Days in a Life

Tomorrow marks 1 year of the Copper Den.

Before I dive in this week, I want to say a quick thank you to anyone who’s come to check it out over the past year.

Whether you’ve read a post, subscribed to the newsletter, or reached out about a particular post you liked, thank you! It truly means a lot to me when I hear that an article has resonated with someone.

I write to work through the ideas that I’m grappling with, but it means all the more to me to know that maybe someone else is thinking through a given issue too.

Now, onto this week’s topic.

I subscribe to a handful of newsletters, some of which I’m better about keeping up with than others. 

One newsletter that I regularly read is James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter, which he sends out each Thursday. The premise of the newsletter is simple. It consists of 3 ideas from James, 2 quotes from other people, and 1 question to ponder. 

The simplicity is likely what keeps me coming back each week.

Recently, one of James’ newsletters really stood out to me. The theme of the newsletter was on daily routines. 

The first quote I liked came from James:

"Work is endless. Exercise is endless.

Parenting is endless. Same with marriage, writing, investing, creating, and more. You get to choose the parts of your life, but many of the important things in life cannot be "finished."

Do not approach an endless game with a finite mindset. The objective is not to be done, but to settle into a daily lifestyle you can sustain and that allows you to make daily progress on the areas that matter.

Embrace the fact that life is continual and look for ways to enjoy the daily practice."

The second quote came from Friedrich Nietzsche:

"The history of every day. – What is the history of every day in your case? Look at your habits that constitute it: are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and lazinesses, or of your courage and inventive reason?"

One thing I’ve really struggled with in my 20s is feeling this need to arrive. It’s as if school is finally over, which means we’re ready to succeed, right? 

In hindsight, the entire education process feels like a long march right to the edge of a cliff. You walk for years, and then it just stops.

Perhaps without the enforced daily structure of schooling, I’ve tried to be more intentional about my days. A phrase that resonates with me a lot of late is “the days are long, but the years are short.” Each individual day might scrape by, but then all of a sudden, it’s Christmas time again, and the countdown is on to a new year. Long days, short years.

This turning over of the calendar adds more and more pressure. What did I do last year? I need to do something more this year! The path to progress becomes self-enforced without the cadence of a schooling system to keep the rhythm. If you don’t force yourself to develop, you might stagnate. 

I don’t want to stagnate.

And that fear of stagnation often makes me feel like I should be farther along than I am. I worry that if there aren’t clear markers showing forward progress, I’ll find myself in reverse.

That’s where the quotes from 3-2-1 come in.

The theme of the quote is that many important things in life are endless. There is no finish line.

Take whatever is important to you, whatever you want to do. You might think there’s an end goal, but once you reach it, you’ll likely want to push on farther. Humans can be insatiable like that.

Fitness is one area where I fall into this trap. I want to go to the gym or run to reach some goal, whether that’s losing weight, running faster, or lifting heavier. 

When looked at that way, my fitness endeavors often feel like failures. I might lose a fraction of a pound (or less) in a week. I might run even slower. These failures can make it hard to keep going. 

Yet, when I think about fitness through James’ lens, it’s not ultimately bound in a goal. It’s about creating a routine you can manage. 

I work out because it’s good for my brain and my body. Yes, if I keep to a goal over a long period of time, I might achieve it, but that won’t always happen. You need the days to add up first to reach any goal.

Fitness is an endless path.

The same applies to writing. When I start to think about a blog post each week, I want the piece to be finished before my fingers even touch the keyboard. That’s not how writing works, though. Writing is a process (not an output you get from ChatGPT). It involves repetition and dwelling on a topic.

Writing happens in the moment but also later on when your brain is wandering, and a new idea pops into your head.

Writing is an endless path.

There are so many endless things in our lives. We can deny the limitless nature of so many habits and routines, but that can lead to frustration. Alternatively, we can embrace the repetition. It’s like the famous Camus line: “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

That’s where Nietzsche’s quote from above comes in. 

Our lives add up to this “history of every day.” If I constantly put off a task, my life consists of me never doing that thing. Yet, if I manage to just start with 5 minutes most days, those 5 minutes begin to add up. They take the form of a new future history. 

It’s like yet another wise philosopher said: “do or do not; there is no try.” This time, the philosopher is Yoda.

A life is lived one day at a time. Sure, most days may seem inconsequential, but we’re either doing what we want to do, what we love to do, or we’re not.

If there’s something you want to do…do it. Even if it’s just for 5 minutes a day, do it. Do that thing every day or most every day. Find a way to do the thing you want to do often.

In the end, the days all add up to one life, and even a little bit counts over a long time. Our personal histories are written every day, which means every day we can move a little closer to who we want to be.

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