No this post isn't about History and where our society should be headed, it is, disappointingly enough, about my failures at project management and what I could do better.
My motivation seems to be a fairly capricious mistress who I haven't spent much time understanding. One notable aspect is that it seems to deaden rather quickly, often leaving me feeling like I am spending all my time polishing dead intentions rather than following the inner fire of curiosity.
One strong intention I have with these short writing pieces is to finish them the day I start, or even better, the session I start them. I ride on momentum and I am rather bad at picking up where I left the previous day if it didn't end in a satisfying and compartmentalized fashion. This is definitely something I would like to get better at in the future, but for now, I am going to work with the constraints I have and decide to treat a project as a series of daily sprints which point towards the same direction, rather than trying to stretch my intention through a longer period of time.
Let me look at the projects I have attempted and failed, and some of those which have succeeded.
§1. I had the intention of having a ZettelKasten (a digital one in Obsidian) to collect notes and build a knowledge graph, so that I would not have to repeat myself over and over when it comes to ideas. This mainly failed because of the effect of dead intentions I mentioned, the fact that I spent most of my time in the ZettelKasten pursuing ideas while the excitement for them was no longer there. I have other things to say about the ZettelKasten in particular, and how the idea of atomic notes is sort of flawed anyway, which I might expand on in another post (or not).
§2. The same thing happened with my writing on my Substack. I can count at least 25 to 30 tangible notes which I wanted to expand into larger essays, but the current 'me' who has to write them no longer has the interest of the 'me' who started the ideas in the first place, which is why I intend on finishing the pieces I start the day I get the excitement, as mentioned. There is also the fact that much of my writing is tainted with a desperate need to feel superior and smarter than people, my imagined reader included, which makes them very unenjoyable to sit with and re-read, which is something I would like to do away with entirely.
§3. In the beginning of this year I started working on a comic called 'Zenith Finding', a story of a little girl stumbling around in the world of adults which makes no sense to her whatsoever, strongly inspired by 'The Little Prince'. I envisioned this as a 16 chapter story, and got around to making ... 2 of them. Disappointing I know, but the comic suffered from the same lack of satisfying cadence. I would like to get back to working on the comic in around a month from now, but I feel like I need to address some other bottlenecks, such as my energy levels and precisely honing onto what I enjoy drawing. On a practical basis, my mindset for the comic now would be to draw page after page, so that each day can feel like a satisfying win, rather than trying to work layer by layer on an entire chapter, which is to say sketch the whole thing, then add the dialogue, characters, backgrounds and finish, in a sequential manner.
So far the main takeaway I have from these failed projects is that I need each day to feel like a satisfying win in order to keep a project going. This might also be why my sleep can be so disrupted at times. I do not encounter major problems with regards to sleeping, but I also do not have the deep and serene nights I would like, mainly because, from what I can tell, much of my time and energy is wasted throughout the day because I do not manage them skillfully, and I always feel deep disappointment at myself for that.
I will think more specifically about the comic, because that is ultimately the main thing I would like to work on in the future, but that will be in a few weeks from now.
§4. The one "project" I have been successful at being consistent is this thread featuring (mostly) daily sketches. Each drawing feels like its own win, and a way to experiment with very small aspects of my drawing which I might have never paid attention to, such as the particular way in which I draw the fingers, or the curve of the forearm, or the way I hatch an area. There is also far less expectations for these drawings because they are about exploring my comfort zone and making tiny adjustments if I feel like them, as opposed to my comic which always makes me feel disappointed in my poor art skills after I am done working on it.
§5. Exercising has also been somewhat successful in the sense that I move every day now. Again, I think the main reason it has stuck is because each session is rewarding in its own right. I do not go very hard with my body but the simple act of sweating and getting my heart pumping makes me feel more in tune with my body and it feels great.
From these two successful endeavors, I gather three aspects to improve my ability at working on the comic. The first one is that I could be more conscious of my expectation before doing something, and perhaps find a way to lower them, or perhaps be more loose about them. "Lowering expectations" feels like a deficient frame (a term I will expand on in a future note) which is why "being more loose" or something similar might be more helpful.
The second one is that a lot of my time drawing the comic is about creating abstract pieces or backgrounds to illustrate the main character's inner state, but what I mainly enjoy drawing are figures (the human body if you will) and portraits, which I do not get to draw much. It also doesn't help that the figures and portraits that I do draw do not come with a neat photo reference which I can start from, because I tend to enjoy working from an existing visual the most.
The third one is that drawing purely on a tablet makes the experience far more disembodied, and as a result less pleasant in some dimensions. The reason why exercising is so satisfying is because the results are directly felt in one's body, whereas more abstract work such as programming or writing do not register directly as such. Hence, I might want to play around with having sketchbooks and sheets of paper lying around to sketch ideas I have with regards to my comic, making the workflow and progress more tangible on a physical sense.
And a last thing that comes to mind while thinking about the title, never looking backwards, is the principle of "cutting qi" I have been exposed to recently. I think that lens might become a major part of my life and how I think about things, but for now I can't say I grasp the concept very well, and deeper than that, the reality it points to. But a major facet of cutting qi has to do with how intentions can conflict with one another, or how they can be left unresolved. Typically, switching between activities without holding the proper intention of letting go of the first one and moving on to the second one is an example of cutting qi.
The subtle aspect about that situation is that it is possible to switch contexts without cutting qi, through having a very decisive intent to do so. Thus it requires both a sharp will that can make those decisions, but also a loose attention that can melt into your own body to create fluid motions, so to speak.
Overall it is quite subtle, but the main thing I notice with the common thread which has emerged from this piece is that working on ideas which haven't been finished is a form of cutting qi, whereas finishing the intent the day it has started is a way of completing an intention and allowing a new one to unfold the next day, which creates a more harmonious energy (qi) flow.
And the design of a harmonious qi flow doesn't merely lie in your ability to hold intentions skillfully, but also in your environment and how the two interact with one another. Intent and energy have to do with martial arts, and environment design points to the principles behind Feng Shui. Lots of cool stuff to explore and learn, but for now I want to focus on the basic, which is to complete intentions the day they arise.
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Aliveness Productivity Momentum
2025-07-29