Just do anything useful: Doing simple good things
Channel: Quest for a Meaningful Life
Date: 2019-10-10

You know, there are some times when there's just too much going on. 
There seems to be disorganization of work. 
It's like the feeling that I know there's a bunch of things that I need to do, but when it comes to actually working on them, it just seems like things get scattered. 
I'm still working on- I'm really working on improving the kind of efficiency of my work. 
Because when I was starting on self-development, really the program was just stop doing bad things and start doing good things. 
So that's the baseline. 
As I'm becoming more solid in reducing the bad habits and establishing the good habits, now I'm more concerned- I'm becoming increasingly concerned with improved efficiency of my operations, so that I can be getting things done. 
So I would look at this as levels. 
And the first level is don't destroy yourself. 
Reduce the worst habits and establish basic positive habits. 
And at this level, don't even worry about efficiency and productivity and getting all kinds of things done. 
Just reduce the worst things and make a basic baseline for yourself. 
And, you know, if you're gonna- if you just spend the day playing video games, but you're not doing- but you're recovering from your addictions, and you're not doing anything destructive, and you're continuing- you're taking care of basic cooking and cleaning and sleep and basic upkeep, then you can count that a victory at the end of the day. 
The next level is really where I am now, which is just try to do good things. 
Try to fill your day with doing things that are actually useful and helpful. 
So eliminate the bad things and just try to spend your time on useful activity. 
And this is sort of the middle level. 
Now, the higher level would be to really refine and focus the time, so that not only am I filling my time with useful activity, but I'm actually doing it in the most efficient and effective way. 
And I have a long way to go to reach that kind of efficiency. 
But my idea for today is just that sometimes it's OK to be in this middle- This middle zone is still good. 
The idea being that whatever you do, just try to do something that will somehow make things better. 
And there could be a whole list of things that could improve your life, and some may be more important than others, and there may be a lot of scattering, a lot of task changing, interruptions, moving from one thing to another, all these kinds of inefficiencies. 
But if the principle is just whatever you do, make it something that is good. 
And if you do this, then even with all the inefficiency, even with all the room for improvement, there's a satisfaction that comes from knowing that I am spending my time in a way that is each day making things a little bit better. 
There's so much refinement beyond that, and it isn't a great virtue to be working hard for a long time at something that is not effective because of being too disorganized, too scattered, always interrupted, or possibly being something that, while in itself a positive thing, is displacing other things that are much more important to do, that are not being done because you're doing something else. 
So there's tremendous room for improvement, and this is where I'm working on finding the best way to organize my time. 
But simply asking yourself the question in the moment: what can I do? What is something that I can do? Not necessarily the best thing, the only thing, the perfectly calibrated, ideal thing, but simply, what's one thing I can do to make my life, to make the world, a little bit better? This kind of thinking helps me to be able to really relax into good work, not worry too much about how I'm being less than ideal in everything I'm doing, but just knowing that I'm moving in the right direction. 
And maybe that's what crawling is. 
Crawling before we walk. 
Simply, crawling is you are moving in the correct direction. 
And it's certainly not the fastest, most efficient, most effective way of locomotion, of moving oneself, but it is starting to move in a chosen direction, and the walking, the running, is something that can be developed with time. 
But there's just something so good about knowing that this is a good direction. 
So find something to do, even the littlest thing, and do it. 
Then go back to your list of good things and do something else on that list of good things. 
Even if it's just eat your dinner, go for a walk, go to sleep, simple things like that, as long as you're advancing the project and making the world better.