Sleeping on brushwood

Goujian, king of Yue, lost his war with Wu. He went to the Wu court as a servant and worked for the victor, Fuchai, for years, in humiliation his own officials wrote down so it wouldn't be forgotten.

He was eventually released. Back in Yue he put himself on a bed of brushwood and hung a gall bladder above the seat. Every night he tasted it.

He didn't do this for show. He did it because the man who'd been comfortable for a decade had lost. He wanted the discomfort available to him at all times.

Then he spent ten years rebuilding the state. Grain and people and old grudges, one kind of patience each.

The detail worth keeping is that he didn't try to feel better. He built a system that would not let him normalise what happened.

That's a design problem, not a willpower problem. A person who has made a mistake keeps it in mind for a month. A person who has decided not to make it again builds something that won't let them forget, and then stops worrying about their own memory.

What's your brushwood? What object, calendar, or consequence are you willing to keep in front of you so progress doesn't depend on your mood?

MOJOWAY's file is a quiet version of that. A weekly line about what actually happened is the least dramatic and most durable appetite for bile.