096 • Let the world teach you the same lesson again and again
You may never learn, but it's trying to get through for a reason...
In the spirit of being on-topic with what I’m going to write about here, I’ve written in the past that we have to keep learning the same things over and over again.
Often, I find myself coming back to one or two struggles I can’t seem to shake. The most frequent one - to relax and keep things simple.
Earlier this week, I found myself changing minutiae on the backend of the business, after I’d spent weeks and weeks putting together a real change and redesign. I’d told myself that I wasn’t going to keep tweaking things once this change had been completed, rather I was going to write more marketing articles and emails.
Yet here I was, poking around with things that weren’t really going to make any difference to the bottom line. And I stopped and laughed. Here was yet another opportunity to learn to relax and keep things simple.
As for why I think this happens…
These lessons, these things you’re getting wrong, to an extent, are tied to your character deep down. That’s why they keep coming up - they’re not easily changed.
And in my case, and I believe most cases, the positive aspects of the characteristics that are causing you have to re-learn these lessons are responsible for many of the good things in your life.
My business is (borderline) successful because I enjoy juggling lots of different moving pieces in my head and having tight feedback loops in the form of audience and revenue numbers that the screen throws back at me when I work.
As well as this, I’m quite neurotically organised, liking everything to be in order. This is why I’m good at teaching people how to organise and use their work. My head comes up with strict rules and protocols for this without any applied effort.
On the flip side, though, it’s this part of my brain that compels me to spend way too long trying to get the analytics looking and operating just right on my website (a pointless task beyond a certain, basic extent).
So I try to walk the line between the two as best as possible. When you’re repeatedly reminded of these lessons, the world is just urging you to stay in balance.
Your character will guide you down a certain path that’s useful in the macro, but in the micro, at times, you might have to keep things simple and relax.
As for myself, and focusing more on creating content, I think that this will come to me increasingly easily, considering that I’m going travelling in a little more than a month.
When I’m out in Asia, there’s going to be so much to do and so many people to meet that I plan to have only enough time in the day to get content written/filmed and shared.
Unfortunately, until then, you might have to put up with my tangled thoughts about thinking and human nature.
Thanks for staying with me all the same!
— Theo
P.S. I’m working on something new and improved for Fundamentalised. Don’t know when I’m going to announce it yet, but it’s going to be like back when I was doing video issues, just new and better, as well as quite a bit more writing
Other stuff I’ve created recently…
There are some new articles and photos, seeing as my focus is now on creating content…
Writing
Obsidian's New Bases Feature is The Biggest Update Since Properties - talking about the newest feature in Obsidian, and how I’ve started using it in the last few months.
I Switched from Google Workspace to Proton Business Suite and Couldn't be Happier - another niche piece, this time about switching from Google Workspace to a simpler, more privacy-focused alternative in Proton.
Photos
A couple of shots from my graduation. It was a nice day, even considering the seven-hour round trip it required, just so I could walk across a stage.
As well as this, some film images from when I went to Represent’s flagship store opening. We a few Ks around central London in a massive pack. Very cool.