If you see clothes in the laundry basket, there is nothing wrong with you. You have clean clothes in the closet. You have clothes on your body. There are dirty clothes on the floor. There are clothes you should probably donate or throw away. There are lost garments somewhere unknown. And some end up in the laundry basket.

It exists in a cycle.

In my hyperproductive sphere, I have increasingly noticed things described in binary terms:

• Workout: done or missed.
• Anki reviews: cleared or not.
• To-do list: crushed or failed.

What if we viewed our lives in more of a cycle, something that ebbs and flows?

There are always things that are done, things soon to be done, things waiting to be done, and things that can be discarded. A natural cycle of action.

I was recently commenting to my friend how my “to-read” pile is never zero. My rate of finishing books is always slower than my rate of finding new books to read.

“Is that a problem?” they asked. “Sounds perfectly normal.”

They were right. It is an endless, perfect cycle: a river that flows continuously, rather than a bucket that is filled and emptied.