Right now, the routine I follow is thus:

• Wake up whenever I naturally wake up. Do the waking up ritual which includes, among other things, drinking water and going outside to let my body know what time it is.
• A flexible fitness routine which can include running or body weight or free weight exercises, and some stretching. On days I wake up pretty late, I can choose to skip fitness and just do stretching.
• Putting on some music and moving to it. I sometimes do it while working out and sometimes I skip it as well. Nothing pumps you up like music!
• Morning routine that includes cleaning, bath, breakfast etc.
• Disciplined daily practices. These include music, drawing, writing and philosophy. These are about consistency and hard work.
• Lunch break. Sometimes followed by a nap.
• Creative play in one of the four categories of music, art, storytelling and philosophy. This is more about freedom and expression and having fun. Learning by doing. Together with the disciplined daily practice, it forms the core of my learning strategy.
• Evening routine including dinner. I’ve recently decided to completely stop consuming video content or play video games for relaxation. So relaxation is reading or listening to music or playing covers on my guitar.
• A break from relaxation to do daily blogging. (Starting from today.)
• More relaxation till it’s time to sleep. I go to sleep at the same time every night.

This routine is an improved version of the routine I had developed using my philosophy. It’s a routine for rational nihilists.

If life is meaningless, why do anything?

The answer: because we can.

Okay but then if life is meaningless, what the hell do we do?

The answer to this question is a philosophical hypothesis of mine. I argue that we don’t need a great purpose or grand narrative to live life. All we need are two things:

1. A way to fill time from day to day. To know what to do on a daily basis.
2. A direction to aim at in the long term. To know what to pursue in life.

And so I hypothesized that if we filled our day with taking care of our basic needs and our biological machine plus some value creation to exchange value with the world and some advanced needs and wants such as companionship, social interaction, beauty consumption, relaxation, fun etc. that should take care of our day to day.

The problem was that value creation was going to be the major portion of the day and I didn’t know how to fill it out. For those who have a job, it’s easy. You provide value to your employer in time, energy, knowledge, skills etc. and they pay you for it. But as an unemployed philosopher/storyteller, I was struggling to figure out this major portion of the day.

That’s when I had to consider the second part of the equation:

The Long Term Direction

My first instinct was to dive into philosophy full time. Develop it quickly. Write books about it. Make YouTube videos to gain an audience. But doing that I ran into the trap of pursuing success in a short amount of time. Something like philosophy can’t be rushed. And making it my only source of income was also not smart.

This led to an internal contradiction where I was trying to be productive and hustle and pursue success and it even gave me a sense of purpose, but my philosophy was about living with nihilism and not turning away from the void. The hypocrisy was that I was using my philosophy of nihilism to fill the void and give myself a purpose. And it’s not that I’m against having a purpose, it’s just that feeling like it was my purpose made me crave success which made me want to work hard which made me want to live an unbalanced life and sacrifice my basic needs which contradicted my philosophy.

In order to remain lucid of the void, I have to avoid filling it with accomplishment or success. What happens when you have a purpose or pursue success is that satisfaction and gratification is delayed to the future when you achieve those things. But what if you never achieve them? Then the sacrifices in the present become meaningless. And the doubt that you’re on the wrong path can paralyze you.

So, I decided to build a routine which would make me feel satisfied in the present. I asked myself, “what kind of day would make me feel satisfied if I died in my sleep that night?”

This routine is what I came up with. I’m not trying to be an artist or famous author or successful philosophy YouTuber. I’m just trying to live one satisfied day at a time. Success, if it comes, will be a side-effect of this path, but it’s not the main destination.

If it helps me live better, whether or not it leads to success, my philosophy itself will be proven to be successful at least in my lived experience.

So Far So Good

It has been a success today because I feel extremely satisfied. But by now I know that new things, new ideas, new systems can have this effect on me simply based on the novelty. The real test will be in the medium and long term.

If I can stick to this routine and continue to feel satisfied most days, then it’s a success. And if I can consistently do disciplined practice and creative play, I don’t see how I can avoid improving as an artist, storyteller and philosopher. Success will still be at mercy of luck but that will be the next test of this hypothesis; whether I can be happy in the long term with satisfaction without success. We’ll have to wait and see about that.

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Cover Photo by Dmitry Mashkin on Unsplash