I have been paying lip service to this for the longest time but it’s finally about time- better late then never- that I get around to doing it. I’m talking about consolidating my passions, focusing warm sunshine into the laser beam of a heat-seeking missile. And I’m talking about creating habits, because first we create our habits, and then they create us.

So anyway, I’m writing this right after a pleasurable session of reading. (Specifically, I was reading More Sex is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics by Steven Landsburg, which is a great book that I’d recommend to absolutely everyone.) And I’m confirming a hypothesis here- which is that I always get around to writing a long quicker if I pursue it immediately after reading. Because reading crystallizes my thoughts, it puts me in a receptive mood for working with ideas. I won’t necessarily regurgitate whatever it is that I was reading- because I read in an engaging, critical manner (I’m not trying to praise myself here, this is just how I read) that gets me thinking and asking questions. I write much better when I’m in this zone, and for the most part I like to pretend that the zone is something mystical and serendipitous- but statistically speaking, getting into this zone is something that can be arranged.

I cannot guarantee that you will fall in love this year, for instance- but I can guarantee you that it becomes statistically more likely if you make a habit of meeting and interacting with new people, and statistically less likely if you’re sitting at home every day. Similarly, I greatly boost the my odds of writing something palatable if I simply read more books, and write immediately after my reading sessions. It’s all about the mental state. And this is consistent with a conversation I was having with my friend Xavier about how it’s difficult to do more or less of anything, but it’s easier to rearrange our existing activities in a more effective system. Sometimes I sit and beg for the words to come. Moments like now, they come in torrents, and I struggle to put them all down. It’s a sobering thought. I can enter this state of mind if I make the necessary preparations. It’s not that difficult.

So now that we’ve gotten the read book -> blog idea out of the way, I think it’s worth thinking about what other little associations I could create that would make a significant difference.

I want to be tracking my expenses every day. (2024: this was important when I was broke, but it no longer seems particularly important in my current lifestyle.) I spend more consciously when I have been tracking them, and I get a greater satisfaction out of my purchases that way. (It would not be accurate to say “I spend less when I have been tracking”, because even though it’s generally true, sometimes I do spend more despite tracking- because of things like the Foo Fighters and L’arc~en~ciel showing up in the same few months, and me paying for my web hosting and other things like that. Still, all else held constant, I spend less on stupid frivolous bullshit when I track my spending. I smoke less, I eat out less, I waste less time- all sorts of wonderful consequences. So I want to track my expenses every day. My notebook remains a great medium. All I need now is just an activity to link it to, to make it a habit. I think I shall make it a bed-time activity. I shall track my day before I go to bed.

I need a wake-up routine and a bed-time routine. Bookend your day, says Art Of Manliness. More on this later. (2024: I think it’s worth investigating why I’ve never quite managed to make a desirable routine stick?)