Daniel Crenna

Code Soloist #20: Resolutions

In the aftermath of the season of resolutions we like to make bold commitments to ourselves, except that they aren’t bold and they aren’t commitments.

They aren’t bold, because they are the same things we hope for ourselves, secretly, constantly, when we are alone. We drag them out each year and put them on display: our best selves.

They aren’t commitments because they rarely happen. The act of public wishing does not guarantee anything. We know this, but we try anyway, and we get pumped up and even do the thing for a little while, and feel great as we make progress.

But then something funny happens. One day we wake up and look at the clock and it’s 5AM and it’s forty below zero (depending where you live) and we don’t feel like going to the gym. It’s a real tragedy. All those hopes, but we just couldn’t make it all the way. We ran out of feeling like it. Then we ask questions like “Why is it so hard to do the things we truly want to do?” and wonder what’s wrong with us inside that we can’t sustain our motivation.

If you’re following along and not laughing at how ridiculous this story is, it’s because it is so deeply woven into our cultural bias towards comfort. The little secret buried here is that you don’t have to feel like doing something, to do it. In fact, chances are, unless you are pumped up on holiday enthusiasm, an inspiring movie, the thrill of a new idea, you will definitely not feel like it when the time comes to actually do it.

And that’s all there is to the big myth about destiny: you don’t feel like doing the things you have to do to get what you want. Pretty much never.

But this isn’t the same thing as that “suck it up” mentality, it’s much lighter than that. When you “suck it up”, you have to pull “feel like it” from somewhere else, somewhere we like to call “will power”. But that is destined to fail, because it too is an effort. Sooner or later we aren’t going to feel like “sucking it up” anymore.

To have this be effortless requires just a subtle shift in thinking. “I don’t feel like going to the gym, but that’s okay, because I don’t have to feel like it to go.”

When you look at someone more successful than you are right now, you don’t have to ask “What do they have that I don’t have?” or feel resentful, poking holes in their personality along the way. Because you know there is very little difference. There is only one difference. That person does things they don’t feel like doing all the time, and you (currently) don’t.

Code Soloist is for single-person software development companies that are trying to start something big with their bare hands. In it, I try to impart whatever I’ve learned, for better or worse, doing the same thing badly.