In praise of doing things halfway
Apr 25, 2024
It isn't a new concept really, that doing things halfway is better than not doing them at all. I always think of the Chinese chengyu (traditional four-word idioms) about the woman cutting her halfway-knit fabric in half. She says to her son: if you don't finish your project, I might as well cut my in-progress fabric; it's as good as not finishing. I think hearing this expression so early in my life might have contributed to my perfectionism/completionism. I have a really hard time accepting, or even considering, doing things halfway. But then again extremism/perfectionism has been a constant struggle of mine.
I think one of the earlier examples of "doing things halfway productively" that I heard of was when Ellen DeGeneres encouraged "Meatless Mondays": even you aren't vegetarian all the time, you can still reduce meat consumption partway. If the alternative is no moderation at all, then going partway is preferable.
As most people on Neocities (and maybe the wider population), I've been struggling with my screentime and relationship with the phone for years now. I've even written about it before on this website. I go through waves of high usage and low usage. Maybe it will be a never-ending struggle. Seeing some people do totally screenless days is really impressive to me. Not using a screen at all for an entire day seems impossible to me.
In an effort to be encouraging to myself, I've started thinking of halfway efforts that I could try in the meantime.
- days without mindless social media (not too bad for me, since I actually don't use it much, besides...)
- days without video-watching (especially YouTube)
- days without internet!
I think internet-less days might be attainable and healthy for me. It's hard for me to imagine going without a screen for a whole day, since I need computers for my work, but I don't necessarily need to be connected to the internet. The internet is so tied to computers these days (c.f. my recent attempt to install Alpine Linux on an old computer and not being able to do so without being connected to a network) that I almost forgot there were decades of computers before the internet really became a thing. In the same way, the internet has become so intertwined with our lives that there are precious few contexts in which we are now disconnected. The subway, the airplane, and the remote camping location: even these are all steadily getting internet coverage too.
I was rewatching a sitcom from the 00s and was struck by one of the characters saying "plug in!" to mean "get with the program!". Yes, back then you'd have to choose to plug in, to connect to the internet. Now we are all plugged in. Well, actually, it's more than that. We're connected by default, without needing to plug in, without being tethered to a landline or power outlet. Batteries and wireless data have made the internet portable.
In a similar vein, I just realised today that I've basically de-Googled except for my YouTube addiction (and my work email, which will never escape the grasp of the big Goog)! I had such strong words for people who couldn't de-Google properly even in that blog post, yet I am so attached to YouTube that I allow it to single-handedly block my total separation from Google. I think it's time to cut that cord (again).