Since beginning my semester away from college, I have been going through a massive restructuring period. Among many things, I no longer have anyone dictating my schedule. Rather, I must simply make enough money to provide for myself and work diligently towards my six-month and greater goals. Charting this new reality (which all will face when they leave school) has confronted me with the fact that work expands to the time available. And to solve this, I use nothing other than mathematics.

n / a = i

This formula relates an individual’s working intensity (i), number of tasks to complete (n), and time available to complete them (a). For example, if the number of tasks is small and the time available is large, then the required intensity is low, and vice versa.

Now before discussing the difference of the formula applied to school and adult life, I would like to clarify the levels of working intensity. First, each person has an optimum intensity level, or focus, where they have consistent high-quality outputs. This optimum level is different for different people. Some people thrive in high-pressure situations where they have much to complete before a looming deadline, and some don’t. With this, working intensity is on a spectrum. On the low end of this spectrum, work may be characterized as distracted or pushed off until later with procrastination. On the opposite end, work is characterized as stressful and leads to fatigue. Both of these states lead to low-quality output. Also, funnily, low intensity work in the form of procrastination leads to high intensity work such as last-minute cramming. This is not a recipe for high-quality output.

Connecting back to the formula, school set the number of tasks and time available to complete the tasks for me. With two known values, all I had to do was complete the task at the intensity level that was required of myself to meet the strict deadline. This was easy to do.

On the other hand, outside of school I must define all of these variables. To do this, I have my long-term goals which I break into weekly and daily sub-goals. This necessitates gauging my average working intensity to understand how long tasks should take and then setting a deadline for myself. I find it very hard to set accurate deadlines. For example, I have pushed the deadline back for my upcoming book so many times. This largely stems from me learning how to write a book by writing a book, and not knowing how long individual items take to complete like revising a 80 page manuscript.

The ability to constantly push deadlines back, creating essentially no deadline, has caused two issues for me. First, my working intensity can diminish greatly with no perceived deadline. It is easy to get distracted and procrastinate. Personally, I can get distracted by the minutiae of my work because of my perfectionist tendencies and procrastinate on making real progress. This is highlighted by the fact that when I am working independently I am not held accountable by anyone to complete tasks in a timely manner. No one is going to dock my grade for finishing a project late. Without enforced deadlines, I am neither rewarded or punished when I complete a task. My work expands to the seemingly infinite time available, and I struggle to make urgent progress.

To solve this, I copy school. I continue to work on enforcing my deadlines with a system of rewards and punishments. For example, if I finish my blog article by Friday night, then I can go snowboarding Saturday. And if I don’t, I will spend Saturday inside writing. I know what I want to do.

In closing, to anyone looking to achieve your independent goals: build the structure of school around your values. Or as serial entrepreneur and philosopher Isaac Morehouse states, “The need for structure in an individual life is too important for it to come from somewhere else.” 

Every morning I begin by making my bed. This is my first small victory of the day. I follow this by drinking a glass of water, reading two chapters of the Bible, kneeling next to my bed, and stretching lightly to loosen my body from eight hours of sleep. Next, I wash my face, brush my teeth, and get dressed. Finally, starving, having not eaten since 9pm the previous night, I eat a toasted bagel with either turkey or peanut butter and drink chocolate milk.

It is now the afternoon, and I am getting tired. So, I take a 20-30 minute nap to rejuvenate my energy supply and destress.

A few hours later I do some form of exercise for roughly 30 minutes, then yoga or foam roll for 30 more, and finally play wall ball for another 30.

Lastly, it is nighttime and I want to go to bed. Before this, I read the current book on hand for half an hour, and tidy up my room to declutter my mind before sleeping.

Everyday I do the same thing.

This process, that I continue to optimize, promotes my personal well-being and removes unnecessary thinking.

Completely my routine, I improve my physical health through exercise, sleep, healthy food, and hygiene. I grow spiritually by consuming scripture in the morning to center my day on what is most important. And cumulatively, this routine allows me to remain at peace with myself, no matter the circumstances in my life. Having a structured routine for my day is the number one thing for my personal well-being.

Additionally, my daily routine removes unnecessary thinking, offering me more cognitive energy towards my intellectually demanding tasks for the day (like writing this blog). A key component to greater cognitive focus is an idea I picked up from Deep Work by Cal Newport known as time-blocking. With time-blocking, each night, I create a list of the tasks I am going to complete the next day. From this list, I give each task a time of day. For example, I will research publishers for my book from 10am to noon, and exercise from 5 to 6:30pm. Planning my day in advance, structured around my routine and tasks, removes the energy sap of constantly asking, What’s next? I am able to be hyper-efficient and give greater energy towards the demanding tasks of my day.

When I don’t obey my daily routine I am out-of-touch with myself. I am tired, stressed, and confused. I can’t fully articulate all of the benefits that my daily routine has for me, but I am a significantly better person because of it. If you don’t yet have a daily routine, I encourage you to build one. As my life has improved dramatically, so will yours. Now, I’m going to read. 

I grew religiously apathetic as a senior at my Christian high school. Christianity was a chore of three chapels a week and theology class everyday. I was able to say the right things to get by but I didn’t really believe them. God had no place in my life.

But after graduating and transitioning to a new stage of life, I felt something was missing. I was lost. This was emphasized when a friend of mine took his life. I could not understand what had happened. If you would have asked me how I was, I would have said “confused.”

As someone who finds peace in understanding, I wanted to get out of my confusion quickly. So I questioned my own life.

“What is my purpose? Is there any meaning? Is my life a lie? Why do I feel my hands? Am I conscious? Is there a god? What is the purpose of life without god? How can I ask myself questions about myself?”

This barrage of questions crammed my mind everyday for months. And, every answer led to more questions. I couldn’t understand something to be true unless I had proven it true and moreover. I would not stop asking questions. Why would I do this? I was frustrated that I didn’t know because I was always known as the person who knew. I was trying to know the answer to many unanswerable questions. Never in my life could I not understand something if I had enough time.

Emotionally this left me drained. I could not trust the concepts that formed my very existence because I was a stubborn skeptic. I grew depressed by the confusion brought upon my metaphysical skepticism. I was confused by asking questions to get out of confusion. And when I would find an answer, I would immediately invalidate it because “I don’t know.” My stubborn skepticism left me in between here and there, in nowhere.

Really, I could not accept that God was the answer at the trail’s end of many of these questions. I could not get over my skepticism. Radical skepticism positioned me as the highest object in my life. I became my own god (a depressed one) because I had the power to question all. I ran away from God and tried to outsmart Him. I despised that God was the answer to my questions and tried again and again to find different answers, but nothing changed. I found God by running away and trying to outsmart Him.

Now, how does this knowledge transfer to belief in my heart? I don’t know.

I don’t care what year it is. To me, the year is an arbitrary concept with no meaning other than scientific. My experience is not capsuled into the prior year, rather it continues without distinction. I never wake up a new person on New Year’s Day. Still, the end of a year can ignite reflection, and without further ado, here is a list of 21 insightful quotes and adages I chanced upon in 2021.

1) Rather than trying to be happy, try to be at peace with yourself.

2) To find yourself, think for yourself.

3) Success is not the answer.

4) “Who needs an academic career when you’re the one with all the ideas?” – ‘Paradise’, Bcos U Will Never Be Free, Rex Orange County

5) Take Action, Make Mistakes, Learn from Them

6) You must design your life because if you don’t then someone will design it for you.

7) “Engineer a way of moving through the world that puts you in the driver’s seat of yourself.” – John Mayer

8) Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.

9) To think is to be free.

10) Asking questions shows courage, not weakness.

11) “Don’t trust people who don’t walk.” – Ryan Holiday

12) Great art is fueled by great experiences.

13) To be interesting, be interested.

14) “Emotions are like children. You can’t let them drive or put them in the trunk.” – Thundercat

15) Expect to be betrayed.

16) “Find your direction through introspection.” – Rhythm & Wraps Bathroom graffiti

17) “Not all crazy ideas are great, but all great ideas are crazy.” – Mike Posner

18) “You can do whatever you want to do as long as you can govern yourself because there’s no sure ticket to anything. Why would you want to trade in what you really want to do, for what the odds are in favor of?” – John Mayer

19) “I refuse to exist. I want to live.” – Mark Carter

20) “What connects to people is you connecting with yourself.” – John Mayer

21) “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” – Jim Carrey

I hope these can help you in the new year as much as they have helped me in the past year. Cheers!