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Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#71

Post by jb_s »

zackmorris wrote: post #40

I had an unusual experience this weekend while I was sick. After laying around for 2 days with brain fog, I woke up early Sunday morning and watched TV, checked social media, etc, but was sick of consuming information and had the strangest feeling that I wanted to work on something productive but my body aches wouldn't let me concentrate. I also felt like.. playing video games? I haven't had the urge to play video ga…

I have ADHD. Being bored is simply.. not something that happens naturally. I have a zillion unfinished things, too many hobbies, too many games, too much work that I was supposed finish yesterday. My brain gets filled with all of this junk every day. As the day passes my thoughts progressively get more and more cluttered and noisy, like I've got every radio station on at the same time. I also get really anxious if I've blown past a few too many deadlines, which compounds the issue immensely.

The only way to fix it... is to make myself bored. To FORCE myself to be bored. I sit on the ground with my legs crossed, close my eyes, and slowly count down from 60, 120, 180.. while shoving all the other thoughts out of my brain. It's like meditation, but meditation apps are a bit too interesting. I get distracted over how utterly weird they are.

Eventually, interspersed with all the intrusive thoughts and stressful shit ricocheting around, I start feeling a few brief twinges of boredom. If I'm really worked up it might take 10-15 minutes for these to take hold, finalling boring myself into calmness - at which point my shitty brain has stopped spazzing out and I can go back to getting shit done.

If you're neurotypical you can probably just put the phone away and go for a fucking walk. It will let your default mode network do its usual thing for a while, like it's designed to.

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#72

Post by maroonblazer »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #70
zackmorris wrote: post #40

I had an unusual experience this weekend while I was sick. After laying around for 2 days with brain fog, I woke up early Sunday morning and watched TV, checked social media, etc, but was sick of consuming information and had the strangest feeling that I wanted to work on something productive but my body aches wouldn't let me concentrate. I also felt like.. playing video games? I haven't had the urge to play video ga…

Everybody always raves about meditation and although it makes me feel nice for a short while after, i always struggle to get anything like this out of it...

I rave about meditation, not because it makes me feel nice but because it's an antidote to the psychologically toxic and maladaptive thoughts that pop, unbidden, into my consciousness.

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#74

Post by [deleted] »

zackmorris wrote: post #40

I had an unusual experience this weekend while I was sick. After laying around for 2 days with brain fog, I woke up early Sunday morning and watched TV, checked social media, etc, but was sick of consuming information and had the strangest feeling that I wanted to work on something productive but my body aches wouldn't let me concentrate. I also felt like.. playing video games? I haven't had the urge to play video ga…

[deleted]

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#75

Post by mod »

dageshi wrote: post #27
_benj wrote: post #2

I loved the article! Over the years and after burning out I’ve learned observe my state of mind, but mostly for the distracted mode, and when I finding in it I’ll just stop whatever focus work I’m doing because very few good things come out during that mental mode, and a ton of frustration is built. The part that I haven’t been able to accomplish is a good use of the low filter mode. For me in this mode I have little…

Is there a definition of "low filter" mode? I don't think I've heard of it before.

It's part of the article this comment section is discussing.

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#77

Post by TameAntelope »

DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: post #55

I enjoyed the article, but I disagree. Back in the day, the Getting Things Done book said to organise tasks by energy level. That does make things easier; however, easy to procrastinate by saying I'll do it later when I have energy. I have taken to the more disciplined, priortized approach pushed by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger/Jocko Willink/David Goggins... the items that are a priorty or important get done fi…

> Even if you're not feeling it, go through the motions

How? This is the whole problem; for many folks, this isn't helpful advice because the whole problem is that it's hard to do things if you're not "feeling" it.

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#78

Post by vemv »

As of lately I've found a useful insight in the opposite direction: getting 'in the zone' is never instantaneous. Just like many other activities (e.g. social, or sport), you can't go from 0 to 100 just like that.

And that transition period sucks. Your brain was over-stimulated and now has to focus. It's crying like a child who's been deprived of his favorite toy.

It sucks and there's no way around it. But: being aware of it is liberating! If you remain aware that starting work is painful, you won't be waiting for a later moment where it will magically become more enjoyable.

Best of all, the hard first few minutes are just that, a few minutes. Maybe 10, which again are painful, because one is under-performing and mentally dispersed. If you are aware of the transient nature of this state, it will be less frustrating.

Embrace the suck.

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#79

Post by syntheweave »

zackmorris wrote: post #40

I had an unusual experience this weekend while I was sick. After laying around for 2 days with brain fog, I woke up early Sunday morning and watched TV, checked social media, etc, but was sick of consuming information and had the strangest feeling that I wanted to work on something productive but my body aches wouldn't let me concentrate. I also felt like.. playing video games? I haven't had the urge to play video ga…

I find the examples of rest periods abound when you go looking.

Strength training, for example, is now known to need periodization to stop the overtrain-and-crash cycle, but periodizing well means letting go of days where you feel great and could do a million reps because you need to accommodate longer term fatigue.

Renowned artists often engage in regular periods of "automatic drawing" (scribbling on the page without imagining or observing a specific image) as a way of giving their minds a break from structured practice, allowing raw imagination and muscle memory to present itself.

Something astonishingly common in the diaries of creative people is lengthy days-to-weeks periods of total inactivity, bookended by maniac phases of high output. Often the inactivity phase consists of hyperfocus on something a bit trivial like playing billiards or visiting the movie theater five nights in a row.

Re: Effortless personal productivity (or how I learned to love my monkey mind)

#80

Post by Scarblac »

The problem, for me, is to become aware that I'm procrastinating. Once I realise that, I can apply the kind of thinking as in the article, but sometimes hours of stupid Internet clicking have gone by by then.

I find note taking on paper helps with that, if only because it's something I can make part of my routine without it being on a computer.

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