On consistency
Oct. 31st, 2025 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
posicScott D. Clary writes in Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/scottdclarypage/posts/pfbid02sbUdpYYnSWHrRXft8UEFTxW5PqhyRVLYR7yJRacTxJVhyYdZBASA43jidtdrYCGfl :
Major realization: Consistency is overrated if you are consistently doing the wrong things.
You show up every day to a job you hate. You consistently maintain relationships that drain you. You're disciplined about patterns that don't serve you. Consistency without direction is just stubbornness.
***
Well, I am consistent. I show up almost every day, including weekends and holidays, to a job I like very much. I consistently minimize or end relationships that drain me. I am disciplined about some patterns... but do they serve me?
More importantly, do they serve the advancement of mathematics? Am I doing the right or the wrong thing by studying contramodules and contraherent cosheaves for so many years? Are all my efforts in vain, or almost in vain -- or am I paving the ground for a really important breakthrough? I have no hope of learning the definitive answer to this question while I am still alive.
In any case, I am stubborn indeed, but my consistency does have a direction. I've been stubbornly going in this direction for quarter century already (more than fifteen years at any rate).
Major realization: Consistency is overrated if you are consistently doing the wrong things.
You show up every day to a job you hate. You consistently maintain relationships that drain you. You're disciplined about patterns that don't serve you. Consistency without direction is just stubbornness.
***
Well, I am consistent. I show up almost every day, including weekends and holidays, to a job I like very much. I consistently minimize or end relationships that drain me. I am disciplined about some patterns... but do they serve me?
More importantly, do they serve the advancement of mathematics? Am I doing the right or the wrong thing by studying contramodules and contraherent cosheaves for so many years? Are all my efforts in vain, or almost in vain -- or am I paving the ground for a really important breakthrough? I have no hope of learning the definitive answer to this question while I am still alive.
In any case, I am stubborn indeed, but my consistency does have a direction. I've been stubbornly going in this direction for quarter century already (more than fifteen years at any rate).
