I believe that reframing these “voices in head” is critical for long-term productivity. Essentially, these voices determine your internal reinforcements (rewards, punishments) for things that happen to you, which makes you do more or less of them later. This is sometimes even more important than what actually happened; the same thing may happen to two people, one of them will reward themselves for it, other will punish themselves. In short term, you can try using “willpower”, but in long term the balance will go towards the things you reward yourself for doing.
Of these two kinds of reinforcement—rewards, punishments—I would recommend focusing on rewards. Because if you want to live rationally, you must notice what is happening to you. You may say “I will reward myself for doing X, and punish myself for doing Y”, but unless you use some automatic detector, you actually mean “I will reward myself for noticing that I am doing X, and punish myself for noticing than I am doing Y.” Punishing yourself for noticing, that’s not a good idea; instead of reducing Y, it could just reduce your self-awareness.
it brings back all the failures and shame of not doing more Things before
Heh, I know what you mean. There is no success that a brain sufficiently trained in negative thinking couldn’t interpret as a failure. Even “I wasn’t as great yesterday as I am today… therefore I am a loser” can seem credible from a specific angle (where yesterday is forever, and today is just an exception) and suddenly you punish yourself for improving, which is like the most unreasonable thing you could do. -- Although it probably made sense in ancient environment, where “yesterday and days before that” were better evidence of your social status than an exceptional “today”. So you are essentially telling yourself not to overestimate your social status. Not completely incorrect, but comes with the horrible side effect of not doing the useful thing which could threaten the status balance.
So… be nice to yourself! ♡ Especially when you do the right thing. Even if it is a small right thing, or a right thing you could have done yesterday, or all the other kinds of right things your brain is able to find an excuse why you should actually punish yourself for doing them (as if not doing them could somehow make things better).
I believe that reframing these “voices in head” is critical for long-term productivity. Essentially, these voices determine your internal reinforcements (rewards, punishments) for things that happen to you, which makes you do more or less of them later. This is sometimes even more important than what actually happened; the same thing may happen to two people, one of them will reward themselves for it, other will punish themselves. In short term, you can try using “willpower”, but in long term the balance will go towards the things you reward yourself for doing.
Of these two kinds of reinforcement—rewards, punishments—I would recommend focusing on rewards. Because if you want to live rationally, you must notice what is happening to you. You may say “I will reward myself for doing X, and punish myself for doing Y”, but unless you use some automatic detector, you actually mean “I will reward myself for noticing that I am doing X, and punish myself for noticing than I am doing Y.” Punishing yourself for noticing, that’s not a good idea; instead of reducing Y, it could just reduce your self-awareness.
Heh, I know what you mean. There is no success that a brain sufficiently trained in negative thinking couldn’t interpret as a failure. Even “I wasn’t as great yesterday as I am today… therefore I am a loser” can seem credible from a specific angle (where yesterday is forever, and today is just an exception) and suddenly you punish yourself for improving, which is like the most unreasonable thing you could do. -- Although it probably made sense in ancient environment, where “yesterday and days before that” were better evidence of your social status than an exceptional “today”. So you are essentially telling yourself not to overestimate your social status. Not completely incorrect, but comes with the horrible side effect of not doing the useful thing which could threaten the status balance.
So… be nice to yourself! ♡ Especially when you do the right thing. Even if it is a small right thing, or a right thing you could have done yesterday, or all the other kinds of right things your brain is able to find an excuse why you should actually punish yourself for doing them (as if not doing them could somehow make things better).