casgit Blog

Creating without an output

casgit — Sun, 03 May 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Creating something can be an easy target for the day when you find it hard to follow a purpose at the moment. We decide what purpose to follow because we want to and it is easier to live with one. But it is difficult to decide what purpose is fitting or fulfilling. By creating, we produce something permanent that comes out of our day. There is progress we can track. We can look back at the day and judge its worth by our contribution to the creation. We often can't measure how much smarter we got, how our social status and friendships have improved, or how much fitter we are at the end of the day. But our contribution to a creation is something we can track easily, like a progress bar that is slowly filling up.

At the end, we have put something into existence that we can show around and be proud of. You don't have to prove that you were successful, because the existence of the creation alone proves that. The created thing is the evidence of our worth.

Creating vs Creation

Is the act of creating something enough? For some, the product at the end is the output they strive for. The act of creating is just a way to reach it. For others, the act of creating is the fulfilling part. Time flies by, and the time spent feels meaningful. There doesn't have to be any output. They express themselves in the moment and that is enough.

Do we need a product at the end?

Creation always has a target, regardless if we decide deliberately or not. But do we need to have a product at the end to feel fulfillment? After we have created something, the creation stands for itself. In most cases, if you show it to another person, he or she would not be able to trace it back to you. It could have been made by another person and no one would notice. It is only still relevant to you because you know that you are the creator. But the created thing is also fragile. It can be forgotten, overshadowed or even destroyed. You have less control over the output (after it was created), but you have full control over the creation process.

Imagine it like this. You have created something and want to put it out into the world for everyone to see and experience. But before you push the "publish" button, another person has already published their work and it is an exact copy of yours, 1 for 1. Your individual output has no value anymore to anyone. How would you feel? Was it still worth it or was it all in vain?

The best outcome for me is to create for creations sake. Not focusing on the output, but enjoying the process. If something comes out of it, that is great, but it doesn't have to. You put your heart into it and that should be enough to move something inside of you or to make your day better.

Leaving my thoughts behind

casgit — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 02:00:00 GMT

The rabbit hole for journaling can go deep. You can use different formats, different journaling techniques, you can even start a bullet journal, which has its own practices. The tools you use for writing can also change the experience, for example the paper size and texture. And don't get me started on pens. Many people swear by fountain pens. They elevate journaling to something profound, something you do with intention.

There are also people who prefer practicality. The pen should do its work and shouldn't get in the way of putting thoughts onto paper.

Archival

I got into this rabbit hole for the last two weeks. I looked for high-quality writing utensils and checked different pens that could satisfy my need. It was important for me to choose a pen with ink that would not fade in the future. The biggest enemy for our handwriting is light, water and the paper itself. Light will fade the writing over time. Water can destroy it completely. And the paper should be acid-free, otherwise it can degrade the ink or worsen the paper quality over time. There are even ISO norms for pens that make sure that they are document-proof, for example ISO 14145-2 for rollerball pens or ISO 27668-2 for gel pens.

Surviving me

Why is that important? I want to be able to read my diary entries after a long period of time. I fear the experience of opening up an old diary and looking at nearly blank pages because the ink did not hold up just because I made a wrong decision with my writing utensils 20 years ago. But there was a more important aspect why I wanted to future-proof my writings. I wanted my diaries to survive me. They should still be readable after I passed. I wanted to leave something behind and with that a look into my thoughts and my daily life, my habits and my fears. If you just take a pen with black ink and don't overthink the paper choice, there is a good chance that the ink will still be readable after decades of protecting the materials from direct sunlight. But to make sure that it survives many decades, even centuries, you have to choose your tools carefully.

Questioning the practicality

After researching the right pen and the most suitable paper, I was close to ordering a good fountain pen with archival ink (which can be an expensive option). I took a step back and asked myself if this is really necessary. Who am I doing this for? Do other people really want to read my diary entries after my death? Sometimes I write multiple pages a day filled with mundane things or thoughts that are only relevant to me. There probably is nothing interesting for another person to gain here. Even for people who are close to me, they would be confronted with walls of text that described my daydreams in detail. What would be my reaction if someone that was close to me left behind thousands of pages for me to read? It could hurt to read these words; it could even change how I think about the relationship or the person after their death. These are their deepest thoughts, things he or she would not say to me or another person directly. Is it right to have a look into that?

So there were two insights for me. On one hand, I questioned if someone would even want to read my diary entries because they only have value for me. And on the other hand, I am not sure if I want someone to read all my entries because I can't control how they are perceived and I am no longer there to set the record straight. The image that is left of me can be changed after my death by my writings. And I don't want to burden the reader with things that can be revealed there. There is also the risk of censoring myself because I know that people could read it later.

Writing for myself

I have to accept that the thought of leaving something behind serves only me and my peace of mind during my lifetime, but is not something that is necessarily practical. A diary should be written for my own enjoyment. It should serve me first and foremost. Still, I will try to preserve my written word as best as I can because I don't know how I will think about this topic in the future or when I am older. It doesn't hurt to make sure that it will hold up for a long time and decide later how I want to handle this topic.

Between 30 and 40

casgit — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 02:00:00 GMT

At work, we talked about the sudden passing of a coworker's friend and how it affected him and how it is also something you have to deal with sooner or later. One coworker said: "From 30 onwards, it is likely that the first people in your friend group will die. Some due to cancer, some due to substance abuse and some for no apparent reason". These words have not left my head. He said it like it was a fact. But why shouldn't it be? If you take 100 people, some of them will die pretty young. My friend group is not automatically excluded from statistical probability.

Who will it be? Will it be me? Is it the one with the unhealthiest lifestyle? Could there even be two people? How will it affect me? How will it affect the whole friend group? The more friends I have, the higher the likelihood that someone I know will die between 30 and 40. During this time, most people will not be prepared for it, especially when they haven't had to deal with death before. It can tear friend groups apart. Nothing will ever be like it was before. I deeply fear that.

Right now, everything seems fine. No bad diagnosis, no known illness. But this thought has still cemented itself as a fact inside my head.

I think I should be glad that until now nothing has happened yet. A lot of people pass much earlier in their lives. I should be thankful that I have lived such a good live with my friends without a heartbreaking occurrence. In the end, I must admit that I cannot control what will happen. I can only look after myself and the people who are close to me.

New ideas emerge in silence

casgit — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 02:00:00 GMT

New ideas cannot develop without silence. With constant stimulation to keep our mind busy, there is no growth inside of us. Our mind needs space and time to process new information. You have to be with yourself and let your mind wander to just take ideas further and further until a spark happens.

Of course, you can consume media and get ideas there. But these are not your own ideas. You just happened to agree with them. They will not anchor themselves like your own ideas because you need your own thought process to really root them and later protect them from the outside or from conflicting ideas.

Time is an important factor. You should not feel time pressure. There should also be no pressure to have to do other things instead. It takes as long as it takes. I often conclude an idea or follow it to the end until there is nothing more for me to think about. If you truly take the time and relax, you will switch into diffuse thinking mode. That means that your brain can make new connections between areas that are normally not related. Sooner or later you will gain insights from that.

Struggling with motivation at work

casgit — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:00:00 GMT

Sometimes I just don't want to work. Yet it is assumed that I have to work five days a week. Yes, I get money for that. But my employer also assumes that I am motivated five times a week. That I am productive five times a week. Even if I would do a hobby for that much time every day, it would burn me out. With real work, that burnout arrives even faster. Money can't make work more pleasant; it only changes how much we are willing to put up with.

Maybe my employer knows that already. We are humans after all. To admit that it is impossible for your employee to be motivated constantly is seen as a sin in the workplace. People would lean into that sentiment and would grant themselves more "lazy" days because it is expected that they can't work like a robot. So we have to pretend that we are motivated during that time even if it is unrealistic.

I thought about that because I sometimes have to motivate myself to do the work I am paid to do. I use phrases like "but they pay you for your time, so I should do my best" or "Do you really wanna waste that time at work procrastinating? Do something productive! Don't be a lazy person, you will fall behind". It is okay to have high standards of yourself. But we should not beat ourselves down for something that is only natural. This motivation talk only works to some extent. We can push through that discomfort and that is the only way to get things done. That doesn't change the fact that we don't want to do it. There is often no intrinsic drive to put in the work.

While writing these words I think I am whining about First World problems. Everyone has to do things daily that we don't want to do. That's life. What is different about work is the high frequency of this duty and the huge amount of time it occupies in our daily life. Caring about relatives or household chores can also take up a lot of time but I immediately see the results and have more of an inner drive to do these things. My main motivation for work is money (and I know that people can have more than that motivation, for example socializing, skill development etc.). During work, my activities are mentally disconnected from the money I receive at the end of the month. So that just leaves me with ... my work. If you have to force yourself to work that means that you do something for most of your life that you don't enjoy.

Personally I mostly enjoy my work, but there are also droughts where I have to push myself to do something. I don't want to punish myself for sometimes not feeling it.

Measuring our values based on sacrifices

casgit — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:00:00 GMT

You can evaluate how much a specific goal or value matters to you by looking at the sacrifices you are willing to make to achieve it.

But I don't mean every kind of sacrifice. There are sacrifices that are easy to make. There is not much discomfort in enduring them at the moment but they can harm you in the long run. These sacrifices are silent and happen without my explicit commitment. Just because I play video games all day long and sacrifice my health for them, they are not immediately my highest value. Another such sacrifice would be to ignore my friends to get better at painting as a hobby. The act of painting will give me joy (in this case) and the consequences of ignoring my friends or not meeting with them will hit me much later. The pain gets shifted to a later time.

There are sacrifices that need my full commitment. Spending time on a goal that is not always pleasurable or enduring pain willingly to reach a goal is the kind of sacrifice I am talking about. The discomfort/pain is present in the moment. I can feel it. I know that I have to endure it to reach that goal. Despite that pain, I will pursue that goal. I would even endure much more pain to reach it. Some would sacrifice a lot, some everything. That can be a good measure of the importance of our personal values.

Dangers

It can be dangerous to sacrifice a lot because we can convince ourselves that a goal or value is important because we endure a lot for it. So instead of accepting the sacrifices for this goal because the goal is important to us, we value it higher because we already accepted a lot of sacrifices to reach it. This can lead to regrets in the future.

Balance vs. Focus

casgit — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 02:00:00 GMT

I have the tendency to throw all my ambitions and resolutions overboard if another topic/thing fully captivates me. I strive for balance in my life. I feel best when my day is split up in many small activities that do not fully consume me. This works for some time until something enters my life that leaves all the other plans in the dust. It's like a switch is flipped. I get tunnel vision and let it consume me. That can be a new hobby, a specific interest or a video game.

During the years I noticed that I have a balanced operation mode and a hyperfocus mode. These two switch regularly. During the balanced operation mode I can feel boredom (which is not a bad thing) and take mild enjoyment out of my daily tasks. In the hyperfocus mode I get maximum enjoyment out of something. I want to extend this feeling and will read about my new interest or watch videos about it. Other tasks feel dull and unsatisfying. Daily chores can be ignored.

It's like my mind gets starved for dopamine during the balanced operation mode and waits for something to trigger my obsession so it can get some of that dopamine back. When I switch from the hyperfocus mode back to the balanced operation mode I feel somewhat relieved because the balanced operation mode is more peaceful and not as exhausting.

The regular switch between these two is a balancing act in itself. The consistency is the switch between these two modes. Maybe the balance lies there, to pull back from the hyperfocus mode when the time is right. I don't know yet if this behavior is good or bad for me in the end.

Clean your room

casgit — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:00:00 GMT

Cleaning your room or apartment can be a cleansing activity. If your apartment is dirty or cluttered with things, it also clutters your mind. There will always be this thought in the back of your head that this should be tidy, that this can be clean if you would just do the chore. Things lying around take up mental space and demand your attention, even if you try to ignore it.

The longer you wait to act, the harder it gets and the greater the resistance in your mind is to actually do it.

You cannot escape it at home because you can always see it. One can notice the difference when not being at home, for example while taking a walk. There your mind is not burdened by the messiness of your home. Nothing to clean here and not your responsibility to put things in order.

I was always someone who didn't feel the need to really clean my home. Random things cluttered my floor all the time and the piles grew and grew. One reason for that is that I seldom get visitors. I have a small apartment that is not really suitable for meeting up. I told myself that I don't have to tidy up when I am comfortable with the chaos. It does not bother me at all. A clean apartment is for others, not me.

Self perception

But I underestimated how a messy home would clutter my brain and influence how I see myself. Because you are responsible for cleaning your home and you know deep inside that the current state is not right, but you do not act on that impulse, you begin to perceive yourself as a messy person. Your environment shapes your identity.

Other activities are also harder to do with these thoughts. You can't even take care of the basics, so why should you tackle other tasks? The degree of order in your home is something you can control while life often has many more things you can't directly control. You can interpret cleaning as a way of taking control of your life. After achieving progress in that area, you feel motivated to tackle more things.

Suddenly you don't fear unexpected visitors and can invite people to your home. You can be more open to the outside world and don't have to hide yourself. Don't let the chaos get unmanageable. Act a tiny bit every day and prove to yourself that you have the discipline to be a person who is able to take control of his life.

When does work feel meaningful?

casgit — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:00:00 GMT

Work can feel meaningful if one of two prerequisites are met.

Either the work you do is contributing to a greater good and the output of your work is part of a larger framework that tries to make a positive impact on society or your community or directly serves these people.

Or the execution of the work is fulfilling because you really enjoy what you are doing. The work itself is your target and you extract happiness from the act alone.

The reality

Most people do not enjoy doing their work. They would not do it as a hobby and will only focus on the monetary gains. According to a report published by Gallup in 2013, only 13% of employees are engaged at work. They take enjoyment out of it and are eager to contribute something to the output of an organization.

It makes sense to me that many people do not enjoy the act of working itself. Most of the time the work that gives you joy is not the work you will end up doing. Your company decides exactly what your daily work-life looks like. Deviations from that can often result in a worse outcome for the company.

But what about the output of your work? There exists the concept of the alienation from work defined by Karl Marx. It says that our input often has no real relation to our output. We ourselves do not need the things our companies produce or can simply not afford them. We are emotionally separated from the goods we create. There is a layer of abstraction between the things we do and the value we create.

Imagine you are living in a small town where no big companies exist. Everyone has to work but at a much smaller scale. That means that no goods produced leave this town and should only serve the people there. Once a week there would be a big market where goods are traded. There you see exactly who needs what and at which quantity. The output of your work would directly serve the needs of a person you can see and talk to. This person would be happy to give you money for your product. You would be happy because your work makes another person happy.

Important work

People have basic needs. To fulfill these needs is important because only then humans can continue existing as humans. Without it they have to fight for their survival or live in misery. Social work is work that can fulfill that need (collective needs fulfillment). People that do this type of work can understand at first glance what the value of their work is and how they are contributing to the fulfillment of people's needs. There is less abstraction here.

Does that mean that I can extract more meaning from my work if I contribute to the greater fulfillment of people's needs? If I slave away in a factory that produces chicken meat? Of course not. Working conditions are important too. People working in healthcare have it easier to see the meaning of their labor because they see the people that profit from their effort but that is not enough when the working conditions are bad and they are destroying themselves in the process.

The definition of work is doing something, either physical or mental, to reach a goal. If the positive impact on people that comes out of that goal is hard to pin down or is not important to us or society, we have a hard time extracting meaning out of it.

It is a fact that most of us are only a very small gear in a colossal machine. We are blind to the results of our labor and most of us don't even care what the output is. You can gaslight yourself that your work is contributing to a greater good but is it really what people need or is it only benefiting the people that sit on top of the food chain?

Telling your kid that it is beautiful

casgit — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 01:00:00 GMT

If you ask people online if parents should tell their kids that they are beautiful independently of their actual looks, the answer is universally: yes.

Why even focus on the looks of your children? Because they can tell that something is off when you do not make a comment about it at all. When they reach a certain age, looks will definitely play a role in their self-worth or how they think they are perceived by others. Even if you do not focus on appearance at all, the reality will catch up. Kids are getting bullied because of facial features or an unusual look. They get rejected as teenagers and will blame something for that or at least consider that their looks mattered here.

Focusing too much on the appearances can convey the message that looks do in fact matter, even to you. You are also praising something that is not really worthy of praise. There is no accomplishment, the child did nothing to earn that praise.

Saying "you are beautiful" does not strictly mean that they are beautiful on the outside though. It can also mean that they are beautiful on the inside and have inherent worth beyond their physical appearance. Sending this message the correct way is important.

As much as I want to live in a world where you should not have to tell your kids that they are beautiful and therefore planting a seed that looks do matter, actually abiding by that rule is difficult and could do even more harm.