73 Comments
User's avatar
Mister Cunus's avatar

Please make tiktok version

jesse hlebo's avatar

woah my routine is quite similar to yours. yours has more cats and caffeine than mine does. mine has more weed and snow management

austen's avatar

i read this, shirtless

Tao Lin's avatar

thank you for reading

Jordan Bates's avatar

You are the ancient future 💚

Theodore's avatar

Sounds peaceful.

Carlen Altman's avatar

I loved reading about your schedule and we have many similarities! PS Going to your wonderful talk in NYC was probably the only large social gathering I attended in 2024 - it satiated my social needs for an entire year basically - quality over quantity 👼🏼 thank you!

Tao Lin's avatar

Cool—that was a good gathering that night.

(Alexandra) Apple's avatar

love how varied this is while regimented still!

Charlene's avatar

How does one shower in 0-5 minutes? Is that called a shower?

Francisca Magis's avatar

I enjoyed reading this and it made me want to bike barefoot

Ren Harvieu's avatar

this was very readable i enjoyed it

mary g.'s avatar

i feel much better about myself after reading this

Jake's avatar

Sounds ideal and not too different than my days.

Dickie's avatar

Hey from volcano

Curtis Eggleston's avatar

ty tao

Brontë's avatar

I have recently discovered your work and over the past week I have read and listened to a lot of what you talk about... Whenever I find the work of others interesting and inspiring I love to use it as an opportunity to figure out what parts of that person are areas reflected back to me that I may enjoy. I love your work on reincarnation, and your discussions around autism.

I always wonder how inspiring people fill their time.

This has saved me a lot of time wondering to myself it is very helpful.

My favourite quote so far is "like wanting to bring back information from a rainforest to use in a game of Tetris."

Thank you...

imit's avatar

I feel like I am of two minds relating to this schedule:

1. I feel jealous and in awe and motivated by your schedule. I want to have more of the things that (I currently think) that I want. I also want to be free of things that weigh me down, like social media, overthinking, and mindless context switching. I don't know what is motivating me towards these things quite yet, so I will think more on this and try to understand what draws me toward your lifestyle.

2. There are some things in your schedule that I don't think would work for me. I don't think I could do without so much human contact. I wonder what that would be like for me. I've come to think that I *need* human contact in order to survive+thrive. I also feel like I would find my mind wandering and not getting things done as I desired with such a schedule, something to do with ADHD and a shitty attention span atm. I do also feel that I am in some sense "locked in" to a career path that I chose, not because of outside obligation or skill building (a bit of this one), but mostly because I care about the work (AI alignment). I want to do some things in similar ways to you, but I don't think that my pursuits support this afaict. This is likely a lack of imagination and trying.

I have a general direction that I want to go as a result of your schedule, and I think maybe just trying a couple things might be the way to do this. I'll think some more. Thanks for writing this!

Tao Lin's avatar

This makes sense—everyone is different and would have their own ideal schedule. Mine is constantly shifting too.

Working on a collection of personal essays helps sate my desire for human contact somewhat, and also my awareness that I'm just in a reclusive phase.

Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts.

imit's avatar

Thanks for the reply.

One question: how did you get to this point? How do you make adjustments to your schedule? Ie, do you use "willpower" to change your schedule/habits? Or do you change them with/through other sources, eg aligning your parts or making it impossible to fail by removing affordances?

Tao Lin's avatar

It’s more intuitive. I try to stay flexible and have overarching goals, which currently are to detox my liver, improve my general health, and work on my essay collection.

imit's avatar

Goal-driven, very nice! I'm writing a poast on thinking/acting from principles right now!

Do you have times when you don't have goals?

Tao Lin's avatar

Maybe not since middle school. Since then, I've always had a goal of wanting to be healthier mentally and physically. I've had writing goals all the time since college.

imit's avatar

Oh nice, wanting to be healthier are good broad(?) goals! I think I was restricting my def of goal too small st it felt like I didn't have goals. I guess I do have goals :)

What are writing goals? (I'm not a big writer (yet), so idk what these might be.) And any in particular that you mind sharing?