Creating the illusion of continuity in your life
Why do you feel disconnected from yesterday?
Think about yesterday. What did you do? Did you plan some activities and did not follow through? Did you set your goals and could not achieve them? Does yesterday feels disconnected from today? Does every day feel like it is a new beginning and you cannot get over into a momentum and flow? There is good news, and that it is never your fault.
All or non-neurons
Why it is never your fault, is an important philosophy. That is due to the inherent nature of our mind. Human mind is dealing with binary data, yes, just like a computer CPU. Your mind runs through many impulses per day, even neurons in your brain follow an "All or non-law" And with these discrete experiences, brain tries to prepare a story for yesterday. As an example, what you think about yesterday is wrong. You just have few haphazard memory points in your brain as experiences. Trust me, these are very few of what happened and what you felt throughout the day. The problem is there is no way we can understand the continuity of yesterday, Other than by jumping back and forth within these data points.
Tragedy of mind
Tragic is unless you deliberately create chronological order and peg all your experiences in your brain it is unlikely that this happens naturally in your brain. Trust me there is a great importance in doing this. I know you like a messy desk and a mixed colors on your palate as it sparks your creativity. But meaningful work and meaning from work arise, when those chaotic experiences are streamlined. Why do you think most of the things made by humans run in rows and columns? Think about a vegetable plot, an assembly line, or chairs in a movie theater. Keeping the order against while the forces of nature (entropy) acts in opposite direction is not an easy task. But paradoxically it is very habit forming and also an easy task as you have been doing just that all day every day.
You have done this before. If you played video games, had a chat in a WhatsApp messenger and Facebook. Even done some doom scrolling on your YouTube app. You have been creating the illusion of continuity by creating saved values. Saved value is what happens when each time you judge tiny thing as important and peg it with a like, a subscription and even an archive of messages. This archive of "Your" saved values act as an memory location which you cannot get rid of. Whenever you come back, they will, instantly create the illusion of continuity, feeling of familiarity and value. And this is the same method you should be using for your own creative endeavor.
Creating the illusion of continuity in your life.
Chose few projects you can come back repeatedly. A body of writing, painting, a garden, a personal philosophy discussion. And focus on the coming back habit. Whenever you return think "This is where I left off yesterday". Once you come back know exactly what you are doing during 20 following minutes. Something like 5 minutes for brainstorming, and 15 minutes of creative writing. Make sure you add to the saved value from yesterday, instead of starting new again today. Idea is to plant a seed in the brain which feels like it is growing day by day, not to plant a seed and not care for it. And go on planting another one. If you do that instead, you will never reap a crop. And once you finish, just relax and breathe and enjoy the feeling of continuity for a while before you fill your day with the rest of the things. This will create the continuity in your life, a fulfilling experience.
I know this sounds a lot hard. Although it is 20 minutes, although it is a single task, there are lot more things you should be thinking about before you even start doing it. As your motivation and willpower after reading this article would not remain same, tomorrow. So, the task should be designed in such a way, that saved value is enough for you to return to it. Once you get the hang of how to do it, you can fill your day with tiny things which create continuously enjoyable day. As, what you did enjoy yesterday doing is certainly would make sense to repeat today, especially when you feel and notice something is growing.
Few things you can try.
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