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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

#241

Post by gsuuon »

perlgeek wrote: post #233

I've been listening to a psychology podcast, and they label every "should"-statement as a cognitive distortion. > While I do read articles here and there, it’s far less than I should. Formulating it as a "should" abstracts away who wants it, and makes an artificially abstract norm out of it. But what is actually? It's probably just something that the author wants. Not doing something I want feels less bad than not do…

I (too recently) realized "shoulda, coulda, woulda"'s are generally useless, and to focus on only "need, want"s. If it doesn't fit into these two categories then it's not important enough to think about.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#242

Post by MichaelZuo »

Gud wrote: post #179
MichaelZuo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a signalling problem, a 31 day old pseudonymous account is pretty always going to enjoy vastly less credibility than say a 10 year old account with hundreds of thousand of karma. If the latter wrote the above comment, nobody would question if the real intention was farming for this or that, since it would make practically no difference for the account holder or the passing reader.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to suspect the account with hundreds of thousands of karma points to be the karma farmer?

No, because the top 99.99+ percentile of accounts will attract much greater scrutiny from the mods.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#243

Post by bbor »

LoganDark wrote: post #216
MrMetric wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You... what? You can't be serious. Simply putting "exercise and adhd" into Google® got me multiple studies which say that exercise helps, along with many other websites (some reputable and others possibly not) all saying essentially the same thing. You can easily find licensed physicians giving this same advice to their patients, and they observe that it works. And, off the top of my head, exercising elevates dopamin…

> And, off the top of my head, exercising elevates dopamine and some other neurotransmitters, which are well-known to be deficient in people with ADHD. As far as I know, stimulant medications for ADHD treatment act as a reuptake inhibitor for those neurotransmitters. The end result is still somewhat the same (levels become higher on stimulants, and it absolutely can help with ADHD), but I've never really seen it stat…

Great convo, love all the details on both sides! There's shockingly little long-term study of executive dysfunction because it's so new, so I understand your dubiousness. I never read that before about neurotransmitter reuptake, but it seems plausible -- it's really hard to say. My fave AD(H)D site (low bar...) quotes a doctor saying (in 2024);

  ADHD was the first disorder found to be the result of a deficiency of a specific neurotransmitter — in this case, norepinephrine — and the first disorder found to respond to medications to correct this underlying deficiency.
- https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-neuroscience-101/

But then a basic search on the actual lit paints a much murkier picture:

  We found no significant differences in NET availability or regional distribution between patients with ADHD and healthy controls in all investigated brain regions (F1,41
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4699255/

Which is a synechdoche of the broader dynamics around the disease IMO; lots of confident people with degrees saying stuff, often while trying to sell you services or medications, but the lit is still mostly vague. The only solid finding I know about ADHD is that it lowers life expectancy... TL;DR: I wouldn't personally be so confident it's about reuptake rather than production.

To give my hot science take, I think this is a somewhat inevitable result of our differential-diagnosis-based psychiatry system. ADHD is, objectively speaking, a set of symptoms. Common sense tells us that there's some common causes in the population, sure, but treating it as a causal condition rather than a opaque descriptor leads to a lot of confusion and heartache, IMHO. Such as;

  Sure, depression-induced anhedonia can result in executive dysfunction, but depression's not what ADHD is (even though ADHD can easily cause depression).
I don't have an issue with any of these specifics per-se, and I'm sure you're accurately describing your life (and mine, tbh!), but I don't believe this level of ontological separation is helpful in the longterm. Some people with depression and ADHD might have a completely different cause than people with one of either, or even than other people with both. This is why I like the 'software debugging' metaphor; it's easier to iteratively try improvements to an opaque system than it is to find the "true" cause or "real" solution. E.g.:

  So far I haven't seen evidence for myself that trying harder helps. Sometimes things happen (things like trauma) that manage to keep me motivated and functional for a while, but I haven't found a working strategy to manufacture this motivation at will yet.
You're not broken for being imperfect, you're just human - I would encourage you not to let this dissuade you from pushing yourself! I consider failure-to-motivate as a cognitive event in a system with a million inputs, not a subconscious choice you made because you're broken/sinful/lazy.

In those terms, I agree with your interlocutor; regular moderate exercise can really only help, in 99% of cases. It doesn't have to fix to help :)

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#244

Post by bbor »

simonw wrote: post #170
bbor wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough, well said! I'm fighting a philosophical battle that's somewhat orthogonal to publishing writing, so "it's a virtue" is already a win for me.

For any passers-by who might not realize, this kind young man is a recent (?) celebrity in the AI space for publishing quick, no-nonsense takes on the cutting edge of open-source LLMs. So he's got the receipts to back up this claim, lol

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#245

Post by hackable_sand »

lazide wrote: post #221
hshshshshsh wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the idea but I would also be skeptical of Buddhists acting like they have it all figured out.

For sure. Though at least monks nominally figured out the only winning move is not to play. Depending on your definition of ‘winning’ anyway. Depending on one’s perspective, it could be the ultimate loser religion, or the ultimate winner. Pretty clear why China loves to kick Nepal in the sensitive bits, either way.

I maintain that competition is a human construction.

Eat and be eaten, but accept both for what they are.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#246

Post by hackable_sand »

ChrisClark wrote: post #145
vasco wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you have this grandiose idea about yourself that you transcended ego and are beyond basic judging of others or of yourself and so on doesn't give you pause to say that maybe that's a bit naive and ego-centered? How can someone declare themselves done with this? It's like someone telling me they achieved a state of never having a bad thought again, I know they are lying.

The problem is that state cannot be expressed in words or cognition, because it isn't part of your mind. I cannot fully explain to you what it is like, I can only experience it myself. Until you have the same experience, you will continue to doubt it in the exact way you currently are. And that's perfectly fine, and natural and still good. It's like trying to describe a color in its actual raw experience, or describi…

This might be a useful metaphor for the future:

It is a canvas of a thousand brush strokes. Each time you look it becomes a new color.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#247

Post by smolder »

Aeolun wrote: post #126
hshshshshsh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like idea of only one religion getting it right. There are multiple paths to truth. Pretending only one religion has it is ignorance and lying and not truthful. And truth is what we should strive for. Irrespective of which society you were brought up in.

He didn’t say that had the answer, just the most complete one. Sorta makes sense when it’s the youngest religion I suppose? They wouldn’t make the same mistakes they made 600 or 4000 years previous.

The youngest religion is probably something silly like the people who say they are jedi from Star Wars. Though I'm of the opinion the old ones are mostly silly, too.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#248

Post by docmars »

When it comes to writing, one of the best decisions I've made is to just start typing what I think, and then go back and proofread it, make edits sentence-by-sentence, figure out if things could be worded better, and finally, trim some fat if whatever I end up with feels too lengthy.

It helps you learn your own thought patterns and understand whether your logic is sound or not.

And you're right, getting started is the name of the game. Someone brilliant once said: beating "procrastination" is really just imagining yourself starting the task, instead of being in the middle of it or finishing it.

Instead of picturing the document full of paragraphs after writing for several hours, what does it look like for you to sit down at your desk or couch to write? Do you need coffee first? What's a good motivator for getting started? Can you find a new trigger to motivate you, like a snack? Some people like to reward themselves after doing a task, which can help, but I find myself saying: "Ooh, I'm going to brew some coffee before I start" and that gets me excited to follow through with whatever I set out to do.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#249

Post by hshshshshsh »

junglegreen wrote: post #121
hshshshshsh wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I really enjoyed this post; thank you. "No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe." I am often amazed / in awe of the internet for leading me toward this place. My mind and equanimity opened much further as a result of the knowledge share that occurred over the last 20 years. Much less judgment, more curiosity. Paradoxically this has led me to revisit areas, like religion…

The best I have got so far is to just treat if it as another thought. Another appearance in awareness. I don't have an answer.

There is a line in Upanishads that say something like why even the god doesn't know why it was created.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#250

Post by docmars »

perlgeek wrote: post #233

I've been listening to a psychology podcast, and they label every "should"-statement as a cognitive distortion. > While I do read articles here and there, it’s far less than I should. Formulating it as a "should" abstracts away who wants it, and makes an artificially abstract norm out of it. But what is actually? It's probably just something that the author wants. Not doing something I want feels less bad than not do…

> Some "should"s are also what we think that others want us to do, often just assuming that without asking.

Yep, and to take it further, I'd argue this kind of thinking is a reflection of any shortcomings that you think others perceive in you. It's an inadequacy complex.

You think about others saying: "Bill doesn't read enough. He isn't intelligent enough. He isn't informed enough. He spends too much time doing other things..." -- says who? Sometimes this can come from loved ones or colleagues priding themselves in their own hobbies or activities. Other times it can come from past criticism you've received from friends or family.

There is so much freedom in doing something for yourself (because you know it's right) versus pleasing others, when it doesn't really benefit others.

As an example, I don't cave to the pressures of working out because I know I'd only be doing it to impress others. I'm at a healthy weight, but I play recreational sports instead to get my exercise, because I enjoy doing it. I also benefit from socializing with others and being outside doing something competitive.

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