I don't know that I would say never be disappointed that you aren't doing more of something you want when there's no valid excuse not to do whatever it is. It isn't whether you think about how you should be reading more, practicing your swordsmanship more etc., and feeling crappy for not doing so which is the issue. The issue is what you do to make yourself feel better. Do you wallow and go on doing the same thing, therefore just waiting for the next wave of failure to hit? Or do you instead do something to change the action, making yourself feel better in the process?
Deciding to change an action, and making a plan of attack to fix said thing is actually very soothing. The hard part is sticking to whatever you've come up with.
I think it depends on the individual how soothing it is...
Sometimes, you decide to change, make a plan, follow through with said plan, and then feel relief for a moment before you decide that really wasn't good enough. And over and over and so forth and so on.
I have sometimes found that my plans of attack don't actually fix whatever I'm trying to fix, or they get me so far and then I'm in a hole again, which is the opposite of soothing; but I'm also not exactly the soundest of mind
So...well. It depends.
Sometimes the problem is reconciling expectation with action and that's enough, but sometimes the problem is the expectation itself. Internal settings and stuff. It's hard to say for another person
But you're right, it is worth pointing out that making a plan and following through can be quite beneficial, depending on other circumstances.
To the OP: Reading a few hours a week sounds fine to me. I actually spend most of my time not reading (fiction, anyway; I read little non-fiction articles and such--which, don't exclude nonfiction entirely; it's quite fascinating
), and then go through binge periods. In the interim, I critique stuff and I write stuff and I try to work out the plotting of writing stuff.
Although--I'm not exactly a paragon of success over here.
Perhaps a bad example.
I dunno. As long as you're reading, I think, you're taking those necessary steps.
The thought of putting on scuba diving equipment and getting into a shark cage excites me.
On the other hand, I can't dive, have never worn scuba gear, have never so much as touched a shark cage, and have no concrete plans to do so in the near future. I've got other priorities at the moment.
You don't have to know how to dive and the scuba equipment is minimal-ish.
Well, at least on the boat I went on--the regulator is just attached to a hose that goes up to the boat, rather than tanks on your back; you're right below the surface of the water. You don't have to bother about stuff like buoyancy and decompression and whatnot
(Though I still needed the Valsalva maneuver
)
'Course you may be talking about something else...but don't let lack of diving knowledge stop you if all you want is the cage and the sharks
(The expense might stop you, though, depending on where you live and where you want to go...my savings account went bye-bye
)