No B.S. Guide to Fixing Your Life
You are a slave. Here is how to get what you want.
I threw away my phone. The only piece of technology left in my life is a heavily restricted MacBook.
Panic Attack
I feel an itch, sort of a panic attack with no cause. If there is a cause, it must be not a cause, but a void. Why mustn’t I have known it before, or have seen it for what it is?
Escapism in every direction except the direction in which I should have been going, the direction my innermost being knows is true. But is avoiding, maybe due to cowardice, laziness, ignorance? I think not.
I believe it was simpler. It was ease. Simple, dumb ease. A moment of discomfort turned to pleasure with a click or a tap. The quenching was instant, a phenomenon like jumping in a pool on a hot day.
We rationalize, don’t we? Yes, we rationalize! Like a pig to the trough, we rationalize. We lie to ourselves. We steal from ourselves.
We sometimes believe it’s true, especially in the moment. If the fire comes to burn us, we will hide away to yet again, “rationalize”. We will say to ourselves, “Just another click, just another tap, but it’s productive… I’m learning.” Oh, how we rationalize!
It’s not for lack of willpower that we miss our mark. We all want to exercise the behaviors we admire, those behaviors we desire to stake our identity in.
So how irrational is it to rationalize the behaviors that take away from our desired identities? Very.
So then, why do we participate in those behaviors that dilute us? “Don’t you know, bro? You just need more discipline!”
It’s not true. We’ve been hijacked.
We Are Much, Much Sicker Than We Realize
The hours you are awake are all that count. That is the only time you’re conscious, the only time you have any potential agency. And we all have no time.
You are a slave to technology. You serve it. It does not serve you. I promise.
Here’s the math:
You’re awake 16 hours a day.
Americans now average 12 hours of it on a screen. (computer, smartphone, TV, etc.)
Necessities take 2 -3 hours: A shower, your commute, eating.
You have 1 hour left.
1 hour! The other 15 gone, and screens took 12 of them.
You can plug in your own numbers here, but I don’t think it’ll look pretty no matter what. It’s a sad trap we’ve got ourselves in.
Now stretch that one hour across a lifetime.
1 hour out of 24 hours.
1/24th of the average 77 year life expectancy is 3 years.
That’s your life. You were told you get 77 years. The truth is you get 3 years.
3 Steps to fixing your life
Discipline does not equal freedom. It’s all about your environment, not your discipline.
You will ultimately react to the environment you are in. So, what we must do is design our environments according to our truest desires.
Here are the steps for the system I am proposing.
Step 1: List out all your desires. (If it didn’t come to your mind quickly, it’s not important, get rid of it.)
Step 2: Cross out every desire you don’t absolutely need. (Ideally, you come down to 1, 2, or 3 desires.)
This does two helpful things:
It puts into perspective what actually matters. (You’re welcome. You have far less desires now. Doesn’t that feel good? Instantly less anxiety, and a nice happiness and gratitude boost.)
It makes it a lot easier to design your environment. We’re only optimizing for 1, 2, or 3 things.
Step 3: It is not about what you put in, it about what you take out. (The Enemies section below is a guide to finish Step 3)
Elimination of alternatives leads to inevitability of desired action. No willpower or hating yourself needed here.
What is Profound Boredom?
This is a system and applicable life philosophy that I am calling Profound Boredom: The act of eliminating or making what is not serving your desires so boring or burdensome that serving your desires automatically becomes the inevitable choice.
The Enemies
These are the primary enemies you are already facing, and will need to confront. Design your environment to work for you instead of you being a slave to it.
Enemy 1: Technology
The greatest of them all. This will be your biggest lever, and you will be a slave to it, or it will be an incredible tool to you.
This will also be the biggest thing you try to rationalize and justify. But let’s be honest. You are a zombie and a slave to your phone, to your desktop, and to your TV. You serve it. It does not serve you, I promise.
At best, you might currently have 1 to 2 hours a day that serve you. Check your screen time, I probably just found you a few hours.
How to defeat technology
I’m not being hyperbolic here. This is dead serious, and you could do it. Be bold and be honest with yourself.
Take that TV out of your wall. Go get the TV in the living room, the TV in the bedroom, the TV in your kids’ rooms, any TV in that damn house. Unplug it, and throw that monster in the trash. It is killing you and stealing your life.
Smartphones are insane. They have been eroding society for far too long already. They are also killing you and stealing your life. You will heavily try to rationalize this smartphone. You will say you need it so badly. The truth is, for all of human history, nobody needed it. There are workarounds.
So what I say is: Get the dumbest phone you can. That is actually a phone, something you could call humans with, which is what a phone is.
If you absolutely need your smartphone for some reason (and there are very few, but some legitimate reasons, you probably don’t have any of them, but let’s say you do, hypothetically), you better block that thing as intensely as you can and give someone else the passcodes to unlock it.
You don’t get to try to have more discipline by overcoming the phone. Your technology overlords in Silicon Valley will beat you. They know how to hijack the most chimp-like areas of your brain, dummy.
Everything that is done on that smartphone could be done on a desktop. Yes, it might be annoying and cumbersome from time to time, but I assure you, it is a net positive.
This might sound like I’m anti-technology, but I’m not. I think it is a tremendous tool, and we’d be foolish to completely shut it off, but it needs to work for us. We cannot be a slave to it.
Take your desktop or laptop and repeat again: Restrict it as heavily as you can, give someone else the passcodes to unlock the restrictions.
Enemy 2: Overconsumption and Your Monkey Brain Desire for Status
How to defeat over-consumerism
You do not need all of these things. Again, you usually serve the things and become a slave to them. They usually don’t serve you.
If you examine it, oftentimes these material desires you have are not your desires, but instead your monkey brain’s desires for status. You want the fancy house because you want to show everyone that you have the fancy house. You want that good feeling. You don’t need a second dining room. You want the fancy sleek car because other people can’t have the fancy sleek car, and you’re a big shot, woohoo! You’re going to die. And just imagine, you could have been the guy without the cool car.
You have to ask yourself with anything you buy: “If I couldn’t show it to anybody, would it still be as exciting?”
I’m asking you to deeply ask yourself: “How little material possessions can I get away with?” Because I assure you that lightening that load to as little as possible is incredibly freeing.
You are getting crushed by the weight of the things you choose to own. If you can’t move houses in a day, ask yourself: “Do I have too much stuff? And why did I choose to get all this stuff?”
To the best of your abilities, regard only your opinion of yourself, and the opinion of the people you truly respect. It’s now becoming trite, but it’s trite because it’s true. In 100 years, you’ll be dead, and everyone you know will be dead, so do what you want.
Enemy 3: Your City, Your Physical Environment, Your Family, and Your Friends
You want to increase the surface area for good things to happen, and surround yourself with like-minded people.
If you want to be in film or music, you should probably be in LA. If you want to be in tech, you should probably be in the Bay. If you want to be in finance, you should probably be in New York. If you want to be an academic, you should probably be in London. If you want to be an artist, you should probably be in Paris.
There is an ideal place for you to be that has the highest density of people you admire, and the greatest probability of making something extremely difficult to achieve a bit more feasible. Your physical, location is a huge lever to living a great day-to-day life, as well as eventually reaching these desires.
How to defeat your environment, family, and friends
If you’re trying to quit drinking and you don’t want to be lonely, and all your friends only like to go to the bar every weekend, you’re probably not going to quit drinking.
You actually need to do the harsh thing and examine your friends deeply. There is a higher level of friends you could reach that are thinking the same thoughts you are.
You have to cut these friends that aren’t for you and replace them. It will be harsh. There will be a lonely period, but you could do this.
That cringe phrase that “you are the five people you hang around” rings true in almost every case. Just believe it and be brave enough to take the leap.
This one is tricky, were talking family. There is a wide range here, so do your own examining.
They often love you (hopefully) and do not mean to manipulate you or keep you down. They want to know that you will remain safe and okay. They would rather you just be getting by rather than trying to excel, fail, and falling into a deep pit. This isn’t a bug from your family, but instead a feature. They want to protect you.
But you have to have a serious talk with them and get them under control and backing you.
It’s also an amazing way to instantly have at least a small group of cheerleaders, and people keeping you accountable to what you say you want. You’d be surprised the respect you will garner if you’re able to sit down and have this hard conversation just one time with them and let them know what you’re all about.
That all for this rant. Here’s the system in a nutshell, extremely simplified. Lets call it Profound Boredom.