Month: June 2020

I found a new hobby,

And like all hobbies, it takes time. A lot of time. I’m spending about an hour a day on it. Where does this time come from? Is my hobby extending a day to twenty five hours? No it isn’t. Although if this is your hobby, please give me some tips on how to get started. The time for this hobby comes from somewhere. It comes from all of the things that I was already doing.

The hardest hit? My existing hobbies. I used to spend an hour a day on those. Now it’s down to thirty minutes. But that still leaves thirty minutes. Where does that come from? Some of it comes out of cleaning. I spend about five minutes less cleaning my apartment each day. Turns out, I can just clean faster when properly motivated. I’m also spending less time on administrative tasks (checking email, etc). It turns out that I can drop five minutes from that too. But the rest, those twenty minutes, that comes out of time I used to spend working towards my long term goals.

And that hurts.

Because my goals are important to me. In many ways, they help me define the person who I want to be. And they are my map to help me go from where I am now, to who I want to be. Slowing down on that makes me feel further away from my ideal self. I don’t measure this in distance, but in time. And working on it less will mean that it takes me longer to get there, even if the distance hasn’t changed. And that’s not something I’m sure about.

I want to be someone who lives intentionally. Someone who works on important and meaningful things. And my hobby is neither. So at times this feels like a wrong turn mixed with a flat tire.

But I picked up my hobby for a reason,

Because it excites me. I look forward to my hobby in a way that I simply do not for my goals. Those tasks are fulfilling, but I’m not sure if I’m actually making progress. And when I do make progress, it can take weeks for that to become clear. With my hobby, I can see the progress I’m making immediately.

Because it gives me room for failure. My goals are difficult and intense, just like my hobby. But with my hobby, I don’t feel pressure to succeed. I can experiment, learn from my mistakes, and then shrug off any consequences. Because my ego is the only thing that gets hurt.

Because I enjoy it. Sometimes on the long, dusty path towards my goals, life can get dull. I do the things that I should, follow each step written by past me (that guy’s a drill sergeant). And I start to question life. Is this all there is? Is this what I want my life to look like? Am I even enjoying this? Often the answer surprises me. There is joy in most things if you look hard enough. And yet, sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes I want more.

And now I’d like to use these lessons for my goals.

Seeing myself push aside or drop tasks has inspired me. If I can do this for my hobby, why don’t I do this for my goals? I can reject or compress unimportant commitments so I have more time for my most important tasks.

After having tasted the freedom to experiment in my hobby, I’ve acquired a new appreciation for the willingness to fail. Now I want to bring that to every other area of my life. I fail, and that stings. But thanks to trying new things, I’ve improved a great deal in a short period of time. Looking back, those failures seem worthwhile. And I want to bring this to other areas of my life.

I want to monitor my progress towards my goals more frequently. Having seen how much reinforcement this provides for my hobby, I’d like to borrow some of this for my goals.

And most importantly, I need to spend more time looking for joy in everything that I do. I don’t need to enjoy everything, but I should appreciate the parts that I do enjoy in everything.

But what about you?

Have you taken up any new hobbies? What have you learned about yourself because of them?

Falling Behind Requires Expectations

Falling behind requires you to have an idea of where you want to be. Sometimes we set this consciously, like when you set a goal, or unconsciously, like when you see someone driving a nicer car. An expectation tends to be a visible sign of progress. And it hurts to see yourself come up short on it.

Pain and frustration

Seeing yourself come up short is a heavy burden on your ego, and it’s hard to accept responsibility for an outcome that you don’t like. All too often, we blame circumstances for our failings. I didn’t get much work done today. But that was because I had too many meetings. It’s tempting because it’s easy. Because accepting that our actions lead to this means that you have to change. Or else you’ll get the same outcome again, and that is unacceptable.

Blaming others

The world does not conspire against you. Most of the people surrounding you are focused on their own world and give your goals little consideration. How much thought have you given to dreams of those around you? Chances are about the closest two or three people, and do so no more often than once a week. Other people are similar to you. They have their own dreams and that’s where their focus lies.

But the world sometimes gets in the way. While other people are climbing their own mountains, sometimes they’ll cut you off. Or someone drops a task in your lap. This is normal. If you expect never to be interrupted once you set a goal, you are in for a lifetime of disappointment.

You have control over your actions. They are the levers you use to affect the world. So whatever change you want, must start through them. Changing your own behavior is difficult, challenging, and time consuming. Using your behavior to change someone else’s is more so. It’s like going from using a pair of chopsticks, to using two pairs of chopsticks to pick up a third. Not impossible, but much more difficult. If you can do that, you can generally just respond to whatever troubles the other person’s behavior causes you. And that tends to be much less effort.

Giving Up

Once you’ve accepted blame, it hurts. First you must accept the pain of getting the wrong outcome. Secondly, you accept that you could have prevented this if you acted differently. That you are the author of your own misery. This makes us want to withdraw. To distance ourselves from it. Because there is another step. You need to hold onto your expectation even though it’s causing you pain.

We tend to push away anything that causes us pain. That includes expectations. Any time we fail, we’ll degrade or devalue our aspirations.

Sometimes your expectations are not worth holding onto. It takes work to reach them and holding onto them without reaching them will cause you suffering. All too often, you’ll realize that you have been grasping at nothing. Don’t strive towards goals worth having. Strive towards goals worth pursuing. That’s a much higher bar, and one you should hold yourself to. Sometimes you’ll realize this after you’ve worked on something for a while. If so, then you should drop it. But don’t do so lightly. Understand why you chose this in the first place.

Holding onto an expectation means striving towards it. Because no one will continue to let their ego suffer under constant recrimination. 

What about you?

I’ve been trying to spend more time working on my long term goals. But this week I’ve fallen behind where I wanted to be. I’ve reviewed what I wanted when setting this expectation, and I’ve decided that it’s worth holding onto.

What expectations are you holding onto that you aren’t meeting?

I want many things. I want to do some things. Or have some things. Some large. Some small. And some that I’m not willing to work for. I call these baseless desires. These desires  lack concrete action, which is the foundation of any solidly built desire.

This is a crazy mix of greed and folly. If I’m not willing to work for something, I’m telling myself one of the following: it’s less important than everything else I’m working on; or I’ve researched it, and it’s infeasible. So this means I’m keeping unimportant, or unrealistic goals.

Why is that a problem?

Ok, I have some crazy dreams, so what? Desires are emotional energy. Wanting is not passive. It’s an action. To want something, you need to run it through my mind regularly. It’s a distraction.

I’m trying to align my actions with my beliefs. If my actions say something is not important, but my beliefs say it is. Well that’s cognitive dissonance. And that is incredibly draining. The next time you do one thing, but keep telling yourself that you should do something else, watch your energy levels. Or your focus.

Beware impossible dreams.

If someone has done what you want, it’s not impossible by definition. Don’t let go, until you speak with someone who has done this already.

It’s easy to confuse the intimidating with the impossible. Layout what steps you can take to make any kind of progress. Sit and look at the list. Does your chest tighten like you’ve been plunged into a pool of icy water? Are you sweating? If so, you are afraid.

And that is the first problem you must solve. Tackle these tasks one at a time. Don’t quit until you can look at the list calmly. Until you can look at the list and know that you are stronger than when you started.

But only work on goals that are worth working on.

Make no mistake. Goals take work. If you could flip a switch to get this, you would have done that already. Expect progress to be slow. And hard. And frustrating.

Because it will be. Not always, but pretty close.

What about you?

Which of your goals are you willing to work for? What have you done for them? Which are you unwilling to work for? Why are you keeping them?

Paying Interest on Misery

Why do we procrastinate?

Procrastination is an emotion coping mechanism for painful or unpleasant tasks. When we procrastinate, we avoid work that we feel we should be doing to protect ourselves. This is done to protect our ego when we think we’ll be judged harshly for our efforts on a task (by ourself or others). Or it can be done to delay working on a task that is intrinsically aversive. I’m looking at you filing taxes.

Lately, I’ve started doing this quite a bit at work. I felt like I would definitely fail. And that made it very difficult to do my best work (or put forth any amount of effort really). So, as an experienced procrastinated, I’ll give you my take on it.

The Immediate Payoff

Procrastination gives you an immediate payoff. Expense reports? Ha! Not today. And you would think that would make you feel good. Only it doesn’t. Whenever I pushed off work for an easier task, I didn’t relax. I spent all of my energy worrying about that no good, very horrible thing that I was actively avoiding. I felt guilty about dodging that task and sticking it on poor old future me.

I was building a habit. Whenever I thought about that task, then I immediately panicked and found shelter on YouTube or Reddit. Every time I reacted out of fear, I was telling myself to be afraid. That there was something worth fearing. And that running away was the sensible thing to do. Distractions became my panic room from life.

Finally Starting

After largely cowering from my chosen task for weeks, I finally mustered up the courage to start on it. I had been nibbling around the edges, but that more to assuage my guilt than to actually complete that work. And you know what? It didn’t feel all that bad. The terror that I’d created was a paper tiger.

The task was not pleasant to be sure. But it was not so terrible that it justified my fears. I had spent weeks suffering to avoid this? I felt like an idiot. Instead of just working on this, I had paid interest on my misery. For weeks! And not bank account interest either. That was credit card interest.

Never Again

So now that I properly understand how awful procrastination is, I’ll avoid it right? I mean why would I ever put myself through that again? Only I did. Ulg!

Fortunately I have another solution. Throw books at it. Drown it in knowledge. Here’s what I found.

I’ve also started to question my negative thoughts. Those were the source of this after all. Instead of just accepting that ‘everyone will think I’m a failure,’ if I don’t do something, I’ve started to challenge those thoughts. Who is everyone? Is this task important enough for them to judge me entirely by my results in this one area? How well am I actually doing on this?

Understanding that procrastination causes you pain is incredibly helpful. Instead of feeling tempted to put off tasks, I feel cautious. I look at every delay to my goals sideways.

I’ve thought about what tasks I tend to procrastinate on, and when I’m most prone to this. Then I made decisions about how I want myself to act in these situations. Having a script helps me follow through on my actions (because I know I will not feel like it in the moment).

I’ve upgraded my environment to support the pursuit of my goals. Mostly that means removing distractions and clutter. Any attention magnets (like my phone) are banished (to the next room).

What about you?

This change has been pretty dramatic for me. Partly that was because I was coming from a bad place. But what about you? What do you procrastinate on? How do you feel about it? What have you done about it?