Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (II)

There will come a day when people will no longer be telling you what to do. When to wake up, when to go to school, what subjects to study, when your essay has to be in by. Teachers and parents will one day no longer be giving you orders. You alone will decide what to do with your time. Yes, you will need a job to pay for food, clothes and housing. But you will choose that job, not your parents nor your teachers.

The Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran says that raising children is like firing a bow from an arrow; for parents, the force with which they pull back the bowstring, the direction in which they point the bow and its angle of elevation will all determine where the arrow will land. But once the arrow has been loosed from the bow, they no longer have any further influence over its subsequent trajectory. 

You will one day be that arrow, shot from your parents' bow. You are on your own now, their work as archers done.

So – thinking about that day, you are thinking of your freedom, to do furthermore as you will. But who then will define your goals? Who will fill your day with tasks? Who will set deadlines? Will it be you? 

The difference between winners and losers lies entirely in self-discipline. Training, practice, rehearsal. Getting in your ten thousand hours needed to achieve mastery. You have to be tough on yourself. It will be no use outsourcing that to someone else. Laziness and procrastination are signs of weakness and will result in poor life outcomes. Failing to plan is planning to fail. You will not make the most of your potential.

But pushing yourself too hard – especially in pursuit of purely material goals – is also harmful. Finding that balance between taking it easy and charging on willfully is crucial. Stress starts to hurt when you can no longer cope with everything on your plate. Living with long-term stress has negative effects on physical and mental health. But having no stresses at all, no aims, no ambitions, is also dangerous. The concept of 'eustress' – good stress – is useful. Enough that you can cope with. Everyone has a limit of how much stress they can tolerate before it overcomes them. For some it's higher, for other its far lower. It is important to define that limit for yourself, through experience.

That limit changes over life. The maximum you can cope with peaks in your mid-20s to mid-40s. You are physically at your most robust. Later, you will need to settle back and learn to enjoy the fruits of your efforts. Materially made, it's then time to contemplate more elevated matters. And here, again, it must be you that determines what you pursue and at what pace. The balance between rigour and taking it easy. The balance needs to be struck; you need to define when it is that you are genuinely tired and are in need of rest – and when you are just feeling lazy. And when you identify yourself as just feeling lazy, you are the only one who can get your arse in gear.

Self-discipline is built around structuring your day so that time doesn’t evaporate before you know it. First thing in the morning – write it down. What you have to do, and when you should do it by. Set yourself goals and deadlines. Get into this habit as soon as you can and stick to it. Be consistent. Day in, day out. Whether it’s written down on paper or recorded digitally – this doesn’t matter. What counts is that this behaviour becomes habitual. At the end of each day, you become your own judge, your own taskmaster. What didn’t get accomplished that day, put forward to the next day – and at least this way, you are aware of your own procrastination. When you see a task getting kicked down the road, you know there’s a problem. Deal with it; get it sorted or outsource it to someone else.

Writing it down is one of the most important habits you can have. A pocket notebook that’s always with you to jot down your thoughts. A desk notebook with your day’s tasks mapped out. 

You are in charge of yourself. 

This time last year:
"Fill the edge of your bed with pebbles"

This time two years ago:
De-growth: A personal manifesto, Pt II

This time three years ago
Old signs in Wrocław and Gliwice

This time four years ago:
Are aliens good or bad?

This time five years ago:
Thoughts – trains set in motion

This time seven years ago:
Great crested grebes and swans hatch

This time nine years ago:
Jeziorki birds in the late May sunshine

This time ten years ago:
Making sense of Andrzej Duda's win

This time 14 years ago:
A walk down ul. Gogolińska

This time 17 years ago:
Twilight in the garden

This time 18 years ago:
Late-May reflections