Nikita Khutorni's Site

Went to bed at 5.30 am woke up at 11 am. I feel sleep deprived. I am just as stuck as in the beginning. Possibly even more. The answer is obvious: My current habits absolutely suck. No physical exercise and a terrible sleep cycle. I felt like an absoulte piece of shit yesterday when I tried to go to sleep. I was comparing myself with Andy Matuschak and the likes and it resulted in me feeling powerless and incredibly stupid.

The few simple tasks I had I wasn’t able to complete.

They went all the same way: I know I need to do task X.
I start doing it and complete a decent amount of it.
At the end, I get an overpowering feeling of powerlessness, the feeling that I suck and that I need to do so much more — and I leave the task unfinished.
I feel terrible about myself and try to find some form of escape.

It is likely that I get stuck because at the end these tasks require some courage. Something that I need to put in front of other people and possibly be criticized. And as soon as the stuckness overtakes — I don’t know what it is; fear of failing, fear of succeeding, feeling inadequate — I start self-sabotaging and do everything possible to not accomplish the task. I am incredibly good at suppressing the thought that I need to do the task.

This destructive thought process is the most limiting factor in my life. It is the thing that leads to me failing to keep promises. It causes a lack of willingness to pull it through, to put up with discomfort. I fail the promises that I make to myself and promises that I make to others. This leads to even more self hate and a stronger feeling of inadequacy and as result more self-sabotaging behavior.

How do I fix it? These are developed thought processes. They may go back to childhood. However, just a few months ago, I was in a state of mind where these processes were much less present. That means that I have the ability to override them. And as I — just as other humans — have a biological brain, the ill behavior can be described as a function of its current neural wiring (yes, I feel really smart for using that phrase).

So to fix it, multiple things are required.

Fulfill my biological needs
Develop better self-awareness — mindfulness.

There might be other things, but I don’t know them yet.

1. Fulfill my biological needs

For 1., I will establish a routine that serves my biological needs and track how well I stick to it as well as psychological and other metrics that help me assess my state.

I think that if I post it online, it will help me stick to it. And I encourage you, dear reader, should you be stuck like me, to do the same.

Apart from helping me staying accountable, the tracking will enable me to identify what actions or behaviour impact my state of mind. It would be interesting to correlate my writing with the tracked metrics by doing some form of linguistic analysis (e.g. sentiment). I don’t have the illusion that I will get much information out of this.

It’s pretty fucking obious that if I sleep regularly, drink enough, don’t consume sugar every 2 hours and do sports I will feel better.

Therefore I should not get too stuck up about the details. In the end, the simple, obvious things matter. The rest are the 20% of the benefits that need 80% of the effort.

2. Develop mindfulness

It is arguable whether this is part of biological needs, but I will keep them separate.

Mindfulness encompasses multiple things. Currently I envision a meditation practice, journaling — which I am doing with these daily notes; identifying cognitive biases and unwanted thought processes and writing them down; and finally, learning to escape them, perhaps using CBT techniques.

When things are good we may feel as though we do not need a routine, but routines are especially for moments when things don’t go as planned, when relying on willpower doesn’t work because you feel like a fucking wreck.

So, here is my routine I am trying to stick to at the time of writing. I assume that it should be evolving continously.