I may add, from experience, that this condition is quite complex to cure. I understand that there are tasks that either can’t be cheated through or maybe you just need to be very-very lucky to do them without much effort, because all the tasks with that property have been automated and the world is not heaven yet. Therefore all the things that tell me “you shouldn’t experience pain to make an effort towards a task” make me not believe in them, because pain IS effort, and such allegations propose to cheat the way through every task possible. It’s much like a lot of syllogisms that cut greek philosophers the mental effort to actually understand reality and thus allow them to instantly “understand” all of existence — I just don’t consider that as anything serious and often don’t even try.
When I occasionally try to address the issue of too much pain during my effort, it is instantly, immensely painful, because if successful, it would cut a lot of pain-effort from all other tasks and therefore must be the hardest-painful task I will ever accomplish. This sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but “this just CAN NOT be easy, this must be painful” is what I feel every time I am presented with a trick to make my work less painful.
The general issue I am “working” with in therapy (rather, complaining about it, because it does not require effort, and I like my therapy sessions) is my anxiety. It is the primary source of the pain from my efforts for the last couple of years. Recently I have experienced a sort of epistemological shock that triggered a lot of reflection on myself. I have confronted the question of “why do I not keep main questions related to my job always in my head, and why do I not consider my actions from the point of these questions but instead do it just when the actions feel cool, or worse, if the action will seem to others like I’m doing the work”. The stance my brain has taken is that the point I just can not push myself through is the point of setting the goal. Like, I just cannot let the profit or some other objective stat to guide my decisions, I actively resent it and continue to “keep with the flow of my mind”. To set a goal, to let the numbers guide my decisions even for a few hours, seems very wrong and excruciating. I don’t know how to come out of this pit yet.
Also I am very surprised with why do I even make as much money as I make now, with such a severe case of this effort-pain bias, given that my colleagues do not have it as bad.
Wow, this post describes 100% of my life.
I may add, from experience, that this condition is quite complex to cure. I understand that there are tasks that either can’t be cheated through or maybe you just need to be very-very lucky to do them without much effort, because all the tasks with that property have been automated and the world is not heaven yet. Therefore all the things that tell me “you shouldn’t experience pain to make an effort towards a task” make me not believe in them, because pain IS effort, and such allegations propose to cheat the way through every task possible. It’s much like a lot of syllogisms that cut greek philosophers the mental effort to actually understand reality and thus allow them to instantly “understand” all of existence — I just don’t consider that as anything serious and often don’t even try.
When I occasionally try to address the issue of too much pain during my effort, it is instantly, immensely painful, because if successful, it would cut a lot of pain-effort from all other tasks and therefore must be the hardest-painful task I will ever accomplish. This sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but “this just CAN NOT be easy, this must be painful” is what I feel every time I am presented with a trick to make my work less painful.
The general issue I am “working” with in therapy (rather, complaining about it, because it does not require effort, and I like my therapy sessions) is my anxiety. It is the primary source of the pain from my efforts for the last couple of years. Recently I have experienced a sort of epistemological shock that triggered a lot of reflection on myself. I have confronted the question of “why do I not keep main questions related to my job always in my head, and why do I not consider my actions from the point of these questions but instead do it just when the actions feel cool, or worse, if the action will seem to others like I’m doing the work”. The stance my brain has taken is that the point I just can not push myself through is the point of setting the goal. Like, I just cannot let the profit or some other objective stat to guide my decisions, I actively resent it and continue to “keep with the flow of my mind”. To set a goal, to let the numbers guide my decisions even for a few hours, seems very wrong and excruciating. I don’t know how to come out of this pit yet.
Also I am very surprised with why do I even make as much money as I make now, with such a severe case of this effort-pain bias, given that my colleagues do not have it as bad.