The main reason I wrote piece 0 (I always like to start counting at 0, it's not really a programming thing for me, it's just that I like the number 0) about the (bullshit) framework of learning is because I wanted to give context to the idea of "better slop", but then the context ended up becoming its own thing. This often happens with me, and no doubt that this ends up making a lot of writing projects for many people far longer than they wanted to.
Regardless, the idea of "better slop" originated for me from this tweet, which recommends people to stop focusing on being the best version of themselves (whatever that means), but simply to adopt better quality slop in their life, improving the type of stuff you do when you are physicall or mentally tired and just want to zone out.
Why is this piece of advice sensible? Well for one it is directly applicable, without having to exert a mountain of willpower and without having to wade through the confusing swamps of figuring out what the hell "the best version of myself is". Too much time can be wasted navel-gazing or trying to do herculean tasks, when you could instead pick something and improve it.
The second aspect is that it encourages you to design for your tired self. I am not a fan of seeing my life as a set of systems which need to be "designed", because there is a quality of self-management and utilitarianism I am not fond of, but it can be very useful regardless, because the simple and unsexy reality is that you will always run into bad days. It's profoundly stupid and dishonest to expect that not to be the case, and therefore it's good to consciously preempt what you will do when you are less motivated.
I think one simple way to start with this is to have one fallback for each target which feels a bit too ambitious to maintain for a long period of time. If you want to eat healthy, you also want to make the laziest options you have in terms of food healthier. If you want to move more, you also want some type of physical activity when you feel tired, for instance deciding to stretch instead of doing nothing whatsoever. If you want to draw more, you want a way to fallback to making doodles, by having dedicated spaces for making something with less stakes (and also less friction, by making it easy to get started doodling)
And the third one is that it orients me towards thinking about what I enjoy and what I don't. Chances are, if I don't do the things I'm "supposed" to, it's because I don't enjoy the latter in one or several ways. I can try to fight that, but it's a hopeless battle. You cannot engineer care for something, though you can nudge or facilitate it. Entire relationships and projects have failed because people try to force something which ultimately isn't satisfying for both parties.
The reason why people try to force something they don't enjoy is very likely because it was forced upon us in school. The teachers simply did not care about what we were interested in as kids. The implicit idea was that without coercion, kids would do nothing but be lazy and engage in degenerate behaviors.
I do not buy this. I do think there is some amount of intention that needs to go into developing a wholesome life, but I think that there is a phase shift that can happen where your inner sense of pleasure aligns with what is genuinely good for you. For instance, having grown up on South Eastern Asian cuisine due to my parents coming from there, I don't feel the tug away from vegetables and towards sweets, pastries, crisps and ice cream that so many Westerners report. My coworkers often talk about how hard it is for them to do their groceries because they are constantly "tempted" by the bag of crisps, or the ice cream, but I personally do not relate with this. I think if you grow up with healthy food—I think a lot of European countries have had their cuisine utterly destroyed through modernity—then the dichotomy between enjoyment and wholesomeness tends to vanish. Not completely I think, because the convenience of modernity does tend to steer towards unhealthy things, but I think it's manageable to the point where you do not have to force yourself to eat vegetables for instance, and actively look forwards to eating them.
I think this is similar with everything. It is possible to align your life in a way that pleasure can be an indication of wholesomeness, rather than something to fight against. Embodied pleasure is bliss, whereas disembodied "pleasure" turns into addictions. I put "pleasure" in scare quotes in the latter case, because anyone who has experienced the addictive hook, or who has seen the eyes of someone engaged in their addiction knows full well that there is very little pleasure going on. It's more like the corpse of pleasure which they then try to revive through a bunch of electric shocks, rather than the vivid sense of pleasure coarsing through their body.
But okay, what am I going to do concretely to implement better slop in my life?
The main thing is that I will not repress or shame myself from the current activities I do not like, but instead will try to make the options I deem better to be more appealing. Appeal can come from various factors, such as: 1) friction or lack thereof 2) specificity and visibility (writing about a specific subject, and knowing that it adds up to a total project which you can easily visualize) 3) how much flow you are in (and removing the obstacles you can identify)
So I would like to draw and write more as my main productive tasks, but if I don't feel like doing those, I would like to have easier versions of those, and also enjoyable ways to relax and do nothing.
What I am thinking is:
1a) Writing these low-stake pieces during the quiet periods of my dayjob. One piece at a time, only moving on when I am finished with the current one, even if it means making it bad or whatnot. Momentum is the key, not quality (I am not good enough at writing to care about quality)
1b) Continuing my sketching thread, perhaps prompting myself to draw without references if I feel more experimental, but still, doing what I am doing right now is pretty high in the scale of wholesomeness
My time usage will never be "perfect" because there is no such thing. Chasing optimality in time usage strikes me as very neurotic. I just want to increase the quality of my slop. I don't really know what to add more to this, because I think the main things will emerge from me holding this intention and seeing how my life unfolds. I will try (emphasis on try) to update this from time to time, to report on my successes (or lack thereof) of improving the slop in my life. (piece written in July 29th, 2025)
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Aliveness Productivity Babysteps
2025-07-28