16 days of Youtube
7.4 days in Age of Empires II
4.4 days in Mail
3.6 days of the coding game
3.5 days in text editors of various stripes
3 days in Obsidian
2.6 days of Twitter
2.1 days in Blender
1.9 days in Thrones of Britannia
1.6 days in FreeCAD
1.2 days in Messages
18 hours of reddit
17 hours of calculus tutoring
15 hours in Preview
14 hours in Numbers
11 hours in the terminal
10 hours of Alcumus
9 hours of minesweeper
That is what time sink reports of my usage since April of 2023, much of it underestimated because of the way that the website shows URLs (reddit and cough YouTube), though perhaps some overestimates caused by me not sleeping my computer when I leave it (my AoEII score is an overestimate, I think—I hope).
In one sense, I chose to do all of that. Inasmuch as it makes sense for me to refer to something as me, it makes sense to say that I chose to do all of that. My desire to watch YouTube or play Age of Empires is no less a part of me than my desire to coordinate soccer in my community, learn new things or my creative impulses.
There is a contrast between those desires though. Some last longer than others. That means that some parts of me last longer than others. What do we then make of those things?
Self identity is a tough nut to crack and I have not cracked it. That won’t prevent me from talking about it though. In the most trivial sense, there is no such thing. A millisecond from now, I will not be precisely identical to what I was before. Ten years from now, I will be so different, that in some sense the person writing this will have died.
Practically though, there is some sort of through line. I have memories of my early childhood. I have many of the same desires and proclivities. Perhaps like a parabola’s values taken at different points along its journey, there is a sameness. $y=x^2$ is $1$ at$ x=1$ and $25$ at $x=5$. While both the values and the slopes are different at those different locations, there is an underlying continuity and sameness to that parabola.
I don’t know if we are like a parabola though.
What am I getting at? I’m suggesting—and to be clear, I don’t have an argument really—that it makes sense to prioritize the parts of me that endure longer. That there is death in abandoning ones longer term desires and goals for shorter term ones.
Not abandoning the longer-term goals and desires requires slowing down though. If I am on the YouTube autosuggestion train or playing round after round of some online multiplayer game, that is a very short-term part of me that is making those choices. I don’t think a week from now I will care nearly as much about whatever technology announcement occurred or I will be nearly so tilted about losing that previous round such that I need to play another one. In the moment, however, I very much do care, and if I cared more about the other things in the moment, I would do those things.
In those moments where the choice is so easy that it doesn’t even feel like I’m making a choice, that is when indecision can actually be helpful. I have been using another app called 1focus . This one allows me to suspend against my will my browser tabs and selected apps. It is like a version of myself reaching out from the grave and yanking the plug , so in a sense that person has some life and some effect in the world still.
At any moments to put limits on oneself is to give up some control; however if you don’t make any commitments to future actions, then that is also a limit on control: there is no easy way out of it. The control exerted by the past self comes at the expense of the current self, and the current self control comes at the expense of the future self’s control. It’s like how the parliament (in Canada) made a constitution and have had their actions subsequently limited by that constitution. In a real sense, they are less sovereign than the group that made it. However, undermining the constitution, and thus the sovereignty of the group that made the constitution, would undermine their own sovereignty. And that is what I am doing when I place limits on the actions I can to fulfill my short term desires. While it does mean I loose some control of my future acts, the control over my actions exerted by my future self is predicated on my ability to follow through in the present and the past, as I undermine my control over my actions when I don’t follow through.
This is where some indecision is helpful. As I said earlier, I use an app called 1focus to snap me out of binge computing. This will create a space of indecision for me where the next action is not so easy or automatic. Unpleasant though it can be, indecision means that the less loud, but more enduring desires get a chance to be heard: it gives me space to choose.