10 minute read

Askesis (Greek: ἄσκησις)
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

ASKESIS

Askesis can be described as “shaping through practice” and was originally the idea of shaping athleticism through repetition. Think of ancient Greek Olympians. A wrestler could practice his craft by devoting an entire training session to practicing one move. Performing this move over and over, until it becomes 2nd nature, while refining the movement from the macro to the micro. Refining parts of the movement that you could only see after hours of repetition. This is the original process that was known as Askesis. It was a way to shape athletic ability through hours of repetition and refinement, as well as many other habits such as good diet and rest. To the best of their ability, athletes would focus only on the actions that made them better athletes while discarding anything that detracted from that goal. It’s this refinement through repetition, and focus on what’s important or effective, that many ancient Greek philosophers started to adopt and apply to the broader set of principles of their philosophies, not just athletic ability. Stoics reshaped the idea of Askesis and formalized it to be applied towards the pursuit of building the mind and thus building character. For instance, take these 4 exercises:

• Premeditatio malorum – imagining setbacks so they lose their power to shock.
• Self-restraint – delaying gratification to strengthen mastery over desire.
• Attention to the present moment – focusing on what is fully under your control.
• View from above – zooming out to reduce ego and distress.

Rather than formally studying these ideas, with the expectation of adopting them, the stoics would practice them in every day life, over and over, shaping themselves to react in different ways to any situation they may face. The more one practices these responses or mental exercises, virtuous action becomes the default. Virtue becomes a habit. The character is shaped towards excellence, one action at a time.

PURSUIT

Askesis, in and of itself, is only a word. It describes something broad that can be applied to anything you want to develop. An Olympian can apply Askesis to develop a wrestling hold, while a Stoic philosopher can apply it to practice focusing on what she can control in the moments after an event, perhaps pondering on what she could’ve done differently for a possible next time, rather than simply ruminating. As well, you can apply it in pursuit of anything you want to develop and if you were to ask me, you should, but ethics isn’t the point of this essay. A few weeks ago I came across this idea of Askesis and started asking myself what I would apply it to. What would I apply a structured, daily execution of specific actions towards? My last essay described a life of wanting to learn, but also a life of certain choices, followed by a single desire to now apply myself the best I can and to go as far in the discipline of Computer Science as my little brain will take me. I started thinking of deliberate actions I could take to support this goal. The ideas that floated to the surface were obviously things like “code every single day”. Practice over abstract study. In hindsight this isn’t the worst idea, but I’m not sure it’s the best starting point I can come up with. How could I ensure that if I were to take deliberate action every day that those actions would be engineering a foundation made of brick rather than hardened clay, or cement rather than brick, or steel rather than cement?

After a while I realized that at the moment I am strengthening 2 other disciplines alongside studying Computer Architecture. I am also working on strengthening my academic endurance and refining the way I learn.

• Academic Endurance
  I see academic endurance as a 3 dimensional discipline centered around focus: depth, length and speed. I see the depth of focus being determined by the quality of the focus. This is when ideas are bubbling to the surface, you’re trying different things, a bird chirps outside and you don’t even notice. There are levels to this. One person can be in that state (perhaps what some call “flow”) and another could be stopping what they’re doing every 5 minutes, because they’re not as focused. The speed dimension is just how quickly a person can sit and bring themselves to that state of deep focus, and finally the length dimension is of course how long one can stay in that state of mind. Each of these 3 dimensions can be trained. Daily actions can be taken in pursuit of strengthening each of them. I think focusing on training them, to at least a formidable level, is key to squeezing the most juice out of every study/work session and therefore crucial to reaching any sort of pinnacle. So the first thing I aim to build is my academic endurance.

• Academic Competence
  Academic competence is something I came up with on the spot and it’s really just meant to describe how effective a person learns. You can read about the different ways a person can study here, but in a nutshell studying can be broken down into a set of principles, a few being Active Recall, Spaced Repetition and Deliberate Practice. It goes much deeper than this, but you can apply just these principles and make significant leaps in competency. Though, these principles are just principles and they can be applied independently towards personalized learning frameworks. For instance, active recall is the principle of testing yourself to pinpoint cracks in what you know and don’t know. It’s basically just testing. However, the efficacy of this principle truly shows when a person applies it to something more specific. This can be a computer programmer testing her skills with online coding challenges, or it can be a mathlete going at a 100 problem quiz to pinpoint the concepts he’s still having trouble with. Same principle, different application. So, when I say that Academic Competence is a foundational discipline I’m working on I basically mean I’m working on understanding how to study/work at a level that produces tangible change and solid learning. So that I’m taking less part in building illusions of mastery and putting more effort towards genuinely building my skills and knowledge.

So, while on the outside it looks like I’m working towards one pursuit (understanding computer science to the level of wizardry), underneath the surface I am building much more.

ACTIONS

It is often said that focusing on too many things at once can be detrimental: “you can do everything you want, but not at the same time”. So where does that leave me? Perhaps focusing on all of which I’m focusing on is aligning directly with that quote, but I don’t think it leaves me in as desperate of a situation as it may sound. Yes, I am working at multiple things, but I think the things I’m working on/towards happen to align so closely together that by working on one I am indirectly working on the others. While I work on refining a personal learning framework (academic competence) I am doing so in bursts of focus, on some days, to train the depth dimension of my academic endurance, and the thing I’m applying my learning framework towards is studying computer architecture.

Though, I still would like to take the number of actions down to a set framework. Not x actions to build academic endurance, and x actions to build academic competence. I want a framework that, when followed, is building each to some level. I think that framework is as follows:

• Consistently applying and refining the way I learn
  Each time I study the current textbook I’m going through I am consciously applying the principles I’ve learned over the last few years in ways that I think best align with studying computer architecture. The full breakdown of this framework can again be found here. It is a constant and iterative process of analyzing how a study/work session went and thinking about how it can go better next time. At this point I think the framework I’m applying is pretty solid and I only periodically think of ways to make it better, but the process is ongoing. Some days I go back to the book where I first started learning about learning (Make It Stick) and read passages to see if I can catch a glimmer of knowledge to apply to what I’m currently doing, but for the most part it’s just doing it, analyzing and refining. This is the action I take towards building my Academic Competency, while simultaneously learning computer architecture on as deep of a level as I can.

• Training Focus Every Day
  Like I said before, I think focus can be seen as depth, length and speed to focus. There are different ways I train each one, but I have a couple of main practices. I do them every day, to some degree.

  • I have the privilege of knowing many people who don’t mind at all that I use their winter/summer homes to work/study. A lot of the year these homes are rented through AirBNB, but not all of them at once and during the colder months they are rented out less. So on days where I train my depth and length of focus I find spaces to work that are untouched by humans. I seek out one of these empty homes and I set up shop. No people, no notifications, no distractions. The goal is to focus as deep and as long as possible. You can think of it like lifting as much weight in the gym as you can, but also doing so until your body gives out. I usually warm up with a few 15/5 pomodoros. Then I lock in and I don’t stop for as long as I can. There are often moments when the desire to check Discord (the only social media I have left) comes up, or to just do something else entirely. A lot of these sessions are sessions of intense focus, peppered with moments where I stop what I’m doing, allow the desire to give up pass, and continue. I don’t do this every day, much like I don’t go to the gym and work out until I almost pass out every day, but I do both periodically and intentionally. The intention is to build and refine.

  • The way I build my ability to sit and get into a state of focus quickly is by simply sitting and getting to work as quickly as possible. No thinking about what I’m going to do, I usually have it set out for me from the day before and no procrastinating. It can be tough, but I essentially push through the discomfort of getting started and just get started. Simple. This can be sitting to work or study, or it can be opening a book and getting started on reading it. This action may be one of the most powerful things I’ve done to develop a “get started” muscle and the development of that muscle has been invaluable.

• Exercise - Healthy Body, Healthy Mind
  Exercise has been shown to boost cognitive performance as well as so many other benefits that I won’t list, to the point that many researchers suggest that if you were going to only take a single measure towards living a better life that you would be better off just exercising or getting up and moving, every day. Following this advice, I try to hit the gym at least 4 days a week and more specifically I try to get enough cardio each time that I leave the gym sweating. Nothing more, nothing less. On days when I’m feeling particularly energetic I will incorporate about 30 minutes of weights or weighted circuits, but the one thing I always shoot for is that cardio. It doesn’t take much, I always feel better after and I think it will slowly begin to only support my goals. Even if that support just means feeling better as I pursue them, but I know the benefits go much deeper.

  • One more thing, involving exercise that I do is something I call a “mind/body” routine. It essentially combines exercise with some element of work or study. This can be programming, studying my textbook, writing or just reading a book. In a nutshell it is a routine consisting of a 10 minute cardio warm up to get my blood flowing, 1 hour of deep focus (again, involving any of the listed activities) and then a final 30 minutes to 1 hour of exercise. This is more of an experiment to see how much the exercise combined with the knowledge work helps, or if it even helps at all. So far I have noticed boosts in focus when I sweat a little bit before getting to work, and I think exercising in silence afterwards helps to encode information. Though, I’m not an expert.

• Silence
  This is something I try to apply as often as I can, for the simple benefit of allowing my mind to organize thoughts, think and problem solve in the background. These moments of silence also help build my ability to focus. I rarely sit in silence, rather I find silence in 2 distinct ways:

  • Silent drives (Inactive Silence). I like to use quiet drives to just let my mind be. While I often have sparks of ideas during these drives, the intention is to just let my mind be, without feeding it too many inputs. I call these drives “inactive silence”. No music, no doing much of anything except driving. Just the road. The silence and easy drive through the mountains allow my mind to rest and wander. Aside from sleep, I see this as true rest, especially after intense work sessions. Rather than moving from a session of deep learning and then feeding my mind constant inputs from a tv show or video game, the quiet seems to take everything I worked on, or studied, and organize it. Place it on the right spot of the shelf, so to speak.
  • Exercise in silence (Active Silence). Moving, while not receiving any cognitive inputs can be extremely beneficial when it comes to allowing the mind to wander. It has been shown that moving in some repetitive way, such as jogging, can help quiet mental noise enough so that thoughts begin forming naturally, as opposed to forming as a response to mental input. This can promote reflection, problem-solving and emotional processing. On the days I finish my cardio and feel like weight lifting I will throw on some music or something else, but otherwise I always aim to do cardio in silence.

• Reading
  These days I treat reading as something that is going to contribute to the person I’m becoming, rather than a leisurely activity. I treat it as a practice, and I allocate time to it like I would allocate time to any other Deep Work session. Sometimes I read in bed, sometimes I read at my desk, sometimes I read on my front porch, but it’s always treated as Deep Work. I also try to always treat reading as an input that will ultimately lead to an output. For a while I fell into the habit of reading as many things as I could, without taking as much action. So I started focusing on output. At this point I have a bookshelf of about 30 books I’ve read over the last few years that I think have brought the most value to my life. These are the books I read. I read them with the intention of applying what I’ve read to my life. What usually happens is ideas begin to form and I either journal, start an essay or continue an existing one with the newly formed ideas. Sometimes my reading manifests into new frameworks for myself or my business. Other times I finish reading and take 15 minutes to sit in silence as I think about what I read. The point is to do something with the information I’ve taken in, instead of immediately moving on to the next thing.

  • One honorable mention is educational YouTube videos/podcasts. This is something I do the least out of everything else, but it’s still a part of my routine. I periodically will watch something on YouTube that I can take some value from. I don’t always synthesize the information, like I do with reading, but most of the time I do.

• Essays
  I like writing essays like this one. Ultimately this essay will become a blog post on my website, but it’s more so that I post some of the essays I write. I won’t post every single one, but I will post the essays that I think continue to paint a picture of this particular journey I’m on. I like essays, because they’re a break from the deliberate and explicit actions I take in pursuit of my main goals. I train like an athlete (in some ways more literally than others), and contrary to what a lot of people may think, athletes don’t train beyond the limits of their body to the point of injury, and their coaches don’t push them to do so. They train to their limits, see how far beyond they can push then they pull back and do it again at another time, each time becoming stronger. I don’t consider what I do a good way to become injured if I push too far beyond a certain limit, but I do think the same rule of diminishing returns applies if I push beyond a certain limit. For a wrestler those diminishing returns could come from training on an injured ankle, injuring it further and not becoming as strong with each training session as he would if he allowed the ankle to heal first. The way I see diminishing returns in my case is allowing my focus to become so strained that each work/study session I’m squeezing a lemon that has no more juice, therefore not learning as much as I could learn if I take a step back and continue another time. On those days I write. I use essays to take a rest from my main pursuit, while not allowing my mind to become as distracted with things that would have captured my attention in the past. It’s a way for me to continue on my path, organize thoughts, become more articulate and still allow my mind some rest from the work.

• Leisure
  One final thing I’d like to mention is leisure. Essays are a way for me to break up the monotony and intensity of the actions I take towards my goals, while also being productive, but I do take part in explicit leisure because I think it’s important for me to have something outside of the intensity and rigor of my work. Taking actions that are meant to shape my character is meant to persist, indefinitely (to some degree), and I’m not sure how I could handle never breaking the routine. At least for now. I do think that as time goes on I will become more accustomed to this lifestyle and I will naturally shave off leisure time, but for now I like things like watching movies, video games or something entertaining on YouTube.

CONCLUSION

Today is December 13, 2025. I have spent the last few weeks hammering away at my pursuit, refining the actions I am going to take daily. The actions you see here today are going to be the actions I take every single day, for the foreseeable future. If you’re reading this a week from now, a month from now or even 10 years from now, you can almost guarantee my life is still aligned with these actions, to some degree, albeit most likely having made small refinements along the way. Each day shaping my character until the actions you see are executed not on days when I feel motivated, but every single day, because they are part of the person I have become. Thank you for reading.