I’ve always considered myself a fairly unsystematic person, random and chaotic. After a while though, I began to realize that I had developed a rather ineffective routine: “No routine”, for the unenlightened me, meant systematically putting things off to the last minute, being constantly overwhelmed by inertia, not getting much done at all.

A lot of Zen, as I understand it, is about the idea of being free, living in the moment, unrestricted by form- yet it is necessary to learn good form before you can relinquish and transcend it- because at the novice level, before you develop good forms, you have bad ones. This is fairly clear in martial arts, in music, and in pretty much everything, really. It’s like Wittgenstein’s Ladder- you climb up and over it, and then you discard it. When it comes to my personal system of functioning, I realize that I’ve been anxious to discard the ladder before I’ve climbed it.

So I’ve decided to develop a piecemeal, provisional system- the first few rungs of the ladder that I will eventually conquer and discard. I started with a few rough sketches, centered around the idea of learning and then expressing, listening and then speaking, reflecting and then acting. I tried to squeeze in my main interests into this- but naturally I faced difficulties, because nothing is ever one thing or the other, and everything overlaps- so I ended up with a really messy map, trying to do everything at once and accomplishing none of it. I tried to simplify it, and this is what I got:

I showed it to some friends, who kindly pointed out that it was a convoluted mess that didn’t really make any sense, and that it wasn’t clear what I was trying to say. That was what I needed to hear- I needed a clearer purpose, and I already had one- that I wanted to show, to myself and to anybody interested, how my interests could form a self-sustaining, internally coherent system. I wanted to reveal the elegance and wisdom of phase-cycling, so I decided that I would make that the central focus- the relationship between action and reflection.

I’ve always been more of a thinker and talker than a doer- although I believe the main reason for that isn’t genetic or heriditary or unconquerable- it’s simply that I haven’t built up the confidence and habit of making things happen, of getting things done. I haven’t done it enough to carve it into my identity. So this system is to remind me that I can’t just linger in one phase, that I have to keep cycling between action and reflection to get the most out of my life. So this is what I came up with:

I realized that things like “ideas” and “projects” and “build effective systems” were impossible to express through arrows and boxes, at least in this particular framework- rather, they have to be demonstrated. The idea is self evident, I don’t have to mention it. Getting this bitch up and running is a literal demonstration of building an effective system. Once I accomplish that, I’ll be able to talk about effective systems management- but until then, it isn’t particularly necessary.

I realize that this diagram helps me answer a simple but recurring question- “What should I do?”. Sometimes there are so many options that we end up doing nothing at all. This is rarely a problem in video games- it’s always fairly obvious what you could be doing, because games constantly alert and remind you of your options. Real life doesn’t do that- so I think that’s something that we can hack, and this is partially how I do it.

If I’m thinking “Wow, there’s nothing to do!”- immediately I’m refuted- I could be writing, working out, practicing my guitar, writing music, blogging, meeting a friend for conversation, reading a book, working on one of my projects. So the idea is that I should look at this every day and internalize it- it’s oversimplified, as all maps necessarily are- but it gets me moving, gets me doing things that I believe that I need to be doing. If I’m tired of Acting, I could switch to Reflecting, and vice versa. I know it might seem mildly simplistic and contrived, but I believe that it’s a clear improvement over my present status quo- where I don’t really do anything at all. By quantifying everything (again, as video games do!), I can chart my progress, which is a sort of motivation in itself. I can climb a couple of rungs on my ladder.

The greyed out nodes are things that I’d like to do, but I don’t particularly feel qualified to do yet- I can’t travel while I’m still doing my National Service, for instance, and the Legion of Heroes project requires that I build a substantial supportive community before I initiate it. Unlocking these achievements is something to work towards, to look forward to.

The entire map could seem rather redundant and unnecessary- isn’t it something that I already know? Sure it is. We all know how life ought to be lived- in fact, we almost always already have the answers to practically any question we might have. We all know how to be good parents, friends, siblings, people. But we don’t always do it. We forget to philosophize when we most need to. The idea here isn’t to discover anything new- the idea is to really understand myself inside out, to really live purposefully, knowing exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing, and the higher purpose that each individual action serves.

Again, life is far more complex, beautiful and random than I could possibly depict, and necessarily so- because if life could be accurately described to the last detail, then it wouldn’t really need to be lived any more. We can derive knowledge from the world, but we cannot derive the world from knowledge. Perhaps tomorrow I might become a touring musician and put everything else on hold. (Highly unlikely, but you know what I mean.) But between now and then, I figure that I ought to get my basics right- to work out consistently, to build my finances, to invest in wonderful relationships, to write ceaselessly, to read and learn, to make sure that I have time to be surprised, to live with a sense of wonder and appreciation.