Long Tail Drift

One of the biggest challenges of this phase of my life is having a good grasp of the meta of how I think. In a sense, is my mental framework for thinking about X issue in my life the correct one? Top of mind recently is a trap I've fallen into several times, something I call the "long tail drift." I'm sure there's a more academic way to describe it, but it's the idea that as we invest more time and energy into a project, a lifestyle, or a habit, we become disconnected from the normal way of thinking about it.

This seems quite innocuous on its face, but it's become a ticking time bomb for me on more than one occasion in recent years.

A great example is my approach to fitness. I started out by recognizing during COVID that my mental health was steadiest when I regularly exercised. So, like plenty of people, I dove in. I joined gyms, went to workout classes, followed influencers, etc. After a few years, I had friends who loved fitness. I consumed a ton of fitness content. I had read a ton of literature on the topic. I was in the best shape of my life. This is good, right?

The trap though, was mental.

At some point, I stopped asking myself the "normal distribution" questions:

Am I enjoying this?
Is this making my life better?

And I started grading myself on a whole new, invisible rubric.

Was I disciplined enough this week?
Did I PR this week?

If the answer to "Am I enjoying this?" or "Is this making my life better" is "no" -- then I take a break or find a new hobby. This is a normal and healthy approach to life! However, if the answer to "Was I disciplined enough this week?" or "Did I PR this week?" is "no" -- then I get super deep into research on discipline or maximizing a particular lift. Of course, anyone who has been on this hyperfixation treadmill could tell you this leads to the opposite of joy.

The wild part is this shift was intentional. Because all my fitness friends were in the long-tail now too. The content I was consuming was in the long-tail. My framework for fitness had quietly, and intentionally, rewritten itself in the background to something completely dis-connected from how the average, healthy person approaches it.

This is the long-tail drift in a nutshell: when you stop questioning or analyzing how your framework is sliding and just start running harder inside it.

What I'm trying to do now is to capture my original framework when I pickup a new hobby, project, or lifestyle. How did I originally think about this? What were the questions I was asking myself? Then, I try to bring those questions back to the forefront as I go. This helps me catch when I've drifted too far.