I started drinking coffee full-time recently. I like the routine it brings and I understand why it fueled capitalism. Before coffee, people would drink alcohol in the mornings. No wonder nothing got done for so many years.
It's easy to look back at older time periods and be nostalgic because there was no pressure to get anything done and life was simpler. This is biased. People in the past had to face their own set of hardships that were different (mostly physical) and probably worse than the ones we face today. We tend to overlook these challenges because many of them have been mitigated by modern technology. The information age is interesting.
There was a lot less intrapersonal comparison and distractions before the internet and social media. But also less possibility. A lot less possibility. Opportunities are massively abundant on the internet. I can drop everything right now, spend a year learning how to code for a few hours every day, and probably get a relaxed comfortably paying job doing it. I can start a greasy drop shipping business, and put in a few hours everyday but not feel fulfilled whatsoever. I can start a blog! Improve my writing by staying consistent for a year or so, and get an audience (sound familiar?).
There are so many more possibilities, but so many more distractions. Attention is currency in the information age. How are you spending your attention? I say the possibilities are endless, but only if you invest your attention wisely. Ironically, it’s harder than ever to invest your attention wisely because technology is designed to hijack it.
Our brains aren't evolved for the information age. Constantly getting distracted is an evolutionary instinct. If you heard a tiger rustling through the brush 50 meters east of you, you have to pay attention to it or you’re dead. Our distracted brains helped us survive in a primal world of fitful threats.
The good news: Our brains are flexible. You have to train your mind to do something it's not meant to do - not get distracted. If you're anything like me, this is really hard at first.
I often catch myself living as if the past matters - that it means something. As if just because things have been a certain way for a long time they have to continue being that way. I forget that if I wanted to, I could drop everything and start doing something completely different. Things aren’t as permanent as they appear to be.
The appearance of permanence is deceptive and stems from our brain's inner workings. There's a saying in neurology: "neurons that fire together wire together." The more we engage in a certain behavior or thought, the stronger it becomes ingrained in our brain. The longer we stay in one place and repeat the same actions, the more we’re convinced that things should stay that way. In reality, every moment offers us a chance to change our lives' direction entirely.
To get the most out of the information age, we need to approach every day with a beginner's mind: Remind ourselves that we have so much power at our fingertips, that we can always change our situation with the internet, and that the possibilities are almost endless.
Average struggler (as opposed to the average apathy fan)