of attending a special camp or muster or promisekeeper’s rally to get a blast of good Christian self-discipline sunshine blasted up the ol’ rookter! This is BETTER than what was outlined in the previous paragraph … but it is still just not going to cut the ol’ mustard … it is still just not going to be enough to overcome the wrong-headedness of chasing the socially-appropriate nice to have goals that are not really must have goals. If your must have is not equal to the must have of a crack addict, then the tedium will drag you into the mud of the quiet quit. Stop playing games with fantasies of making your high school football team, of being a Navy SEAL, of being some sort of perfect Christian husband/father/promise-keeper. GET REAL.

The BIG WHY has to be an INESCAPABLE ROUTINE

Discipline equals FREEDOM … when we don’t set our agenda, something else will … when we’re addicted to material SHIT or someother kind of fritterware, we might as well be a junkie or crack addict.

Your Big Why has to be like a crack addiction that won’t let go … something that you’d crawl through shards of broken glass to get … something that once the addiction is set results in a drive that deepens with each fix … this is not a rational thing – not something for your cognitive powers … the Big Why has to FEEL more REAL than anything else in your entire existence feels to you … your Big Why has to translate into a PERSONAL addiction, a genuine LOVE which simply will never allow for the old quiet quit.