Useful Ideas, April 2020

You are responsible for everything that happens.

Don’t say Yes unless you mean it.

Unlimited entertainment is like fast food in that you can consume a lot of it without noticing, and doing this transforms you into the sort of person who is only fit to consume more.

Doing literally anything constructive will make you feel better because it helps you understand that your problems are not insoluble.

How you behave reflects what you think is important, whether you want it to or not.

The things you pay attention to become fulfilling and interesting.

Destroying your ability to be attentive destroys your ability to find things fulfilling and interesting.

You have a soul and not everything is worthy of your time. You weren’t made for putting coins in slot machines all day.

You are what you do, not what you think, and not what you say you’ll do. If you spend all your time thinking about poetry and watching porn, you’re a masturbator, not a poet.

Being helpful to the people you love is more important than whatever bullshit you were angry at them for interrupting.

Conceptualise a bad diet as smoking.

Distraction is an obstacle that you place between yourself and yourself.

If you approach every interaction as a contest you’ll feel like you’re at war the whole time.

Thoughts and ideas are like food — they go off and rot in time, and are dangerous to consume in that state. Either throw them out or eat them while they’re fresh.

One of your jobs in life is to harmonise your inside with your outside so you don’t constantly feel like a fraud, or like your head is a warehouse full of junk and rotting food.

You don’t have to force yourself to be who you are, and you can’t.

Any plan is better than no plan. A good plan is better than a bad plan. But the greatest difference is between the first two. The things you achieved in the past were the things you planned.

Whatever happens tends to keep happening.

Food is not entertainment.

When you wake up tomorrow whatever you put off will be there waiting for you.

Every problem in your life is a practical problem with a practical solution.

Congratulate yourself for trying and failing. No one deserves praise for doing a thing they know they can do.

You’re still you whether you fail or succeed.

When you hide from yourself you’re like a rat thinking he has escaped by running to a different part of the maze. Not only have you not gone anywhere, you can’t.