I’m usually never a fan of self-help books anymore, but this piece is:

~~Time will tell but potentially~~ Most likely the most impactful piece of text I read during this stage of my life. The writing resonates.
- (The timing of when you read a piece matters, though, so it’s definitely not for everyone.)
Structured into 28 days of reading. PERFECT that each day’s chunk of reading is no more than 2-3 pages. I’ve never gotten into the habit of reading this easily before.
- Perfect execution of:
  
  In describing this as a ‘retreat of the mind,’ I mean to suggest that you approach it s as a return, on a roughly daily basis, to a metaphorical sanctuary in a quiet corner of your brain, where you can allow new thinking to take shape without needing to press pause on the rest of your life, but which remains there in the background as you go through the day.

I’ve put a ⭐ next to the chapters I enjoyed most, and a 🌟 if it was exceptional.

Introduction

It seems that I’ve started this book at the perfect time to receive the content within it.
Especially over the course of Tilde, I’ve developed two problematic thinking patterns:
1. Every moment of the day has to be productive otherwise I won’t be able to build myself the way I want or achieve the things I want.
2. Life gets really messy and I feel that I need to take some time off to sort it out before “continuing to live.” i.e., if I just had 2 extra days to finish this journal and catch up on reading that, I can then go back to living with things figured out.
This book introduces the mentality of “imperfectionism,” where you accept that you are a finite human being in an infinite world, how you are never going to sort your life out (and nor do you need to).
In our efforts to try to “control” our lives (more discipline, better systems, better tools) we miss out on actually living our lives—the days lose their resonance.

Week One: Being Finite

If you find yourself lost in the woods, fuck it, build a house. “Well, I was lost, but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!”

</aside>

We have familiar feeling “maybe I won’t be able to smooth out all the areas of my life / do all the things I want”—the chapters asserts that we definitely won’t be able to.
Recognizing this is good! Very well then: this is how things are. And you stop playing an impossible game and instead find joy in living in the new game.
(why this personally resonates)

You have to develop the willingness to just do something, here and now, even if it’s not a part of a bigger system or routine.
To be a human is to occupy this one-person kayak along the river of time—scary, vulnerable, unpredictable. All you really can do is stay alert and engage with life as it comes.
- We instead want to be in this superyacht, where we control where we go and how fast we go. Where our actions fall neatly into a broader narrative. Instead this want for control results in inaction.
- Instead of sitting down right now to meditate, just once, for 5 minutes, we get caught up in this broader, daunting project of “becoming a meditator.”
⭐ This is exactly the “aim low enough” principle Jordan Peterson talks about.
Reminds me strongly of:

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.
- John Green, Looking for Alaksa