Sometimes I look back to my life and what I see is very interesting but not quite satisfying.
All the time I was working on many tasks because somebody assigned me to perform.
Honestly, I’m still working on this model because I’m an employee. No question about it.
All the way back from middle school to now, I’m doing tasks because someone somewhere assigned me to do and I did them wholeheartedly.
So the question came to my mind is what did I assign myself to perform?
To be honest, a lot of time, nothing.
I didn’t assign anything to me.
Self-assigned tasks develop superpower
I wonder why our life is designed this way? Does anybody not like to assign anything for themselves?
Have you ever assigned any task to yourself and finished?
In my whole past life, somebody gave me a task, gave details on what and how to do, gave some scopes, responsibilities, directions, possible scenarios of outcomes if done successfully and, I obeyed them and finished all the time based on my capacity.
Now in this phase of my life, of course, I do what others told me to do as a part of my life for many reasons, but I also want to do something which is purely assigned to me by myself.
For example, this morning, I did fifteen minutes of breathing practice.
What I did was I inhaled oxygen from my nose and exhaled from my mouth.
Nobody told me to do it but I did.
I felt relaxed and felt really good throughout the day.
Remember the research proven facts of breathing exercise.
-Healthier blood pressure
-Lower inflammation
-Increase resilience to stress and anxiety
-Deeper focussed work
Do you know what is the number one regret that people have on death bed?
If you don’t know, here it is.
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
If we don’t care what other people think then we are developing superpower.
True superpower.
If we all harness this superpower, we will bring more peace, joy and satisfaction in life.
And, obviously, we will reduce a lot of stress and anxiety coming from this fast paced world.
If we practice this habit, I’m sure there wouldn’t be much regret on deathbed.
Most of the time the source of regret appears in later parts of life in different forms as follows.
-“I did things in the past which I never wanted to do actually, I don’t know why I did.”
-“I wasted my money, time, energy, and resources which I never wanted to waste but I did and I don’t know why.”
-“I did a lot of things to impress the people around me, most of whom left me a long time ago and some of them I left consciously.”
Bronnie Ware, the author of the internationally bestselling memoir “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, says, “Once we acknowledge that limited time is remaining, although we don’t know if that is years, weeks or hours, we are less driven by ego or by what other people think. Instead, we are more driven by what our hearts truly want.” Bronnie Ware spreads purpose and meaning of life, watch her TedTalk ” Regret-Free Living.”
Writing and self-assigned task
Another example, this piece of writing which I’m doing at the moment, nobody told me to write but I am writing.
This writing is purely for me, for my satisfaction, for my curiosity and clarity, and for my peace of mind.
I am just doing it for myself.
Nobody gave me topics, objectives, scopes, outlines, timelines, and any other directions whatsoever.
It’s pure me coming out of my mind.
It could be anything in your life that you really want to do and enjoy doing.
If you are able to make it successful, create value and monetize it and make a profession; outstanding.
If not in that level, this would be amazing self-satisfaction, many of us rarely taste it.
Nowadays, I talk to a lot of people at my regular work. I talk to my family, friends, kids, customers, clients, boss, coworkers all the time.
I go shopping, do online work, meet people online and offline, sometimes on the street or on different occasions.
And somewhere somehow something triggers my mind, I find topics to write about which may not be interesting for others but for me it looks interesting.
This is my lifestyle now, this writing is assigned to me by me for my satisfaction, that’s it.
This is the only way I know we find happiness and joy in life, this happiness is purely personal, at least that’s how I’m experiencing it.
For me now, regular writing is becoming another part of a self assigned task in my life.
Writing for me is a combination of art, science, and storytelling.
It is the blend of my creativity, analysis, and data.
It is my mixture of emotion and intuition.
I’m a scientist so I lean more towards the science side of writing, it gives me more room to experiment and explore.
Writing in the world of FAANG
Writing is about connecting with people as one partner in society and current technology is helping to connect people in different ways.
Just think of the world now without FAANG, the term popularized by Jim Cramer, the author of “Get Rich Carefully”: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.
You might feel the world is at a standstill and everything looks flat without FAANG.
There were, there are, and there will be people doing the work of writing even after the age of AI.
Some people are always writers and always trying to connect other people who are readers like you and me.
Through FAANG, the new writing on the web, the digital writing is very useful and sophisticated now, through one click message spreads across the globe instantly.
These new technologies are helping to make the human connection more and more faster and stronger if we use them properly.
They are checking our attention all the time, 24/7.
For example, Google Ads alone collects almost more than 30 billion impressions in a day.
These human relationships help to drive innovations and discoveries faster than ever.
So the key is that technologies are becoming a more and more essential tool to make human relationships productive and innovative to bring value and help solving problems.
As a writer, my job is not to understand the technology but to understand the people, synthesize my life experiences with them and help to solve their problems, if possible.
Remember, playing on the ground is more fun than thinking or watching from the side.
Because you become a doer not a bystander.
I used to read a lot and still read a lot, but just reading others’ content felt like I’m watching the game from outside.
Why not synthesize my own education, training, and life experiences with society and offer to others?
I started this self-assigned writing assignment by thinking how to make myself into the ground, not necessarily for winning.
Once I started this journey I found that it is way more fun than never having stepped on into the middle ground at all.
We always think of only the end result in mind, but the process of moving towards the ground and doing the actual stuff is more powerful.
Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. They pass by, and we never notice them passing.
The real joy is in the process without knowing how time passed by, and then we reach into a finished product.
I am connecting this not only to my writing task but also to my long distance running habit.
I run each mile slowly, enjoying what comes in my mind, no need to finish a certain distance by a certain timeframe, just true joy of moving my body, passing the trees on the side, just running at a comfortable pace.
Self-assigned task and life priorities
Different people have different priorities in life.
I had seven priorities in my life before: health, finance, relationships, family, passions, spirituality, and happiness.
But now, I have one more in the middle somewhere: writing.
Health is my first self-assigned priority, so I always assign some tasks related to health to myself each day and everyday.
Recently, I’ve developed one habit of walking and talking at the same time for brain-oxygenation to unlock creative ideas.
This is also helping me a lot in my writing.
I also like to read while walking in the living room for at least 30 minutes everyday when I find suitable situations at home.
I like to talk on the phone while walking, I never talk on the phone while sitting.
I like to listen to music while cooking, doing dishes, and laundry.
There is a difference between practical ideas and creative ideas.
In my experience, walking or running helps to separate these thoughts and ideas to make them more concrete, realistic, and useful.
Remember, when we walk or run
-It helps in our blood flowing throughout the body, especially the brain.
-It helps to lubricate the joints to improve our mobility.
-It helps to build strength all over the body.
-It helps to increase energy and improves balance and coordination throughout the body.
-It helps to enhance cardiovascular and bone health.
-It helps to bring new ideas and innovative thoughts to our mind because you are not sitting with your static mind.
-It helps to bring the slow thinking process ahead of fast thinking to avoid possible mistakes.
Nowadays, I am learning to take a day off on a regular week so that I can make a move in my mind to reject the traditional weekend mindset.
It’s the richest form of life teaching us how to move through the preoccupied mindset like weekend off as an example.
The other day I assigned myself one hour and thirty minutes to watch the documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett,” alone at home on midday Tuesday, a weekday.
I wanted to watch it as a focussed task, a self-assigned task, not as entertainment.
While watching the documentary, I emailed one of my friends to watch it and told him that if you want some nuggets from Warren Buffett this is your greatest resource.
After watching this, the biggest nuggets I got myself from the documentary are.
-We have to lead with competence all the time, not with mediocrity.
-Patience wins over haste in life.
-We have to engage with focus and deep work with solid facts in hand.
-Don’t blame others but conduct brutal analysis to know what went wrong.
-Always look for people who are self-motivated because it’s hard to motivate other people. If we have the right people they will always be self-motivated.
Conclusion
Do you know what is the antidote of confidence in life?
For me, it is humility, I learned from the documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett”.
Humility is the acceptance that I’m not the exception.
It is the reality check that I’ve limits and boundaries in life.
At the end of the day, humility wins over confidence.
That’s what Warren Buffett’s whole life is all about. If you really want to go little deeper on Warren Buffett, read an article by Bill Gates in Harvard Business Review.
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.