my ruler was broken

notes to myself. why i feel behind even on good days.

the ruler

you finish something. it is fine. you still feel bad.

in your head there is a better version of it. that better version is the ruler you hold yourself against.

the ruler is bent.

it was drawn from the future

look back at a hard problem and it looks easy. you know the ending now. the you from back then did not.

the ruler gets drawn after the fact and then held against somebody who was working blind.

it was drawn for a machine

it assumes you decide to focus and then focus. getting into a good state is work on its own. the ruler charges you nothing for it.

it leaves out the boring parts

the clean version of a day. no tiredness. no being stuck. no hour lost to your phone. that hour happens every time and the ruler has no mark for it.

it does not record the wins

i did something good last month. it took a normal amount of time. i felt slow the whole way through.

if i bend it back will i go soft

imagine a button. press it and the guilt goes. you also stop caring about the work. i would not press it. so the caring was never made of guilt.

picture a friend standing exactly where you are. you would tell them to ease up and you would be right.

where the mark should sit

guilt is a punishment. you learn from punishment slowly. you learn faster when something good happens too.

put the mark a little above where you normally land. not where a perfect person would land.

you will not wake up twice as good tomorrow. people move in small steps. the mark only needs to sit one step up.

clear it often and raise it a little. that is the shape of getting better.

some days you come in under

the line is noisy. expect the noise.

how to draw a true one

not by deciding to. with facts.

write down how long things take. in a file. your head lies about this.

write down a good day. next time you feel slow hold yourself against that real day.

ask somebody. you are the most biased person about you.

guess a time then bet on it. imagine real money riding on you missing. what number do you say now.

after a bad morning

you lose the morning and then raise the mark to make up for it. you miss. then you throw the whole day out.

i do this one a lot.

stop and draw the line again from here. you are not in the morning any more.

sometimes the ruler is fine

sometimes it is the thing being measured. a class you learn nothing in. a book that went dull four chapters back. the mark is fine. the goal is wrong. drop the goal.

why i keep this

research and building are both slow and both look obvious the moment they work.

with a bent ruler every day reads as a failure. nobody keeps walking into that.

so i track time. i ask people. and after a bad morning i draw the line again instead of pressing harder.