Huh, yeah, this is basically the opposite of how things work for me?
I get into spirals a lot. I can have a positive spiral: I sleep well, get out of bed feeling rested, start the day with a small easy task, get a feeling of accomplishment, feel more confident about starting a bigger task, eventually get into flow, have a very productive day, by 7pm I’m satisfied and decide to start cooking dinner, so I’m ready to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and have another great day tomorrow.
I also get into negative spirals: I wake up feeling tired because I had a nightmare, pick up my phone and scroll social media in bed, encounter some upsetting news, start playing video games to distract myself, suddenly it’s 11pm and I forgot to eat so I stay up late to get groceries and cook, so I don’t get much sleep, so the next day I’m tired again and irritated at myself, so I’m more likely to get back on social media...
I can’t remember to brush my teeth 99% of the time. If I forget once, then the habit is broken, and I’ll forget again tomorrow. Then I’ll have forgotten for three days and it won’t even be on my mind anymore. Soon it’ll be psychologically difficult to think about brushing my teeth because I feel bad about the fact I haven’t done it in a week. Negative spirals.
There’s just a lot of things in my life that I need to be 100% absolutely consistent with, no exceptions, and it’s worth it for me to dip into resources to make that happen. 99% isn’t a stable number; it’s too easy for it to become 98% and too easy for that to become 1%. If I notice a 100% thing becoming a 99% thing, I need to treat that as very urgent and fix it before a spiral starts.
(Yes, this is very delicate and a terrible system which creates gigantic setbacks in my life whenever there’s a change, like needing to move house. But I have to acknowledge that that’s how I work so that I can fix it.)
That makes sense. I have some amount of those kinds of spirals too, especially around “I’m well-focused on my tasks and productive starting from early morning” vs. “I’m keep procrastinating on my tasks and getting distracted from the ones that I did manage to start”. Focus seems to feed additional focus and distraction seems to feed additional distraction, but distraction is often stronger, so if the focus starts slipping it’s an easy slide to complete distraction.
In that context I’d think of the percentage thing on the level of spirals than individual tasks. E.g. getting into a positive spiral on 1% of days is better than getting to a positive spiral on 0% of days, and if I get into a negative spiral on one day, I can take comfort in the fact that tomorrow may be a more positive one. (If your spirals are longer than one day, adjust appropriately.)
Huh, yeah, this is basically the opposite of how things work for me?
I get into spirals a lot. I can have a positive spiral: I sleep well, get out of bed feeling rested, start the day with a small easy task, get a feeling of accomplishment, feel more confident about starting a bigger task, eventually get into flow, have a very productive day, by 7pm I’m satisfied and decide to start cooking dinner, so I’m ready to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and have another great day tomorrow.
I also get into negative spirals: I wake up feeling tired because I had a nightmare, pick up my phone and scroll social media in bed, encounter some upsetting news, start playing video games to distract myself, suddenly it’s 11pm and I forgot to eat so I stay up late to get groceries and cook, so I don’t get much sleep, so the next day I’m tired again and irritated at myself, so I’m more likely to get back on social media...
I can’t remember to brush my teeth 99% of the time. If I forget once, then the habit is broken, and I’ll forget again tomorrow. Then I’ll have forgotten for three days and it won’t even be on my mind anymore. Soon it’ll be psychologically difficult to think about brushing my teeth because I feel bad about the fact I haven’t done it in a week. Negative spirals.
There’s just a lot of things in my life that I need to be 100% absolutely consistent with, no exceptions, and it’s worth it for me to dip into resources to make that happen. 99% isn’t a stable number; it’s too easy for it to become 98% and too easy for that to become 1%. If I notice a 100% thing becoming a 99% thing, I need to treat that as very urgent and fix it before a spiral starts.
(Yes, this is very delicate and a terrible system which creates gigantic setbacks in my life whenever there’s a change, like needing to move house. But I have to acknowledge that that’s how I work so that I can fix it.)
That makes sense. I have some amount of those kinds of spirals too, especially around “I’m well-focused on my tasks and productive starting from early morning” vs. “I’m keep procrastinating on my tasks and getting distracted from the ones that I did manage to start”. Focus seems to feed additional focus and distraction seems to feed additional distraction, but distraction is often stronger, so if the focus starts slipping it’s an easy slide to complete distraction.
In that context I’d think of the percentage thing on the level of spirals than individual tasks. E.g. getting into a positive spiral on 1% of days is better than getting to a positive spiral on 0% of days, and if I get into a negative spiral on one day, I can take comfort in the fact that tomorrow may be a more positive one. (If your spirals are longer than one day, adjust appropriately.)