Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

swapnilchauhan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 284 posts

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#91

Post by mangomountain »

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…

This is spot on for the audiobook I’m listening to “Mindset: The Psychology of Success” , it’s resistance to effort that preserves belief in effortless ability and prevents any real progress

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#92

Post by hshshshshsh »

calstad wrote: post #89
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…

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 every moment is intense. Sunsets are absolutely beautiful that you cannot describe through words. Spending time in nature is surreal. You do the right thing instead of doing things to validate your narrative. The dopamine hit I used to get when I used to do certain things is gone( i use to confuse these dopamine hits as me doing something right). This unlocks doing things more from Intuition and less from memory. There is less fear. There is more flow. More creativity. No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe.

That said it's not all great stuff. You also have to work through some existential questions which you were previously isolated by the ego. Like mortality. Impermanence of everything. Aging body. What happens after death. Nature of awareness. Why I am aware. Is awareness eternal and it's implications etc etc.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#93

Post by Etheryte »

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…

Happy to hear that worked out for you, that sounds like a great place to be. What facilitated the change though, or how did that happen? Was there a catalyst?

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#94

Post by hinkley »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #60
hinkley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a pretty pickle when you’re trying to hire devs. A candidate with a large GitHub repo may actually not be the team player you’re looking for.

>a large GitHub repo I feel like in SW, impact and quality should be a lot more valuable than quantity of repos/apps you write. A few lines of code that fix a Gnome/KDE/$BIG_FOSS_PROJECT bug would be a lot more valuable in my book, than say another one in the millionth pile of JS note taking apps, or a repo full of "Baby's first Rust app"

I spent 1-3 hours every other Friday for six months writing a three line monkey patch to fix a (lack of) clipping bug in a drag and drop library that wasn't taking PRs because they were going to rewrite everything (and were 18 months into a 1 year rewrite and only half done).

I'm not going to name names but it rhymes with jQuery UI.

The best I could do was attach a code snipped to a bug report. I've gone back and forth about whether that should count as participation but for that case it's the most calendar time I've ever put into a line of code and you're goddamned right I want to count it.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#95

Post by ajmurmann »

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…

I've been heavily dealing with the existential questions you are referencing but it only gets worse. What helped you in resolving those issues or come to terms with them?

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#96

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

DilutedMetrics wrote: post #50
dexwiz wrote: post #42

I really think we do a number on kids expecting a 100%, perfection, as a goal. And then only give them one chance to achieve it, but ask them to do it day after day for years. It creates some really unhealthy coping mechanism.

It really warped my perspective when I moved out of the USA to Europe as an adult and found out that's not how school works elsewhere in the world. Still coping with it lol.

Could you elaborate? I always found the "grading on a curve" a distinctly American approach that leads to grade inflation and an overall lower academic level. Now, granted, the US provides very unique opportunities for students that want to go above and beyond, but that's another story.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#97

Post by Jerrrrrrry »

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…

I am suffering from this.

Every word you wrote stabbed me in my past, which means dissonance, somewhere.

Subconscious self-sabotage to rip the proverbial band-aid off, induced manic/delirium from a small infection, rumination/paranoia, catatonia.

Took less consciousness away from my delaying of problems. My ego didn't handle it, the manic iD, did.

I had successfully ran away from all my problems, failing upwards just enough to irk out a cowardly existence.

If Moses had an antibiotic, or had flossed more, the 4(0?) days of desert-delirium may not had been so fearlessly familiar.

after day 4-5 of catatonic rumination and paralyzing anxiety: I cried aloud, "just give me an ounce of strength"; that let me ruminate as to why:

I was asking for help: I am not allowed to. why not? skip that token, backprop later.

Why an ounce? and why of strength? and why am I asking aloud? and who am I asking?

...

Why an ounce? Why not a ratio of my body mass? Why not an arbitrary....because I have 0.

Zero what? Strength?

Why am I asking for strength? Because I am a coward.

and Occam's Razor clicked, all my problems stemmed from cowardice.

I awoke to find myself identifying with "depersonalization" for once, which was embarrassing. But embarrassing/cringe is dissonance, so my ego deconstruction began.

Morality is cowardice in disguise. 

  Or figure out a situation where OP has to ship things no matter what. Which is hard unless you are jobless and can't figure a way out apart from building useful things that people pay for.
Not out of the woods yet, but at least I know I am in a familiar forest.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#99

Post by hshshshshsh »

Etheryte wrote: post #93
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…

Happy to hear that worked out for you, that sounds like a great place to be. What facilitated the change though, or how did that happen? Was there a catalyst?

Sorry. I can't write it down because I think what I did was reckless and stupid and I don't want to give any ideas in a high visible thread like this.

For a lot of people this is triggered by something unexpected happening in life which breaks the narrative one has been building their entire life.

You can search for Spiritual Awakening and find a lot of examples. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a great podcast to listen to for such experiences.

As I sad it's not all great all the times. There were a lot of times in which I wished I could go back to the old mode. Though I think the overall change was for the better.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#100

Post by almatabata »

bluecoconut wrote: post #5

Worrying what others think resonates with me a lot. Every few weeks I try to motivate myself to write more online (HN, X, blogs) and consistently get “self sabotage” stuck. (Been going on for >2 years) The article just says they pushed through and “put it aside”, but that has never seemed to quite work for me. I can push through once or twice, not enough to build a daily habit/obsession like I want. Anyone have any t…

One thing that helped me was accepting that it is not that I might fail but that I will fail initially.

I will produce bad articles because to become good you have to start with your current skill level which probably sucks if you are average. To become good you have to write. Nothing beats actually doing it. But knowing that everyone published something stupid at some point helps me accept that I will also go through that process as well. Everyone failed, everyone will fail and it is fine to fail.

And no matter how good you become you will still fail from time to time. You never graduate from it. Look at the famous movie directors, writers and journalists. Are all their works great? Is each of their work always better than the previous ones? Of course not. Some works will be amazing and insightful, some might be mediocre. Even the very best will have their ups and downs, so why not you?

Each time I publish a post I already accept it might be subpar.

Post reply on HN