I think I can go out frequently as long as I don’t feel drained from it and sleep early. The problem occurs when I lose or miss my cue to sleep. For example, yesterday I got back home around 11pm and I wanted to make use of the hour before bedtime to get some writing done. However, I underestimated the amount of time it takes to clarify my thoughts on a random topic before I pen it down. I went to bed at 1am and my brother’s alarm woke me up at 7.30am in the morning. Yes, I wrote a few hundred words but I didn’t finish writing that essay. On top of that, I screwed up my sleeping hours and lost a sleep cycle (average of 1.5 hours). That wasn’t a good way to start my Saturday.

It’s the same when I told old man Xie that I’ll head down to meet him in a while and to call me in the event I didn’t read his message. I may have the intention to meet him but I certainly didn’t set an arbitrary time to stop whatever I was doing, get ready and head out. I held off on making that decision and didn’t want to commit on a fixed time. It’s like I was busy exploring the solution-space instead of picking the best solution I had in mind and going with it. Not to mention my indecisiveness was because I didn’t want to confine the parameters and close off the possibilites-space. I think this is because I am high in openness.

This is a very common problem: how do you map a problem to the minimal necessary domains? For this small problem, I was searching for a global maxima solution instead of settling for a local maxima solution. How do you know when to stop? When the solution is good enough. How do you know it is good enough? When it takes into account all the relevant constraints. What are the constraints? Preparation time, lead time so you don’t feel rushed etc. My indecisiveness in that particular situation was because I don’t have a habit of ascertaining the relevant facts, planning and seeing it through. It also means I didn’t learn it from the people around me. Once I create all the microthinking habits involved in that process, my decision-making skills will improve with time and experience.

On feeling drained. I went for a meetup yesterday and boy did I feel exhausted. Three people were there: one of them was a Software Developer like me and another was an uncle. I’m unable to articulate exactly why but there were a few times where the conversation or what he said just rubbed me off the wrong way. I didn’t like how he monopolised the conversations even when his talking points were so boring. I didn’t like how I have to assert myself to wrestle control from him (it’s tiring). I didn’t like how I went there with the intention to build up my support network only to listen to his boring monologue about really basic stuff. He hardly asked me/us any questions, he’s totally fine to leave without knowing anything about us. The other guy said the meetup is a way to gain exposure which made it click for me.

Last updated: 25 July 2021