A New Year
16 Feb 2021
2020 eventually came to a close. It was an eventful year with cataclysmic fires in Australia and our own West coast that turned the skies blood red, an unusually large 5.3 magnitude earthquake here in Utah that rattled the Wasatch Front, racial violence, destructive rioting, police brutality, a tumultuous presidential election, general political turmoil, escalating tensions with Iran, food and toilet paper shortages in the grocery stores brought on by extreme uncertainty, corporate news media capitalizing on anxiety to a greater degree than ever before, some other events I am probably forgetting, and of course the Coronavirus pandemic.
Yet life goes on. There was about a four month period beginning in October and lasting until mid-January where I slipped into a gloomy, unmotivated depression. I’m surprised I made it all the way to October before that happened. The change in season and jobs seems to have been the tipping point. Interestingly my GitHub commit history illustrates this pretty well as I shifted my limited amount of attention to the essential items, like maintaining my relationship with my Wife and learning my new job. 
I may not have accomplished much extra stuff during this period of hiding in my foxhole but at least I made it through the barrage.
What Changed?
When the clock struck midnight and 2021 began, nothing changed. The world was still battling COVID-19, the President was still claiming the election was stolen from him, people were planning riots at the US Capitol building, and the endless torrent of doom and gloom continued to spew forth from social and news media. There is of course always a symbolic change that happens at the beginning of a new year, a time when people traditionally reflect on the past year and make goals to improve their lives in the new year.
I took this exercise much more seriously this year than I have in the past. I learned of an idea called the Heaven & Hell exercise while listening to the excellent Deep Questions podcast by Cal Newport. The idea is that you write out two detailed visions of your life.
Hell
In the Hell scenario, you ask the “If This Goes On—” question that has been a staple of Science Fiction since the beginnings of the genre. What would your life look like if you continue doing the things you’ve always done, making no efforts to improve your situation or grow yourself. What habits will lead to increased stress, decreased long term happiness, or eventual self-destruction? You envision this scene and then write a detailed word picture describing it.
Heaven
This scenario is of course far more pleasant to contemplate. What does your ideal life look like? How do you want to develop your family, your friendships, your home life, your career? Describe what you imagine a full, satisfactory life looks like.
Going through this exercise does a few things. It makes plain the results of your stagnation and forces you to confront what you give up through inaction. I found this tremendously motivating. It also makes it easier to incorporate abstract ideas for self-improvement into your life. When you come across a new idea to better your situation, it becomes much easier to stick to it when you know that its implementation brings you a step towards your Heaven.
This reflection has motivated me to get more serious about how I organize my life. Too many tasks were slipping through the cracks especially in the latter part of 2020. We couldn’t keep our home clean for more than a few days. Everything felt like too much. My productivity system I’ve developed is largely inspired by Cal Newport’s Capture Configure Control philosophy adapted to fit my personal life. I have plans to detail my system and my experiments with it in a future post.
Moving Forward
I now have systems in place that keep my life more organized, free up cognitive resources from endlessly thinking about my open loops, and stores my commitments and ideas.
One idea I’ve had is to start a separate blog about the subject of my new job. I’m going to write a blog post every week, alternating between that blog and this one. I have dedicated time set aside one evening each week to sit down and write a blog post.
My news consumption has been cut dramatically with noticeable improvement on my outlook. It turns out you can still be informed without constantly checking news sites and having your artificially amplified anxieties harvested for others profit.
All in all, I think things are looking up for 2021. I’m making positive changes to my life that will act as stepping stones on to bigger and better things.