Thread by @then_there_was

People believe a schedule means imprisonment.

A good schedule does not mean you're a tyrant to yourself.

A good schedule is a question that asks,"How would you like to spend your time?"

You sit down, and clarify what's most meaningful to you.

And if that changes, then you change the schedule.

A schedule is not an expectation of the future.

It's an exploration of the values you find important. What's meaningful to you?

The schedule is a reminder that time is precious and you shouldn't waste it on things that don't matter to you.

If you lived 100,000 years ago, you wouldn't need a schedule.

The actions would've been embedded in the environment.

Kill the rabbit, get some water, make love.

Life's gotten more complex, and so has our conception of meaning.

Your brain cannot hold all the information this world produces in order for you to navigate it well.

A schedule is a guide, a reminder; not to stick to a particular path, but to make sure you don't lose your way.

It's not the road, it's the North Star.

Unless you live in a New Guinea tribe, odds are life has become too complex for your stone-age brain to tackle unassisted.

You know that quiet sense of anxiety you feel?

You feel like your mind is looping through one thought, then another, then back to the first thought?

Those are open loops.

It's your brain asking what you're going to do about those problems, because it feels you have not created a plan sufficient enough to address it.

Why didn't our ancestors need schedules?

Because the environment wasn't complex.

We don't live in a world of sensations. Our ancestors did. They were engaged in the world primarily through sensory data.

Now we engage a world full of our ideas.

And our brains are completely and utterly overwhelmed.

One way people try tackling those problems is with mindfulness.

Mindfulness helps you distance yourself from the "pull" of all these problems.

That's great. Mindfulness can be a useful tool.

But it's not sufficient enough to simply be mindful of problems.

You need a plan.

You still have to address those problems in some way.

And odds are, a great many of those problems rely on a lack of information.

"How do I lose weight, where should invest my money, what skill should I learn next?"

Those are not problems localized in the environment.

They're ideas that you need to think through.

The problem is human brains didn't primarily evolve for information acquisition.

We're primarily good at seeking food.

Seeking information happens to run on the same neural circuits that squirrels use when locating food.

And with the rise of the internet, there's simply too much to do.

Our minds and bodies are fractured.

I do not believe mindfulness is a sufficient enough solution problem to these wave of information.

You need a schedule, a plan, to clarify what you want.

You know what happens when you clarify all those open loops?

I don't mean do them. You'll never be able to do everything you want because new desires constantly spring up.

I mean, when you make a plan for each open loop in your life.

You know what happens?

Silence.

Flow.

Meaning.

You know why?

Because your brain trusts that you're exactly where you need to be.

The brain loves a plan. It dislikes uncertainty.

It's want to know what it's doing today is what is best for it a month from now, 2 years from now.

You need to structure your life in such a way that you can express the values most important to you at every level of being—in this moment, this minute, this month, this year.

When the work you're doing aligns with the values you hold, that's when meaning appears.

It's not happiness. It's deeper than that.

It's a mode of being where absolutely nothing is lacking.

That's enlightenment. And you won't have to ask if you're in it.

You'll just know.

Otherwise, you'll go through life with all these open loops constantly running through your brain.

It'll color your existence with anxiety because you won't feel like you're where you're supposed to be right now.

It's why it's so hard to sit down in a room and meditate if you haven't made a schedule.

You got all these problems you haven't sufficiently clarified.

Your brain wants to know you're going to address them in some way.

So make a schedule.