Author: Imperfectly Practical

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?

Yesterday was a bit of a slog. I had to do some work that was easy, and repetitive. In other words, it was boring. I found my mind slipping away from my task. My body followed a while later. I took longer breaks for walks, for lunch, during exercising until I hollowed out my workday. I tried to evade work. And I largely succeeded. Only I didn’t find happiness. Every time I slipped away from work I felt guilty. When I worked I thought about reading stories or video games, and when I read stories or played video games I thought about work. My emotions bounced between boredom and frustrating (while working) to guilt and worry (while playing).

Playing and Working were largely the same.

I never engaged with what I was actually doing. Instead I focused on myself, and what I was feeling. And I kept telling myself that doing something else would make me feel better. If I played, then I wouldn’t feel bored. But if I worked, then I wouldn’t feel guilty. Only, neither worked. I felt unsatisfied with both of them. And that frustration built up until I switched tasks. And then I repeated the process.

There was joy to be found in either activity. I could gain a deep sense of fulfillment from working on hard problems. Or even easy ones. Instead of worrying about how easy the problem was, I could have seen it as a chance to improve my focus. To become a more intentional person. And with reading stories, I just need to engage with them. To let myself connect with the characters as they explore their worlds and best their problems. But I didn’t. Instead I hurried through each page, because I know I should be doing something else.

Today, I’m going to look for happiness where I am.

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy asking the wrong questions: What do I need to do to be happy? What do I need to have to be happy? How can I change my circumstances to be happy? But none of these questions lead to happiness, because they put your focus on what you don’t have. They assume that you aren’t happy with what you have right now. More than that, they assume that you cannot be happy with what you have right now.

Instead of grasping for happiness somewhere else or somewhen else, I’m going to accept all of the happiness my circumstances have to offer right here and right now. I’m going to start asking myself better questions: What do I most enjoy about what I’m doing right now? What is my favorite part of my life? What parts of my circumstances bring me the most joy?

But, I’m afraid of happiness.

Because I worry that it will lead to complacency. And that I will no longer strive to improve myself. But looking back on the past few weeks, I’ve made more progress towards my goals when I was happy, than when I was not. Focus led to happiness, and happiness led to being focused. When I was unhappy, I pinballed between new activities. This didn’t get anything done, and often left my feeling just as bad.

To allow myself to look for happiness, I need to remember that happiness does not mean complacency. Happiness in gratitude for your current actions and circumstances. Complacency is a kind of quiet despair. You can’t change your circumstances, or maybe you can, but it’s not worth the cost. But that’s ok because they are ok, or at least endurable.

To be happy, I do not need to stop striving to become kinder, or more focused, or more capable.

What about you?

Where do you look for happiness? Are there any emotions that you are afraid of feeling?

Today, life is about speed. Doing something faster is better than doing it slowly. Because of course it is. Because that means that you’ll have more time for other things. And you’ll have more time to work on doing those other things faster. So you can fit more things into your life. Because of course you want more things in your life.

That is something that I struggle with too. But more than cramming more stuff into my life, I want to fill my life with important things. And the first, and most critical place to start, is my mind. More specifically, it’s with my thoughts.

What does it mean to think slowly?

We have learned that thinking quickly means being more intelligent. And that is true. But, it also largely misses the point. How long did it take JK Rowling to write the first Harry Potter book? Do you know? Do you particularly care? No, because the quality of the work is far more important than how long it took to create. We’ve switched our focus to speed at the expense of quality. And I would like to switch it back.

If you wanted to entertain yourself by watching tv, you wouldn’t try to consume as many shows as possible. You also wouldn’t watch them on fast forward. Because the goal is no to watch a lot of shows. The goal is to entertain yourself. Even if watching more shows would help you to do that, the way in which you view them matters, as well as which ones you watch. Understand the goal behind each action, and make sure that that action serves its purpose.

But what is the goal of a thought?

That is for you to determine. Whatever goals drive your actions, should also drive your thoughts. Any deeper meaning behind your actions should exist behind your thoughts. That said, I find thoughts to be more about self discovery and analysis than actions.

And how does one think more slowly?

Thinking more slowly is about giving your thoughts room to breathe. Let them stay in your mind for a few moments, instead of just one. Explore their edges. What do they have to say about who you are? Where your actions will take you? Is that a place that you’d like to go? Delve into their depths. How would you change if you pursued this idea with the entirety of your focus? How would this affect the people around you?

How does this thought affect you? Does it tend to arouse certain emotions? Or drive you to take certain actions? Notice how these things, without reacting to them.

What about you?

Lately I’ve been caught up with video games. I’ve been racing along to get or achieve things, and I lost sight of why I was playing in the first place. But what about you? Have you been rushing your thoughts along without considering them?

Yesterday felt hollow. It started like a normal day, but during the afternoon, I felt tired and listless. Not the tired earned from hard work. It felt more like the oppressive exhaustion of apathy. When I worked, I distracted myself constantly. When I read fiction, I quickly grew bored. When I played video games, I didn’t enjoy it. All of the things that normally bring me joy, failed.

Sometimes that happens.

This is not the first time a day has turned to ash for me. And normally I’d just get some rest and feel refreshed the next day (and I will do that to be sure). But this is perhaps the first time I’ve seriously considered it. What reasons do I have to disengage from life? Why did I stop caring about my actions or their consequences?

Was it due to a shock?

There have been some negative events in my life recently. My granny died last week. I felt terrible when I learned of it. Even though I knew it was coming. But if this was the cause, why today? What caused all of these feelings to well up now? I also read a profoundly negative book about the state of the world and it’s trajectory. But why would that affect me so much? I disagree with many of the claims and the overall tone. At work, I had to deal with one of my least favorite tasks. I was constantly pulled from one distraction to another, and had little time or motivation to advance my long term projects. Or maybe, things are simpler still. I ate some candy for the first time in weeks. Could this have been as simple as a sugar crash in the afternoon?

I don’t have an answer.

And maybe they all contributed. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. But I have started to pay attention. The next time something like this happens, I’ll look back on today. And maybe then I’ll be able to see a pattern.

I’m trying to stay with things that are unpleasant a little longer. Because that helps me to understand them. And that helps me to understand myself.

What about you?

Have you had any negative experiences lately? What caused them? What does that say about you?

Recently, my grandmother died. It was a shock. One day she was alive and sending out holiday cards, and the next, she wasn’t. I couldn’t visit her anymore. I couldn’t show her my new girlfriend. There would be no more trips to visit her, or afternoon tea.

It hurts to know that she’s gone. That I will never do any of those things with her again. I’ dredge up all the ways she touched my life, and flog myself with them. Why didn’t I spend more time with her? Why didn’t I go visit her? Every missed opportunity is another lash. I could’ve had more time with her, but chose to do other things.

But death shouldn’t be unexpected,

My grandmother was ninety eight. I looked at an actuary table for her last year. The median life expectancy of a ninety seven year old female was 2.7 years. And when I saw that I thought, I need to go visit her within the next couple of years. I knew she didn’t have long to live. But I always expected it to be longer. I was informed. I knew how long people her age typically lived. I assumed that she would make it at least 2.7 years. I mistook my knowledge as a guarantee. Having a median life expectancy of about three years means that half of the time, she would die before three years. I knew this to be true. But in my mental arithmetic, that would happen to someone else’s grandmother.

Because when it’s unexpected, it hurts the most.

It hurts to lose time with my granny. But worse is the criticism I level at myself. I didn’t visit her as often as I should have. And when I did visit, I spent time doing other things. Were things like reading books, or exercising as valuable as more time with my grandmother? I don’t think so now. But I did so then. Not in the lip service way we give to things we know are important, but in the way that matters most, my actions. I acted like my grandmother would be around forever. That’s what hurts the most.

Death is an excellent companion.

Everything around me is fragile and limited. Waves drifting across the sea of time. Roiling with vigor one moment, and gone the next. Sometimes I truly understand that, and appreciate the ephemeral beauty of my fellow humans.

And rarer still, sometimes I appreciate that I am human too. That one moment I will be gone. And that I should value my time appropriately. Because one day I will look back on my actions, and judge them with the perspective of my entire life.

Death is an excellent companion, because it allows you to see the world as it truly is. Knowing that things will not last, helps me to value the things that matter, and ignore that which does not.

But what about you?

Have you experienced a loss recently? Has it changed your perspective?

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?

Everyone has goals, even if they don’t call them that. Any desired result that depends on your actions is a goal. Desired results that don’t depend on your actions are wishes. Those tend to not work out very well. So a goal has two parts, a vision of success, and a plan to get there.

There’s a lot to be said about making goals. But people always focus on where they want to end up. Lose ten pounds. Go on vacation. Retire. Get a six pack. Of course people focus on the outcomes. That’s literally what they want. But that’s not the best way to go about it.

Start with your vision

What do you want to do? If you’ve tried this before, why do you keep coming back to this goal? Don’t delude yourself. Accomplishing this will be difficult. Why is it worthwhile in spite of this?

Goals take a lot of determination even if things go according to plan, and things rarely go according to plan. Determination is joining present action with future motivation. This is impossible without a clear understanding of what you are getting in the future, and what you are giving up in the present.

Determine what actions will get you there

What actions will you need to take each week? How long will it take? How likely are you to fail? Once you understand the cost of reaching your goal, and what kind of results you can expect, then you have a plan.

Measure your progress infrequently

Now that you have your plan, focus on what you actually need to do. Measure the actions you are taking, where you can see results immediately. Are you trying to exercise three times a week? Then record each day you’ve exercised and you’ll see progress.

Check you progress infrequently enough to expect progress every time you check. If you want to lose weight, and you know that it takes about a week to lose a pound, don’t look at the scale every day. That moves over weeks and months. So, if you obsess about it every day, most days there will be no change. That’s incredibly disheartening. Once you see yourself making progress towards your goal, and you connect that progress to the actions that you are doing every day, then it gets a lot easier. This will take a while. You won’t know that following your plan will make you reach your goals for several check ins.

But what if it’s not working?

What if you are moving, but not as much as you want? Or what if you are moving, but it’s too damn hard to justify your progress? If something is working, keep at it. Generally things get easier as you do them more often. Try to keep going for a couple of weeks before making changes.

What if you are doing all of your actions, but you aren’t moving towards your goal?

Take a step back. How long have you been doing this for? Are you seeing any improvements? Have you taken a step towards your goal? Speak with a friend about your concerns. Are they reasonable?

Not all of your plans will work. Sometimes you’ll pick out some actions that won’t get you where you want to go. If that happens, check with your vision. Is it still worthwhile? If so, then make a new plan.

What about me?

I recently planned out two changes (one at work, and one personally). My personal goal is going very well, I’m taking actions and moving towards my goal. Not so much with my work one. I’m not performing the actions that my plan calls for, and I haven’t made much progress.