When I quit my job, I had to start practicing the somewhat uncomfortable exercise of figuring out what I want to do, like literally, hour to hour. It turned out that mostly I wanted to play stardew valley, walk or bike around the city, listen to audiobooks and visit libraries, parks and bakeries.

When I was having trouble figuring out what books I wanted to read next, I started listening to a book podcast whose central premise is basically “building your volitional muscles for reading.” The hosts talk about a lot of different books, but mostly they focus on the idea of figuring out your own specific reading taste and leaving behind the “should” motivations. In short, let reading be pleasurable. So, if you’re reading something that you’re not enjoying, drop it and try something new. I got better at noticing when I felt like I should be reading something (good reviews, seemed “impressive”, I really liked this author’s other book, this will “improve me”, or just “I should finish what I start”) or if I was actually loving reading it. It made me focus on the feeling of books that are just effortless and it made me remember how happy reading made me as a kid.

This connection between quitting things and extreme joy kind of blew my mind. It feels like insanely obvious but weirdly subversive idea - stop doing things made me feel bad, look for things that make me feel good. Stop trying to figure out how to improve myself and believe that finding things I love will take care of that. Having found confidence in applying this principle to books and my meandering unemployment, I found myself at the Recurse Center.

Honestly, pretty burnout from my last job, I was worried that my software engineering volitional muscles were broken. But I’m starting my 4th week now, that happily that does not seem to be the case. I was worried Recurse would feel like another job, but it’s actually felt much more like a school with a constantly growing course catalog and interesting, friendly classmates. I’ve been able to scan back through my career and education to things I’ve felt curious about, ideas that felt compelling or satisfying or tantalizingly out of reach. Just like the books, I’ve been focusing on the feelings. What feels joyful and easy and let those things eclipse the others.

In my second week we did a workshop on “building your volitional muscles.” We wrote down things we might want to do, why we want to do them and then a call on whether we should. I tried to notice the reasons that were most related to joy - “so satisfying to understand how complicated systems fit together,” “puzzles and lateral thinking are so fun” and “collaborating with people on shared goals makes me happy” were big themes. And finally, we were reminded to quit stuff. Using your volitional muscles to quit is what allows you to use them to choose.