41–50 of 57 posts
We've lost our ability to just "be". We must always "do". A sad state of affairs.
I hate that in our modern world, we are obsessed with being "productive". Why is this important? Why do we punish ourselves for being "unproductive"? Maybe we should try and spend as much of our time in things that are unproductive or unquantifiable as possible. Is having a relaxing afternoon the beach "productive"? We've lost our ability to just "be". We must always "do". A sad state of affairs.
Things are uncertain(were they ever certain?), every day there is another armageddon prophecy screaming at you from social media and newspapers.
So one can try to hedge, squeeze more out of oneself to make sure he did all he could.
I have a few tricks for handling procrastination that are in this ballpark: 1. When I see myself wanting to procrastinate, I ask myself 'If I follow this feeling, will it increase my power (i.e. capacity/agency/utility) or decrease it?'. Then I have a dialogue with myself: Nope, let's refocus, maybe try reading things out loud or draw a diagram or some other perspective change OR Yeah, I should stop for now, do somet…
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For some tasks I have, I need to live this way. Obsessing over a task next week takes away from what I’m doing now. I have to trust in my ability to pull it together efficiently. And when it’s due, the work often needs to be fresh in my mind - not something from weeks ago.
Sometimes that means unexpected late nights. But it’s mostly worked out.
If you're in an impulsive mode, that's what causes procrastination. Being impulsive will obviously lead to novelty seeking.
Here's how I model the action loop (image at the top): https://wisedayplanner.com/blog/action-loop-impulsive-vs-eff...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, please share it!
https://gist.github.com/ouatu-ro/5ca4abca26bd65630de3d4768fe...
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Great article, especially appreciated the graphs. The idea of "keep adding novelty" is probably what separated my successful long term projects from the unsuccessful ones. I previously attributed that to having lots of variety and freedom, but the consequence of those factors was indeed novelty. I want to mention Neil Fiore's excellent book The Now Habit, which is a practical manual on overcoming procrastination. The…
I looked into The Now Habit, and added it to my reading list. Great addition, thanks! Trying to rephrase 'I have to' to 'I choose to' is already something I try, but in the end, this only lands when you've genuinely internalised it - if you don't truly believe you're choosing it, it doesn't really work (at least for me). As you say, it's a delusion.
Essentially it's affect labelling in disguise, as mentioned in the article.
I hate that in our modern world, we are obsessed with being "productive". Why is this important? Why do we punish ourselves for being "unproductive"? Maybe we should try and spend as much of our time in things that are unproductive or unquantifiable as possible. Is having a relaxing afternoon the beach "productive"? We've lost our ability to just "be". We must always "do". A sad state of affairs.
I'm not obsessed with being productive at all, it's just something that has been on my mind - and I'm interested in the psychology of it. Many of my days are filled with non-productive activities which I thoroughly enjoy. I just don't write about it on my profession-related blog. So I guess it's all about the context.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s meant to be a fun reference to Figma, since it’s my design portfolio. I gather you’re not a fan. Noted!
We mostly use figma for brainstorming and RICE-scoring, which can be hard work. Hence my lukewarm reaction. My other reaction was "cool, how’d he do that".