Dealing with indecision with a sense of maintenance and adventure

What follows is an excerpt from a private exchange that I am publishing with the permission of my correspondent. The quoted/indented parts are the ones I am responding to. The starting point was that of dealing with free time and indifference, to which I added the themes of doing activities that require maintenance while also tending to the side of us that is visceral (not rational) and which needs a challenge or an adventure.

What has been a nuisance to me lately, is the topic of free time and the feeling of indifference in the activities to fill it. I would love to hear your perspective on the matter.

This struggle generally happens after I stop work on my day job, and the time is up to me to fill. I of course want to take advantage of this time, but find this desire to actually make the time full of frustration. From my perspective there are, at least, the following reasons for this feeling:

Too many options of things to do

Not knowing what activity I am more interested in

The aforementioned pressure to ‘take advantage’ of this time

I suspect this is a widespread feeling with the paradox of choice and concomitant fear of missing out. What I do is to effectively make my plans more deterministic, as they are contingent on past decisions, while retaining the discretionary power to do what I feel like in the moment.

The way I approach life is a combination of a longer-term outline and short-term bursts of spontaneity within the overarching constraint of maintainability. I have a general idea of what I want to do for the future, such as to continue to develop my Emacs packages and work on/around the hut, but I do not write down a prescriptive regimen for each day. In practice, this happens at the level of my agenda, which only includes genuinely time-sensitive tasks like “meet with PERSON at 15:00”. Anything that is not time-sensitive is a “wishlist” item, meaning that I will check it out only when I feel like it.

By introducing this criterion of intrinsic time-sensitivity, I am effectively achieving clarity in two ways: (i) I know for sure what I must do on the given day and (ii) I have insight into my free time. How to operate in my free time is more open-ended in principle, though fairly predictable in actuality, because of the maintainability inherent to the tasks I am committed to. In principle, I have the freedom to do whatever I want. Though because the tasks I have started require maintenance (Emacs packages, manual labour, …) I actually have fewer options to pick from. Take the release of Denote version 4, for example: there was no pressing reason for me to publish it last week. I could have postponed that to this week or some time within the next three months. I could, in principle, even say that I am not interested in publishing it at all. But this would have the longer-term effect of compounding the work I have to do if I intend to maintain the project, or it would lead to the discontinuation of the project (bugs would accumulate, users would eventually seek alternatives, et cetera).

Maintenance, then, is the key. If the tasks you do have an inherent requirement of keeping up with them and you genuinely care about them, then you will keep working on them. This covers the manual labour I do as well. If, say, I do not clear the wild vegetation from around my place, I might be dealing with venomous snakes as well as an increasingly likely fire hazard during the summer. So I have to put in the effort, even though I do not have a strict timeline for doing so. Same for handling my dogs. I spend a lot of time with them each day, which is good for our relationship. I also go with them on long walks. This is “maintenance work” too because we continue to do something that is mutually beneficial for our friendship and our health.

The first identified reason leads to the following train of thought: “Maybe I should read. But what book? Or maybe I should play a game…but what game? Perhaps I should journal. There is also that movie everyone at work is talking about. However, it is a beautiful day to go play disc golf.” You get the point. Each one of these I respond to with “I guess I could do that”. None really excite me. None seem to spark any more interest than the other, which is reason number 2 in the above list. It is a feeling of indifference towards all of them.

Notice how all of these have no inherent maintainability component to them and the flip-side is that they require no commitment on your end. Watching a movie, for example, is a self-contained activity. Sure, it may be a series so you have to watch a few hours of video, but the idea is the same. The movie does not require you to keep revisiting it long-term. Video games are slightly different because they can trigger this feeling of accomplishment, like when you level up your character in a role-playing game, but have the same disadvantage as movies of containing the results to the virtual realm where they do not have a life of their own. Because they do not have a life of their own, there is no real urgency associated with them, no external accountability structure that compels you into action and keeps you honest, no emotion on your side that you have to tend to them. So what might appear as maintainability at the outset is, in fact, an illusion.

What you want is to discover matters that have a life of their own and eventually opt for them. It is like gardening. If you do not clear the weeds and water your plants, the garden dies. So if you care about it, you will keep doing it again and again. Each action will contribute to the feeling of contentment, even if it is not one of amazement. Rather than an ephemeral rush of excitement, you get in a stable state of pleasure, of being in good terms with yourself and of appreciating the command you have over your life, as you become attuned to the “little things” rather than the firework-like moments that are flashy but ultimately fleeting.

This is not to say that ephemeral experiences are inherently wrong. No! You can have those as well, though couch them in terms of a generally stable—indeed pleasurable—life.

When I do finally to commit to something, I can’t help but think of all the other things I could be doing. Thinking that a different activity would make me feel like I am ‘taking advantage’ of my free time. This of course is a frustrating cycle.

Yes, this is frustrating. I personally do not think in terms of “taking advantage” in a vacuum, but only relative to how I am maintaining the activity. I keep doing it with consistency, even just a little bit at a time, and so I preserve my momentum and feel nice about the discipline I show towards it. To use the example of sport, inconsistency is what kills enthusiasm for it. If you do not do it with regularity, it eventually feels painful and you quit.

The approach of “taking advantage” does entail a major risk: of seeking self-contained experiences so that you can exploit as many of them as possible in an attempt to maximise said advantage. In other words, it inspires you to not go in depth, to not commit to whatever requires maintenance, and to instead try to see everything there is to be seen. But because “everything” is infinite while you are finite, you set yourself up for failure, in the form of frustration.

Sticking to some things long-term is empowering for the very reason that it puts you in control of the situation: you are involved because your involvement is required for it to persist as an experience you may have. Instead of getting distracted by all the possible and theoretically rewarding experiences you could be partaking in, you remain focused on what works for you with regularity. Fundamentally, each new experience that is done without attention to its maintainability adds up to an unfulfilling lifestyle of not having something to hold onto and be held by, and thus comes at the cost of your wellness.

To try and counter this struggle, I have been trying to be mindful about lowering expectations. Even though the logical part of me understands that all my free time can’t be an amazing experience, I still seem to act as if this is possible. If I am able to lower my expectations about what experiences should feel like, I anticipate that the part of me that second guesses the activity I decide on would quiet down to some extent. But perhaps that in itself is something I should lower my expectations on.

I think this is the sort of trick that might work in some cases but is generally unreliable. You might, say, lower your expectations about how great that movie will be, but this does not change the fact that watching the movie does not have a longer-term aspect to it: it does not involve a commitment to its maintenance as it has no life of its own, as noted above. What I then think is that expectations must also be formulated in terms of the innate qualities of a given project or choice. Some are naturally short-lived while others have the tendency to stick around.

What matters, then, is to factor in your feelings when you pick something that will stay with you for some time. Do I love dogs, for example? Am I prepared to tend to the needs of the dog 7 days a week and 365 days a year? Will I go on a walk no matter the weather conditions or at least try the next best alternative? And will I be willing to sacrifice some comforts, such as going on a vacation, if it means taking care of my dog? If you can answer these questions with your heart as well, then you have found something you like and which will keep you true to your word. You have liberated yourself from the trap that is the fear of missing out only when you can reliably remain true to your word.

This theme of maintainability you cover here and in the succeeding paragraphs deeply resonates. Something I often think about that goes hand in hand with this theme is the practacility of an activity. I often feel as if the activities I engage in need to involve some practical aspect. But I then get caught up in thinking that any practicality I apply is fabricated. For example, reading has the practical aspect of teaching me something, a video game has the practical aspect of problem solving and interaction in a consequence free environment (relaxation and exploration).

The practicality I associate with these activities do not actually contribute to my survival, or longer term outlook. I suppose a difference would be if I have the goal to become a doctor (I do not) then reading medcial books would fall under the maintenance, or pursuit, of this vision. This would then result in reading being a more practical activity.

Practicality is important because it means you stick with an activity that is likely to reward your efforts in some way. Recreational activities, like watching movies or playing games, thus have the practicality of, well, “re-creation”: they let you disconnect from your duties and do something that makes you happy, relaxes you, etc.

However, the consideration of practicality comes with the risk of reducing every decision to a calculation of the expected costs and benefits and, further, of making every choice subordinate to some higher purpose goal. We may say, for example, that gaming is practical because it is recreational, which in turn is practical because it gives you a new impetus to go to work, which in turn is practical because it sustains you, and so on until we ultimately reach the goal you are working towards, which is to live and, perhaps, to live well.

Such analysis is fine in hindsight or to have as a rough idea of how to proceed, though it can lead to the sort of overthinking we have already been discussing: why is “to live” even a goal? Are we really choosing to live or are we living anyway until we reach a state, probably after many years, where we ponder such questions? Is, then, the goal “to live” but a rationalisation of what is already there? And what is “live well” supposed to be? To have a good end so that, for example, I tolerate abusive working conditions because the job pays handsomely and I will eventually enjoy my life afterwards with all that money? Or at the other end of the spectrum, to live well is to maximise my pleasure in the current moment as if there is no tomorrow? There are so many questions we can raise here and never reach a definitive answer. Are we even really operating in pursuit of a rational final goal?

All this comes down to the onesidedness of the goal-oriented approach. It is rational in that it sets a target on the basis of weighing expected pros and cons. But in our life we do not have all the answers. We constantly operate in an environment of imperfect knowledge and can only understand things better with the benefit of hindsight. Yet there is no “replay button” for us, which means that whatever we do, we do it with at least some degree of uncertainty and faith that things will go our way. I then feel that we cannot afford to be rationalists in the strict sense. It is pretentious to claim as much.

The cost-benefit calculus detracts from something basic. “Basic” as in simple or common but also as that which pertains to the basis of our life. This is the experience of excitement, passion, and adventure. Those are visceral, which the rationalist propensities of ours may dismiss as unreliable. Yet they trigger in us something that we cannot ignore with honesty; something that is empowering; something that we recognise when we feel it even if it eludes our efforts at defining it; something that complements or underpins our conscious decision-making as our animalistic alter ego.

Consider again the example of a video game. Why is there such a thing as a difficulty setting? Or why do people do speed runs? What is it that inspires us to seek these increasingly challenging paths in gaming? Now generalise this adventure seeking, this wolf within, to matters of sport, programming, science. Why does the sportsperson try to further improve their performance? Why is the programmer bent on writing more elegant code? Why is the scientist interested in the deeper understanding of the world? Why is the philosopher even writing this? We do not have a rational answer as to what we will do after we discover the limits, yet this does not prevent us from trying.

So, yes, practicality matters though there is also value in trusting our gut feeling or in following our heart. But not to the other extreme of foregoing reason. It is all about finding moderation in our ways.

Do you think providing value to others is an important aspect in your pursuits? I ask mainly with your Emacs projects in mind:

But this would have the longer-term effect of compounding the work I have to do if I intend to maintain the project, or it would lead to the discontinuation of the project (bugs would accumulate, users would eventually seek alternatives, et cetera).

I have written a lot of elisp code over the years, but mainly for my own use. Therefore the mentioned maintenance aspect is rather limited. Thus I wonder if ensuring other’s needs are met is a motivator to keep up with a project. Or perhaps it is pride in one’s work that is shared with the public?

Giving back to the community is an important consideration, though I cannot tell if it is the driving force. I suspect that underneath it is this visceral beast that seeks adventure, as I covered above. I have fun maintaining my programs, while I face the challenge to learn new things and to prove to myself that I can do it. Maintaining the code in public actually puts the whole activity in “hard mode”, because I cannot hide my flaws and must instead rise to the occasion. This is also why I do my publications in one go, as I have explained before (“alla prima”), but also why I publish so much of what I create: by not hiding my in-the-moment self, I essentially take away the option of failing badly and am thus increasing the challenge.

I can apply the same explanation for many of my life choices, but you get the idea.

I suspect that the answer here is up to the indivdual. For example, I do trail runs. However, if I do not have a race or event that I am signed up for then I know I will find ways to not train. Once I sign up for an event I now have motivation to train. If I do not, I will show up on race day with a risk of injury, or a having miserable time due to being unfit. Another example I can imagine is purchasing a fixer-upper house. Once you make that purchase you now have a financial liability so fixing up the house is a practical endeavor. Or as you put it: these activities have a ‘life of their own’. The race will not be put on hold because you are not prepared, and the fixer-upper will continue to deterioate if you do not put in the work.

Very well! You then seem to have this sense of challenge as well and can relate to what I wrote already.

To find a lifestyle that requires engaging in activities that require maintenance, it seems unavoidable that you will have to force discomfort. At least in the situation that I and many others find themselves in where survival, and therefore comfort is relatively easy. It is then up to you to identify an accountability structure that will motivate you, and to take that plunge.

Agreed! Survival may not even be a factor here. Think of the example of speed running a game. Or the scientist who really needs to know about the mysteries of the world. None of these are matters of life or death. But people keep doing them and continue to push the boundaries. To what end? Nobody knows! To me, it comes down to this monologue:

I will go for an exploration!
What am I even going to explore?
I do not know, which is why I have to explore!