Go slowly and cautiously.

Delay gratification, decision, and conclusion.

Use as few thoughts, as little action, and as little effort as you possibly can to achieve a goal: this does not reduce your engagement with reality and your desires, but leaves more mental and physical resources to keep your eyes on what’s going on and your other priorities.

Be kind, gentle, and caring with yourself foremost as your method of selfishness (as opposed to some pseudo-masochistic drive to meet goals which are treated as duties and not sources of real happiness and inspiration,) then your friends secondly and then finally everyone else who doesn’t not-deserve it. As put eloquently in the $100 startup, capitalism is just helping people. If you find a way that you can help people, you can monetize it even if through crowdfunding/etc. If you don’t yet feel a desire to help people, or to create or improve something significant, then take time to care for yourself first and evaluate why you don’t have the energy, drive, and motivation in sufficient excess to generate additional value for others and yourself. Is it a lack of options, a lack of energy, a lack of resources, a lack of self-confidence, or something else?

Be conscientious: do everything that you bother doing with honest intention, full engagement, and ideally a strong emotional desire or not at all. Give things a brief try to see whether your negative association is valid — set a 15 minute timer and give yourself permission to quit if you’re not fully engaged and annoyed by the timer. Perhaps mindfulness will enhance the experience.

Just observe what’s happening — that’s what mindfulness means — to add as little to the natural process of you and your environment consciously as possible and instead to devote the conscious/rational mind to accurate impartial observation, caution, restraint, (to limit impulsive action and thus give the mind more time to process the environment before acting — we’re not cave men running from tigers and needing to make split-second decisions anymore) and /mindful/ reflection which does not immediately jump to conclusions and instead proposes hypotheses which will be tested through your day-to-day life.

Fully engage with and savor everything: each meal (the texture of each bite, on the tongue vs the throat, different ingredients in the food, comparisons with past meals,) each book (the font in the book, the choice of wording, the imagery if it is fiction, simulating the concept in action if a textbook in your mind in a fun accurate way,) each movie (the pixellation, the speed and positioning of the camera, the small sounds in the environment, the facial expressions on the actors,) each tv episode, each situp (the strain of muscle, feeling of exhaustion) each blog post (each keypress, the flow of words, the look of text on the screen) — it’s been claimed (even if pseudo-science, the principle it illustrates is essentially true) that the conscious mind can contain approximately 140 bits of information at a time while the subconscious can handle millions — the difference between a laser and a flood light: neither part of the mind shuts down because the other is taking action, and so it makes sense to take advantage of the strengths of each: the conscious for focusing on selected courses of action or aspects of the environment, for planning — for making slow mindful contemplative evaluations of the self, the environment and the pursuit of goals.

Be like the “net of heaven” as mentioned in the TTC: if you don’t know exactly how things are going to go, and don’t even have an informal plan to guide effective action, then act as broadly and cautiously as possible (but still proactively and in your own self-interest) so what you do stands to benefit you no matter what the external environment does. Do not “muddy your water” — if things aren’t clear, then don’t act irrationally on whims just because you feel the need to. Poke around cautiously if it suits the situation, but don’t charge ahead full bore without a clear map of the situation and where you’re going.

Explore: pick a random course or book or movie and just sit with it for a bit — 15 minutes, 60, whatever — and commit to fully engaging for that time.