An idle mind

You know what they say about an idle mind. I've been troubled by my inactivity in some areas and I've been looking at what I'm actually doing, it's yield and the "net productivity" I get from my efforts. A kind of personal process audit to look at what I'm doing with the grains of sand in my personal hourglass. Every grain has value, so every grain should yield, right? ROI on another level.

I don't do some things because I do some other things that have an opportunity cost. You do this at the expense of that. You do that knowing there is an obligation to prep or recover so allocated time goes up. More time spent on A and less time left for B. Opportunity cost.

The tricky part of life is that you train yourself over time to engage or eschew activities relative to thier "fit" with other activities or obligations. I don't get home from work and tinker because it's dinnertime with the family and then it's dark where I'd work....I'll just sit my fat duff at the computer and wait on the weekend. When the weekend comes, I might spend more time at the computer because that's what my pattern has become.

Next thing I know, months have gone by and while I have done many productive things with my time, I have not done the elective things that I set goals for and that give me joy.

Sloth of some sort. I want to think of that so I can change that and have more to show from my time. When something comes up for someone else, I'll rise to the occasion and go help and enjoy my time spent and the accomplishment of the task. Quality meets joy. On the other hand, when I have the time to meet my own recreational goals.....I don't always rise to my own occasion. I fix what's broke and I handle what I'm confronted with, but I don't pursue my own liesure activities anymore like I did "in the good old days".

Like everything else, I think the answer is reprogramming yourself. Shift your personal paradigm.

Call me nutso, but I think the following:

Your self image is personal and unique to you. Meaning you see yourself in ways no one around you automatically shares. You don't know what they think of you. You interact with them as though you are what you think you are and that they agree with this. You can imagine that they really don't. It's not malicious, it's just that they apply different views to common experience. That's why 2 family members will have different "versions" of the family history when they talk about it. Different views because their mental wiring makes 2 different people receive the same data in different ways and then interpret it differently and then store memories of it differently. They see you differently than you see yourself. Who's right? Perception is reality. Perception is based on assumptions you apply to your interpretations of external stimuli based on self image, coping skills, advice, previous perceptions....many things.

If you made it through that last paragraph without calling the loony bin on my behalf then I have enough time to write a few more paragraphs before one of you wises up and does so.

So take this:
If perception is based on assumption....and perception is reality....it may logically follow (and may not) that assumptions form reality, subjectively. Not events, but the chronicalling of events and the forming of concepts from those chronicalled events and the linking of concepts to the assumption of their fit in your experience. Viola; preconception-perspective-mindset. We all develop our own realities and make them fit in each others' patterns of life. We avoid conflicting realities and are attracted to accomodating or complimentary realities.

Mindset. Mindset based on assumption. Assumption of my own creation and my experiences may have tuned my receptors to channels of bias that may not promote my well-being which skews my assumptions and "harshes my reality".

Crap. Is it that easy? Can I just assume things don't mean what they seem? Can I change the evidence (my perception of the external stimuli) to fit the conviction? Can I change how I see things to change how things seem so as to affect what I think they mean?


Billions of dollars per year are generated by motivational speakers telling you this is possible. I'm telling you why I think they're on to something.

If I think of myself in the way I wish to be I will act accordingly and percieve accordingly over time and become what I see myself as already. It will require me to make positive assumptions about things I normally allow to "sully my joy". It will require me to shed counterproductive patterns as one who just doesn't acknowlege the pattern anymore. I just don't do those things. It's not "me" as I see myself and want to truly be. I "am" this way because it's who I am and see things this way and they affect me this way so I know/assume/feel this way.

But how do you do all that with checks and balances to ward off the deep plunge into goofy-noodle land?

I am in conflict with my true nature when I don't follow the patterns of my self image....and I suffer accordingly.

Now to figure out what is next.