People who have nothing they want to do are killing their desires before they emerge

Now that I'm in my 30s, I have this feeling again that I have nothing I want to do.

The question, 'What do I really want to do?' has been in my head for years. But no answer comes out. To be precise, the moment something is about to emerge, it immediately disappears.

There was a time when I thought this was a 'problem of talent'.

But I was wrong.

I was killing them before they could emerge

One day, while I was searching for the reason why what I wanted wouldn't come out, I realized something.

It wasn't that they weren't coming out. I was censoring them myself before they could emerge.

'It's irresponsible when I have a family.' 'It's selfish when I have a job.' 'It won't last anyway.'

These three filters were burning away my impulses before they could even sprout.

It's close to the feeling of spraying herbicide before a plant can poke its head out of the ground. The reason why no buds appear isn't the soil, but the herbicide I sprayed myself. (I realized this when I was in a sauna.)

There are few people who have nothing they want to do. There are many people who extinguish their desires themselves before they can emerge.

Side hustles had the same structure

I used to think, 'I want to try a side hustle someday.'

But that was placed in the category of 'I'll do it when I have some breathing room.' When work settles down. When child-rearing reaches a milestone. When my energy returns.

Two years have passed.

That 'breathing room' never came.

Eventually, even the doubt of 'Do I really want to do it?' emerged. To justify myself for not doing what I want to do, I was heading toward the conclusion that 'maybe my desire to do it is weak.'

This was another version of internal censorship.

The direction of the censorship just changed, but the structure is the same. The outward-facing filters of 'because I have a family' and 'because I have a job' had transformed into an inward-facing filter of 'I don't really want to do it anyway.'

The moment you put something in your 'leisure time,' it gets pushed to the back burner.

What I realized is that the root of the problem was treating a side hustle as something to do in my spare time.

Things placed in spare time don't move unless spare time arrives. Spare time never arrives. Therefore, they never move.

It's easy to understand if you think about it in terms of investing. If you think, 'I'll invest when I have surplus funds,' it will never start. The moment you change the design to automatic savings, it starts moving. Instead of waiting for a surplus to emerge, you decide to set it aside first.

A side hustle was the same.

Instead of 'I'll do it when I have spare time,' change the design to 'This is something I must do.' Set it aside first. Determine the priority.

Just by changing the category in my head, the order of my actions changed.

The moment I changed the design, it started moving.

The moment I promoted it to 'something I must do,' a change occurred.

Specifically, I secured a block of time first, saying, 'Monday is time to write articles.' Instead of waiting for spare time to emerge, I reserved the time first. I treated it just like work.

Then, things I wanted to do 'emerged.'

To be precise, the things that were there all along finally made it through the censorship. It wasn't because the filter became thinner, but because the design changed to 'this is something I am allowed to do,' so the censorship stopped functioning.

I didn't move after I felt motivated. Once I changed the design, the desire to move followed afterward.

(I still think I was slow to realize this reversal of order.)

Escaping the cage of spare time

The feeling of 'having nothing I want to do' is often not that you truly have nothing you want to do.

It's just that the things you want to do are trapped in the 'cage of spare time.'

Spare time never arrives. Margin doesn't emerge naturally. Therefore, you have no choice but to create it through design.

Move your side hustle from 'something to do in spare time' to 'something I must do.' Just by doing that, things that hadn't moved for two years started to move.

Impulses only land in places where the design is prepared.

If reading this article makes you want to think about it

Among the things you have shelved with the intention of 'doing them when you have more time,' if you were to secure time for them right now like a pre-scheduled savings plan, what is the first thing you would want to take action on?

#SideHustle #HowToFindWhatYouWantToDo #WorkDesign #InnerCensorship #HowToStartASideHustle