Month: August 2020

What does a day need to become a good day? I asked myself this recently. Only I didn’t have a clear answer. Instead of knowing the type of things that I should pursue, I’ve just been floundering in the general direction of my goals. Without a clear understanding of what I need to do to have a good day, I haven’t been able to prioritize those things.

Kittens and Alligators

So I started looking at the last few good days that I had. What exactly did I do that made them good? I felt in control of myself, and I made progress towards my goals. What did I do on all of these days? I exercised, and ate healthy food. I worked towards my goals in the morning and during the evening.

But was that enough? Were there any days where I did these things (or at least started doing them) but didn’t have a good day? Yes, there were many. I could start out well, but turn my good day into a bad one in a lot of different ways. A frustrating meeting would work. Or a steady stream of interruptions. Or avoiding an important task with less important ones.

That reminded me of an article I read a while ago. The basic idea is that life has alligators (things that make you miserable), and kittens (things that bring you joy). If you have both you’ll always focus on the alligators, so you should try to get rid of those first.

What are my alligators?

This insight changed my question a bit. What actions could I take that would inevitably lead to a bad day? I took out a sheet of paper and wrote down all of the ways I had made myself miserable recently. For some items, I didn’t write down a specific action (e.g. poor diet). In those cases, I listed the specific actions I most often took to cause that result (overeating junk food, over snacking). Then I condensed them into two major themes: personal hygiene (sleep, exercise, diet), and acting intentionally (confronting problems instead of avoiding them, focusing on my goals).

And my kittens?

I now have a list of ways that I can use to ruin my days. Or more accurately, a list of things to avoid doing in order to have a good day. So I rewrote their opposites as specific actions. So ‘overeating junk food’ became ‘purchasing small portions of junk food,’ and ‘avoiding important tasks’ became ‘start on your most important tasks.’

What about you?

What things cause you to have a bad day most often? What specific action can you take to make sure that this does not sink your days?

Desire is the most common emotion in most people. It’s about longing for things that we do not have. We all want things. Some of these things are fairly common: money, prestige, emotional connection. But some things that we want vary wildly from person to person.

Desire does not spring from the ether fully formed. It starts with a little bit of interest. Maybe curiosity. Or the need to be accepted. Or maybe the warm glow of praise. Once desire has been sparked, it’s merely a passing interest. It needs to grow before it can develop into a desire.

How does it grow?

The things we want are the things we glorify. Spend each day singing the praises of an unreleased video game, and you’ll grow to want it. Alternatively, if you criticize the alternatives, that will have the same effect. Complain about your job constantly, and you’ll want to find a different one. Consider a few of the things you want desperately. How often do you praise them in your mind? Or bemoan the alternatives? Consistently, and intentionally treat something in this way, and you’ll develop your desire.

But desires are not just emotions.

They are beliefs about how you will respond to different circumstances. You want a new car? Then you must believe that a new car will do something for you or change your life in some important way. And this is always something very specific. Maybe that a new car will help you fit it, or give you the freedom to travel to new places. You want a new job? Then you believe that your current job is making you miserable. These beliefs are the foundation of your desires, for without an underlying belief, your desires would collapse.

And sometimes, we hold onto a belief that simply is not true. Despite our desperate wishes, or our striving, obtaining what we desire often does not make us happy. What beliefs fuel your most tightly held desires? Have you ever stopped to identify them? To question them? Have you tried them out in some way, or are you assuming that they’ll work out?

My Desires

Retirement: I’ve spent a lot of time learning about investing in the past few years (specifically asset allocation). The early retirement community has been a great resource for financial education. It also constantly praises the freedom of retiring, and the constraints of work. Combine that with my exceedingly stressful last job, and retiring early transformed into one of my desires.

But I’m not working in that last job anymore. My current one is much less stressful, and much more engaging. And although I value the freedom of having fewer time constraints, the main reason I want to have more time is so that I can work on self development more. I don’t spend as much time on that as I’d like right now, but retiring wouldn’t necessarily fix that. Self development is hard work, and I often slip into entertainment instead. That’s something that I could work on now, and I worry that my focus on retirement is a way to avoid that.

Self Development: I’ve taken up learning and self improvement as one of my core aspirations. More than that I have a system, and I’m currently working on it. My main goal with this is to become more intentional, to spend more of my time pursuing my long term goals. This rests on the belief that much of my unhappiness comes from making poor choices (often due to not paying attention). And that much of my joy comes from working on hard things where I have a good reason to do so. When I look back over the past days, weeks, and even years of my life, I’d say both of these beliefs ring true.

This week, I came down with a case of busyness. I had too much to do and not enough time to do it. Life was coming at me faster than I wanted it to. Faster than I could handle it. I was barraged with new tasks. Under that fire I started to wither. I’d start working on something, but I wouldn’t set down my other concerns. I’d worry about all of the other tasks that I was responsible for. And what about the new tasks that were bound to come up? How long would it take me to complete all of them? Who was waiting on that? How long could I keep them waiting?

What does it mean to be busy?

Busyness is feeling like you cannot complete all of the tasks you’ve accepted responsibility for to the level of excellence that you expect of yourself. It’s your mind’s early warning system saying “you’ve set yourself up for failure.” And it’s worth listening to. Because you kind of have to. If you try to ignore it, all of your existing worries spring up whenever you try to focus on a problem. And that will crush your focus, which in turn will crush your productivity. When you feel busy, you won’t be able to work at your normal levels of productivity, which ensures you’ll fall behind your expectations.

What I want to do when I feel busy

Work faster. That’s my favorite busyness solution. Focus more. Spend more time. Or more effort. Those are some of my other preferred options. Only they don’t work. It’s hard to focus on something when you know that you are going to fail at it. Why work at all when it won’t change the outcome? It’s hard to justify the effort. Even when I understand that not all failures are the same, and that the quality of the failure matters.

What I really should do instead

So, instead of trying to fail well, try to succeed poorly. This, more than anything else, is a matter of perspective. Take the time to step back. Lay out your tasks, and adjust your expectations. This will be difficult because you won’t feel like you have enough time to work through your tasks, much less the time to review them. But it’s worthwhile. Because your emotions are the first and most important tool for productivity. And your emotions are the first and most serious obstacle for productivity.

How long will it actually take you to finish all of these things? How soon do they need to be accomplished? Sometimes your feelings don’t give you an accurate picture of reality. It could be possible to complete all of them because they aren’t as long or complex as you feared. Or maybe one of them doesn’t need to be completed as quickly as you thought it did.

Or maybe things are as bad as you thought. You’ve been trying to fix a month of work into a week of work. And that is not possible. So instead of trying to do that, determine which tasks are most important and strive to complete them. Push off tasks to other people, or delay them proactively. Instead of waiting for you to be late, say ahead of time that you need to focus on other priorities. If anyone pushes back, you’ve got your list of other priorities. And they might be able to help you get additional resources, or help you rearrange tasks into a better sequence.

But you should try to accomplish more than you think you can

If you only try to do things you know you can, then you’ll never grow. So instead of trying to fit a month of work into a week, try to squeeze in a week and an extra day. Or maybe an extra quarter. It should be possible if you work intentionally and with effort. But it should also scare you a little. You should feel like you need to push yourself to succeed.

Yesterday, my motivation took a vacation. Sadly, the rest of me did not. My actions felt pointless. My experience felt pointless. And I felt lifeless. Why did life feel so bland?

And how did I respond?

As you might imagine, I did not like feeling this way. So I engaged in some emotional first aid. The treatment of choice? Entertainment, specifically reading stories. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I kept skipping around between stories, and felt guilty over being unproductive. The entire day was a struggle. I struggled to focus on work. And I struggled to enjoy my breaks.

I ended the day feeling guilty and frustrated because I was unproductive, and tired. But why did I feel tired? I hadn’t done much of anything. Oh but I had, I wrestled with my emotions all day. Instead of struggling with the problems that I was supposed to be solving, I struggled with myself.

It was my consciousness vs my emotions. And my consciousness was severely outmatched. I knew what I had to do, so my consciousness laid out clear steps. But my emotions said, ‘Nah, don’t feel like it.’ So my consciousness offered a break, which was readily accepted, and then it asked again. But it kept getting the same response. And it got frustrated. There was no pleasing those silly emotions. They wanted everything, but weren’t happy when they got it. Just ignore them. Only that strategy didn’t work either.

How should I handle this?

I should have taken lots of breaks. No, not entertainment ones. Those simply distract from my emotions. I have taken restful breaks that allowed my mind to clear. The kind that allowed me to see the thoughts and feelings swirling around my skull.

I needed to speak to my emotions instead of ordering them. Instead of saying, I should do this so I complete my project by the date I said I was going to (or at least set myself up for success on that task), I should have said do this and you’ll feel like you accomplished something. You’ll feel focused and determined. And you enjoy feeling that way don’t you? I spent the morning trying to logic my emotions into line. I should have spent that time identifying and reconnecting with my motivation.

Most of our feelings are not caused directly by sensations, but by the emotional conclusions we hold. Emotions have a logic of their own. And it pays to tease it apart in order to identify the assumptions that your feelings rest on. I felt like work was pointless. Why was that? Because I didn’t enjoy it or benefit from it. This particular task was rather dull or easy, so I’ll grant the first premise. But I definitely am benefitting from work (I’m getting paid if nothing else). So what benefit am I missing? I’m not growing from this. It’s too easy, so I’m not developing my skills. But what about focus? Isn’t that a skill that you care about developing. And it was. And just like that, I felt better about it.

What about you?

Have you felt dull and lifeless recently? How did you handle it?