Anchor

Today, while AI was doing some jobs for me, I was scrolling YouTube, and one video caught my eye: This Weird Habit Will Make You Unbreakably Disciplined.

The YouTuber wears a rubber band on his wrist. When he catches himself drifting, he snaps it, and the sting pulls him from autopilot back to being aware. It sounds like magic. But after watching the whole thing (with no subtitles, by the way, which I'm still a bit proud of), I kind of agree with him. The rubber band isn't the point. The point is that we all need an anchor: something that reminds us to come back to the moment and do what we should be doing.

I remember back in undergrad, finals were coming, and my roommate was playing fucking computer games day after day. So every day I sat next to him and studied, and kept telling him to stop playing and study.

I became his anchor.

It worked. He made progress, and in the end he got into grad school without the entrance exam. Happy ending.

For a long time, my anchors have been YouTubers. I see their bodies, their success, their discipline, and their words, and that keeps me going. But the roommate story taught me something a screen can't: a real person next to you, every day, changes what you actually do.

So find an anchor in the real world. Maybe it will help you.

Mount Fuji at sunset, Japan