I like this. My view is I aint doing it if it aint a system.

A system: change diet to always have at least 3 veg per meal. Do that until you die.

A non-system: skip a meal and just eat soup for 30 days and try to drop 10kg.

Not diet advice and some people may need to drop weight quickly under doctor advise. But the general idea is to avoid will-power driven outcomes and rely on habit and system driven outcomes.

Not clever org mode needed. To develop a habit just do it every day. Track it somehow. Make it not too onerous. Forgive slip ups.

Main thing I learned with health and fitness is that, for me, I was always trying to do right long enough so I could cheat and "reward" myself. And that always lead to failure. I had to change my mindset from, "Be good until you feel like you can be bad" to ,"You've adopted a new lifestyle. This is you now. You're not building up points so you can buy a whole pizza and 3 beers. You're doing this because this is you now. This is the reward, being able to run miles in the heat. Right now, sweat all over you, breath going in and out. This is the reward." For some reason that worked for me.

Yeah, but I mean... pizza and beer...

Don’t…tempt me Frodo. I would use the pizza and beer for good…

I see it as designing choices. Want to eat healthy? Don’t bring the ice cream (or whatever else you struggle to eat less of) in your home. Want to get up early? Start going to bed at 8 and leave your phone in the other room. Want to exercise more often? Force yourself to bike or walk to the grocery store instead of jumping in the car.

> Learn something every day.

It's fine if it doesn't happen every day. Don't be obsessed about this stuff. Forgive yourself if you ever behave sub-optimally. You're not a machine, neither should you be one.

Tyranny starts with the best of intentions.

He says something similar at the end of the article:

"These four verbs aren’t a productivity system or a self-help formula. Some days I forget one. Other days, one takes over. But when I return to them, they gently reorient me."

You may be overreacting with words like "machine" and "tyranny" to an idea simply suggested as a useful and helpful goal.

I wouldn't have commented if the article kept neutral on when to apply its ideas. But the push for daily learning-reflecting-etc is there. Even the segment you're quoting uses days for accounting. You're downplaying one's potential to read something like this on the Internet and try to literally live by it.

As for machines and tyranny, they're terms capturing the Zeitgeist all too well.

> But the push for daily learning-reflecting-etc is there.

But this is a good thing; if I waste a day without learning or doing anything, I feel bad about myself. And I want to feel bad! Always pushing to improve myself has helped me immensely. It's easy to keep telling yourself 'oh, I'll do better tomorrow'; it's harder to actually do better tomorrow.

That's not to say you shouldn't take it easy on yourself every once in a while. But figuring out those exceptions isn't what this article is about, and it's certainly not a 'tyrannical' article. As a society I feel we have gone way too far in this direction; sometimes life is hard! Sometimes you have to do hard things! And often it will pay off later in life and you'll be glad you put in the work.

> Forgive yourself if you ever behave sub-optimally

Of course there's nothing to forgive. There's no need to course-correct against a way that almost no-one will feel.

> Tyranny starts with the best of intentions.

Placing an irrelevant (and untrue) statement such as this next to the point you're making to imply that it reinforces it is a bit manipulative.

I believe Oliver Burkeman calls it "daily-ish" because it may not be realistic or helpful to force yourself to do it every day. But striving for "daily-ish" is worthwhile.

It’s fine if you have an easy out. Didn’t learn anything today? Open a random Wikipedia article. There, that’s something.

How banal.

$0.02: the devil's in the details.

See also, the OODA loop.

This lesson shows up periodically in different contexts. In the case of OODA, it was fighter pilot dogfighting training.

It’s a good practice to build into different parts of life.

Wow, rehashing the same platitudes that have been retold throughout the eternity. Why didn’t I think of this, bro?

How insightful! When’s the masterclass drop?