Composition of Philosophy. July 19.

The early part of the day was filled with a number of appointments, and thus it was mid-afternoon this time before I did any work at all. By the time I finish today’s chapter (on occasionalism and empiricism) the dates will have changed on wordpress, and I want to get the July 19 post put up with a July 19 date on it. I’ll let you all know in tomorrow’s post how many pages Chapter 3 ended up being, and how long it took.

Tomorrow’s Chapter 4 is on the fourfold structure that forms the very topic of the book, and Chapter 5 the day after that is on the possible mechanics of inanimate perception. That will conclude the chapters where I know pretty much exactly what I want to say. I’ll take Wednesday and Thursday off to reset my tastebuds, so to speak, and then spend the weekend and maybe an extra day or two polishing up the first five chapters. That will put me several days behind where I planned to be, but I’ve deliberately left so much extra time in the weeks to come that it doesn’t matter. The trick with schedules is not to feel guilty about missing them. And that’s why you have to set personal deadlines that are far in advance of actual deadlines, so that your missed deadlines exist merely in your own mind, and there will be no practical consequences for missing them. If by contrast you feel guilty about missing a real deadline, there is likely a good reason for this guilt. Thus, I choose to arrange my schedules in such a way that the guilt is always purely fictitious and self-imposed and of no consequence to anyone else, which makes it easy to debunk with just a bit of reflection.

Of the three full days I’ve spent dealing with this manuscript, only yesterday (day two) was relatively pleasurable. Today was almost as big of a drag as day one. There are several factors contributing to this, but it doesn’t really matter. The point is, I have routines in place now that allow me to do what I couldn’t possibly do at age 25– have productive days even when I don’t feel like it.

Here’s what I mean… I’ve been knocking out 15-17 pages per day this week, and other than yesterday I haven’t really been in the mood to do so. At graduate school stage, there was no way I could have written 15-17 pages in a day unless I was in a nearly euphoric mood. And if your productivity is dependent on euphoric moods, you’re going to have a hard time getting things done, because euphoria is an exceptional case in human experience, occurring only once in awhile. It’s good to be able to write a bunch of pages even when feeling tired or grouchy. The outlines, the techniques for breaking chapters into sections, and the method of simply getting all the content on the page in the right order without worrying about good prose or occasional half-finished arguments, are all ways of ensuring that you can make use of even a subpar day.