theory hoarding
High school was not a normal experience for me. Going to a poorly run religious private school will do that. I have spent most of my adulthood trying to ‘catch up’ to everyone else. Recently, this has developed as an interest in literature theory and analysis. My atypical schooling experience lead me to miss out on a lot of reading early on.
Typically, when a new interest finds me, I spend considerable effort researching as much as I can about the subject. I flood my brain with information about the best tools or books for that interest, to the point of exhaustion. I must know as much as I can before actually diving in. When it finally comes down to putting all of that into practice, though, I flounder. Staying in the theoretical stage is easy. Actually doing the thing however is much more difficult.
Today I was looking for a book about literature when my wife interrupted me and said, "Hey, maybe you should just read the books you have. We have a few classics already, start with those." Needless to say, I got called out. Often times, the newness of things drives me to explore and then once I know enough, my brain detaches.
Later in the day, I thought the most important thing that I needed to do was to set up an arch linux virtual machine and learn how to install and configure neovim (this is a highly customizable piece of software but ultimately it's a text editor). My thought process was that I wanted to create the perfect distraction free writing environment. After many long hours, I managed to get something semi-functional but encountered issues. Finally I gave up and sat down to write this post using a different tool, my wife's words floating in the back of my head to just do the damn thing.
Robin Waldun talks about theory vs practice in his video, Good Ideas Are Useless Without Practice. He mentions how over-theorizing can get us stuck in a cycle of endless ideas without taking action. One comment stuck out to me where they call themselves a theory hoarder. Theory hoarding is my ultimate procrastination tool. The tricky part now is figuring out how to break that cycle and put plans into action without overdoing the planning.