I stopped trying to be consistent

This isn't advice. I'm not saying anyone should agree with this or do it my way — just sharing where I landed.

For a long time, when I thought about productivity, I thought about mastery. If I wanted to learn a functional programming language, I should become a master of it. Same for any other subject. That mindset did work, at first — it pushed me to actually start. But then I'd stop, long before reaching expert level, and feel like I'd failed.

So I read productivity and self-development books. They all said the same thing: consistency is what matters. Show up daily. I got a new wave of motivation from that and tried it. I did it for a while. Then I stopped. I figured something was wrong with me — I was lazy, overwhelmed, trying to do too many things at once.

Now I think it wasn't that simple. I don't think I need to be consistent. It's fine to follow my need and energy on a given day. Today I felt like writing and sharing on dev.to again, after a year away, so I just did it.

I'm not worrying about whether I'll keep it up tomorrow, next week, or next month. Tomorrow hasn't happened yet. And if I stop sharing again for another year, or never write again — that's fine too. I'm not going to force myself into some unnatural commitment about what I must do in the future. We're not fixed. We change, things change, priorities shift.

Same thing with learning anything — writing, a new programming language, whatever. I've stopped obsessing over becoming an expert. I learn because I need to, or because something triggers me to at that moment. And this time, I don't overwhelm myself by taking on many things at once, or reading multiple books on the same subject before I've even grasped the fundamentals. Learning only actually happens when I apply it and reflect on it in the real world.

I do use an AI agent to help with the writing — it asks me questions and helps pull the ideas into something coherent. But the thoughts are mine.