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Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

swapnilchauhan.com

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Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#161

Post by kmod »

I think people here might like Oliver Burkeman's books where he talks about this stuff a lot. I loved his book "Four Thousand Weeks", and there is a new follow-up "Meditation for Mortals" which I have not read yet but seems to be well-received.

He's one of the few people I've seen address what I think is the key difficulty with this sort of stuff: that you can think think that you're addressing procrastination/perfectionism when actually you are engaging in it (with a target of fixing your procrastination/perfectionism). It's a difficult situation to break out of, because it seems like any effort to break-out would necessarily have this sort of grasping, but I think he (and Buddhist meditation) talk a lot about that key challenge.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#162

Post by pmarreck »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #92
calstad wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s a bit of a personal question, but can you elaborate on your ego diluting experience?

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway. So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that. Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and…

So basically, you were an opinionated functional-language developer and now you can throw down Python or PHP (ok, let's at least be realistic... JavaScript) with a straight face of eternal calm?

(I mean this partly in jest of course)

Your new enlightenment sounds like the product of a productive drug trip (no judgment implied whatsoever, possibly some jealousy though)

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#163

Post by slibhb »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #79

I suffered from this. The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant ideas about himself OP has created. I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of…

It's hard to get more ironic than farming upvotes on the internet talking about how you transcended ego or whatever.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#164

Post by tjpnz »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #79

I suffered from this. The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant ideas about himself OP has created. I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of…

That hurt. Is there a name for this?

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#165

Post by masspro »

slibhb wrote: post #163
hshshshshsh wrote: post #79

I suffered from this. The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant ideas about himself OP has created. I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of…

It's hard to get more ironic than farming upvotes on the internet talking about how you transcended ego or whatever.

Or maybe they just wanted to share something connected to the article

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#166

Post by lazide »

slibhb wrote: post #163
hshshshshsh wrote: post #79

I suffered from this. The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant ideas about himself OP has created. I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of…

It's hard to get more ironic than farming upvotes on the internet talking about how you transcended ego or whatever.

One of the biggest and hardest lessons in Buddhist (monk) practice is that self deception is as fundamental, and as hard to avoid, as breathing.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#167

Post by jdironman »

asdfman123 wrote: post #152

My tricks for beating procrastination are: 1) Give yourself permission to do bad work. If you're stuck, just start writing whatever junk is in your head. Make it hilariously bad! Write like a total idiot. But often that alone is enough to unstick you. Having very rough work is infinitely better than staring at a blank page. 2) Procrastinate "a little bit" Rebrand some procrastination as manageable short breaks, stop…

I feel like this also applies to software development. I have a friend, who is a perfectionist. they're really smart! a lot smarter than me actually. with that being said total output and progress towards a goal we both share is higher on my end because I'm as they put it "more industrious". I don't say this as a brag, but more people have different struggles to get started and different motivations. I'm not motivated by the big picture, I'm motivated by the challenge in front of me. others might be motivated by the big picture and not the smaller challenges. either way, I think recognizing that fact, and your motivation, alone is a step in the right direction.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#168

Post by uoaei »

slibhb wrote: post #163
hshshshshsh wrote: post #79

I suffered from this. The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant ideas about himself OP has created. I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of…

It's hard to get more ironic than farming upvotes on the internet talking about how you transcended ego or whatever.

Moreso than riding a moral high horse while violating etiquette and explicit guidelines?

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#169

Post by psychoslave »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #92
calstad wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s a bit of a personal question, but can you elaborate on your ego diluting experience?

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway. So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that. Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and…

Mortality of the self is not a big deal, at least if the illusion of ego was already overcome. On the matter there is for example Epicurus classic thought that self death is not a concern as while alive self won’t experiment it’s own death, and once dead there is no longer any self to observe death. That one requires accepting there is no "afterlife" for the self.

Thus, only death of others is a relevant topic of concern, but taking care of them while they are alive is certainly far more important.

Impermanence of everything "only" applies to contingent matters. So statements like "everything (that happens through some contingency) is impermanent" always match some absolute truth. So the apparent contradiction that "if everything is impermanent was true, so should be impermanence and then not everything would be impermanent", is only indeed apparent.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#170

Post by simonw »

bbor wrote: post #160
simonw wrote: post #159

I will repeat my standard advice for writing more: lower your standards, and allow yourself (in fact force yourself) to publish things despite knowing that they could be better if you just changed a few more things... Also, write about things you've learned and projects you've built: both of those are topics where you aren't expected to provide shining new insight never seen before online: https://simonwillison.net/2…

Love the overall message, and you’ve obv got the HackerCreds to back it up, but I’ll throw an obligatory “what does it mean to force oneself to do something?” IMHO the idea that you can ‘force’ yourself to do things puts a moral/normative element in the discussion that does more harm than good. It makes one feel like they somehow chose failure, when it inevitably arrives. We all agree that are limits to self control,…

Force may be too hard a term, but basically I mean that you should bias towards publication even when you're not yet happy with what you've written, and constantly remind yourself that publishing content that isn't 100% perfect yet is a virtue that should be celebrated. The alternative is a folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all.
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