simplistic but feels right: good repetition is mindful, bad repetition is mindless<\/p>\n\n\n\n
meta: mindless repetition isn\u2019t all that bad either\u2026 as long as you don\u2019t overdo it for too long. you can have a little mindlessness as a treat. it\u2019s ok to eat junk sometimes. you don\u2019t have to be this perfect thing all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
GKC quote<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I feel tired repeating myself, but why? Why can\u2019t I enjoy repeating myself? I feel trapped by the repetition somehow. I\u2019m not paying attention to the nuances. I\u2019m not letting myself be surprised. I\u2019m oppressing myself with this false sense of certainty about how things are going to be. Maybe I should write a substack post about repetition. Repetition legitimises. When you see something, and then you see it again, you realise it wasn\u2019t an accident. It\u2019s a sign that something was deliberate. Is that always true, though? Nowadays we have computer tools that can replicate things effortlessly, so repetition can be an accident. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lead with feelings. My writing feels stale because there\u2019s no emotion in it. I\u2019m going through the motions of repeating my talking points verbatim. To make it interesting I\u2019ll have to get a little more experimental. I\u2019d have to change the pacing, the grammar, the vocabulary. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bo Burnham has a song called Repeat Stuff (2013) \u201cI love the fact that you are dumb enough to not realise everything I\u2019ve said has been said before, in a thousand ways, in a thousand songs, some with the same four chords\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beautiful repetitions, rotate slightly, create beauty\u2026 some of the oldest art that marks itself as human is just the repetition of simple geometric patterns. what makes it look childish vs beautiful and refined? hmm childishness is an interesting dimension here\u2026 thinking about cirque performers who are professional children<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
0057 \u2013 Stop feeding the trolls<\/a> (2013) \u2013 Heh I just had a funny recursive thought about how I\u2019m repeating myself and I\u2019m sorry for repeating myself and how even that apology is repetitive\u2026 I make no apologies for that though. Children learn through repetition, all learning involves repetition and if repeating this plays a role in reshaping my brain then I will do it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0059 \u2013\u00a0waking early<\/a> (2013) I\u2019m not saying anything new here, and again there\u2019s a constant need for repetition. It\u2019s the mental equivalent of practicing a musical passage over and over again until you get it right, until you feel it in your bones and you internalize it and you don\u2019t need to be conscious of it. I built a fitness routine (momentarily disrupted because of my Remedial Training, but I love it and I\u2019m getting right back into it once my RT ends) where I do a little workout when I wake up, and when I get home from work- I tie it to my showers, and it\u2019s something I had to do without having to make the decision over and over again. Decide once, decide deliberately, then trust yourself and execute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0072 \u2013 don\u2019t break the chain<\/a> (2013) I\u2019m repeating myself a lot in these few posts, but I think that\u2019s a reasonable price to pay. Repetition is reinforcement, and it forces me to refine my phrasing. I get better at talking about it each time I talk about it, I get more precise and clear. And I\u2019m writing this for me, so fuck it, man! I still can\u2019t shake off the \u201cI\u2019m writing for public consumption\u201d mentality, but I\u2019m trying. I really want to get to a state where I\u2019m really writing for me, with minimal self-censorship. I know there\u2019ll always be some of it, but I think it\u2019s really important that I try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0075 \u2013 sleepy and unfocused<\/a> (2013) I repeat myself a lot and it\u2019s frustrating that repetition is so necessary. Latest thoughts are the importance of repetition and constant refinement, constant pruning, constant revisiting. I\u2019ve reduced significant amounts of background noise from my life by keeping my email inboxes empty (work and personal.) I still have a shitload of nonsense to declutter from my home PC and from my bookmarks at work, my google drive and evernote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0208 \u2013 earn your keep<\/a> (2015) \u2013 So where do we go from here? I feel like I\u2019ve definitely written about this before, but I\u2019m just going to write it again. It seems like there\u2019s a certain amount of repetition necessary for these things to really get internalized. I need to start by prioritizing my sleep, because I work better and think more clearly and experience less fog when I have slept well. That means getting in bed before midnight, preferably before 11. I\u2019m changing my way of thinking about it- it\u2019s not just something that happens at the end of everything- it\u2019s a priority, because it\u2019s fundamentally restorative. My mind without sleep is ugly and useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0209 \u2013 repeatedly revisit what you know<\/a> (2015) \u2014 What matters is that I know now that daily practice is the only thing that has a decent shot at getting me away from the person I no longer want to be, towards the person that I want to become. I may have said this before, which is good- because repetition is necessary for learning. I will repeat it a thousand times if it\u2019s necessary. My brain\u2019s a little odd that way. I may have to learn other things along the way- so be it, I\u2019ll figure out those things as I go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0232 \u2013 use stories as a thinking tool<\/a> (2015) Robert also talked about dialogue, and how bad dialogue is often repetitive because people can\u2019t figure out the best way to say the thing that they want to say. I realize that I\u2019m incredibly guilty of this. I have been repeating myself over and over again throughout these vomits and throughout my life. Perhaps I\u2019m hoping that if I repeated myself enough, eventually I\u2019ll find a way. And that\u2019s another classic observer-participant problem. The reason that the repetition is supposed to give way to the elegant solution is that I\u2019m supposed to eventually spot some pattern, eventually get annoyed or frustrated in some way, or eventually just accidentally mis-copy what I was going to copy, and in that moment there is some sort of Eureka. I can sort of get that, I can sort of surrender to that process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps at the end of the million words, what will be interesting is to then see how much it can be compressed into. It seems like generally things can be compressed into about a tenth of the space, so that means maybe a hundred thousand words. And if then there is still some repetition I might be able to compress it further still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0364 \u2013 tidy up your mental filing cabinets<\/a> (2015) And to do that I need to pre-empt that I\u2019m going to thinking about picking up smoking again at some point in the future, and I should write myself an easy-to-access letter about it in advance. And I should have a reminder to myself that I have this easy-to-access letter at my fingertips. I think that should work…. So what are the letters? I also need to know how to think about my fitness, how to think about my diet. I shouldn\u2019t have to reinvent the wheel over and over again (which is what I have been doing with some of these vomits\u2013 the idea being that it\u2019s better to repeat things than to have said them once in the past and then forgotten about them). So I\u2019m in the repetition stage. I\u2019m doing things over and over so the neural patterns become stronger, or something like that. And then when I\u2019m ready, I can pull those papers out and burn the filing cabinets, and then have a nice prim and proper folder that applies in most if not all situations. It will be a huge weight off my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0385 \u2013 schedule revisions for learning through repetition<\/a> (2015) \u2013 Yesterday I wrote about how it\u2019s hard to truly have fun when I know I have unfulfilled obligations waiting for me. So the next most important thing I need to work on\u2013 and this is stating the obvious, again [2], is how to attack my obligations and break them down into little chunks and get them done one by one. This is extra hard compared to learning a difficult song on the guitar, because my emotions are tied up into it. Ugh fields come into play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Repetition is important in learning. I was thinking about how, when I was in school, I used to pay attention in lectures just long enough for me to nod my head and go \u201cYeah, that makes sense, I get it,\u201d and then drift off. The problem is, later on when I got the homework, it wouldn\u2019t make sense any more. And I\u2019d think, \u201cWell, it made sense to me at some point, so it should make sense to me again, I just need to do the reading real quick\u2013 so we\u2019ll do that later.\u201d And what would happen is, the amount of necessary readings would accumulate, and I would keep writing them off thinking it\u2019ll just take a few minutes. And the minutes would snowball into hours, into days, into massive unmanageable chunks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0421 \u2013 beware false victory, and validation<\/a> (2015) \u2013 Anyway. I just need to keep focusing on shipping vomits every day. They won\u2019t be perfect. That\u2019s fine, that\u2019s a part of the process. I\u2019m repeating a bunch of truisms but it feels like repetition is necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0429 \u2013 dissatisfaction with wordvomits; how to fix?<\/a> (2015) Ugh, this all really just feels like I\u2019m running the same old ground over and over again, to be honest. Do I really need to write another vomit about this? Wasn\u2019t there a meta-point I was trying to make about how I get caught up writing about starting conditions? Here I\u2019m writing about the basic steps I need to take, the prescriptive stuff. I already know these things, so why am I writing about them again? Because I need a reminder? Fair enough, I guess, but there\u2019s something inelegant and repetitive about this process. I\u2019ve written before that if repetition is what is necessary, then that\u2019s what I\u2019ll do, but I\u2019m starting to think that the repetition isn\u2019t enough. I can\u2019t just keep walking the same old ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0669 \u2013 consider the nature of deliberate practice<\/a> (2017) I need to reflect and review more every day. This is something I\u2019ve been repeating to myself. But it\u2019s true, so I need to keep repeating it. (The next line that was lined up in my head was \u201cuntil it sinks into my thick skull\u201d, which is needlessly aggressive and obnoxious. I think there\u2019s some amount of plain hard repetition required to make something happen. And yeah maybe it\u2019s just blunt brute force over and over again, the big schlep. Or is there something else that I\u2019m missing? A smarter way of doing things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 0689 \u2013 do reviews to measure your progress against the ceaseless sands of time<\/a> (2017) I\u2019ve been thinking about the passage of time. I\u2019m sure I could google \u201cvisakanv \u2018passage of time\u2019\u201d and find quite a large set of writing. I\u2019m tempted to do it now, but let\u2019s pause that to finish the rest of this vomit. What do I mean by passage of time? I mean, time passes all the\u2026 time\u2026 and I don\u2019t really feel it. A couple of vomits ago I talked about \u201cendlessness\u201d. Another way of framing it is repetitive mundanity. Repetition by itself isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing. I don\u2019t mind the repetition of writing again and again, day after day. It soothes me, nourishes me, helps me calm down, get into my bones. But I hate the mindless repetition of a daily commute. Commutes just suck, period. I\u2019m sure lots has been written about it already, so there\u2019s no need to reinvent the wheel there. The point is that there\u2019s good repetition and bad repetition, and since so much of life is repetitive, it makes a lot of sense to try and get more of the good and diminish the bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n