Something

I am a pretty inconsistent person. My tastes in music, in food, in ideas will fluctuate wildly during even just the course of a day. I like this about myself, I consider it liberating not to be confined by a consistent personality, to be able to introspect and listen to what i actually feel rather than forcing myself into the shape of who i think i am.

But on the other side, I also try to have integrity. I remember my form tutor in secondary school at some point saying ‘integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is looking’, which i found really resonated with me. But I think that integrity is a bit more than that. I think it’s about having deep rooted principles that i stick to no matter what. It’s about having beliefs and values resilient to forces acting against it. It’s about deeply caring about things in the world, even if it has a cost.

I think iteration is an incredibly powerful mindset to have. It means hitting reality as often as possible and learning from each attempt.

For example, my routine. For ages, I’ve told myself that I’m someone who cannot stick to a routine without a forcing function. This is because every time I try to do so, I’ve come in with a preconception of what I wanted my routine to be, and then failed to feel motivated enough to actually stick to it. I did not realise that in fact I already had a routine, it just wasn’t ideal for me. When a proposed change to my routine doesn’t work, I can consider this a failure of my ability to stick to a routine, or I can treat it as a datapoint to learn from - to inspect why it didn’t work and what can be done differently next time.

This morning I spent much longer on my phone that I would have liked to without getting out of bed. One thing I could try tomorrow is to a book next to my bed and try reading for 30 mins instead. If I still end up on my phone for longer than I’d like, I might need to buy an alarm clock and charge my phone in another room.