Now, I deliberately compare two future versions of myself, one armed with the technique I just discovered and one without. Seeing how much farther along I will be results in a net gain of motivation.
A variant of this exercise is taking any handicap you might have and wildly exaggerating it. I suffer from mild Carpal Tunnel (or something masquerading as CT) which makes progress in programming slow. When I feel down about this fact I imagine how hard programming would be without hands.
You have recreated the ancient Stoic mind-hack called negative visualization. The phrase is googleable, if you want to find out more.
I just tried it and feel worse than ever, because I started to fear these things actually happening, instead of what I usually do, and suppressing these fears. I imagined my wife and daughter dead, me suffering from a debilitating illness etc. and got scared because I always fear these things but usually manage to suppress the fears or numb them with alcohol. Instead of appreciating what I have today, it made me less able to suppress the fears of losing them tomorrow. I am never able to enjoy anything unless I can convince myself it lasts forever, and a combination of compartmentalization, willful cognitive dissonance, wishful thinking, positive visualization and some numbing alcohol helps usually half-convince myself, so I am usually halfway happy. Good enough. I don’t know if other people work that way… if I am eating a brownie, I have to convince myself it is an infinitely large brownie and I will never have to stop eating it, or else I could not bring myself to bite into it, because I would feel too guilty for every bite making it smaller and thus robbing my future self from enjoying that brownie.
You have recreated the ancient Stoic mind-hack called negative visualization. The phrase is googleable, if you want to find out more.
I just tried it and feel worse than ever, because I started to fear these things actually happening, instead of what I usually do, and suppressing these fears. I imagined my wife and daughter dead, me suffering from a debilitating illness etc. and got scared because I always fear these things but usually manage to suppress the fears or numb them with alcohol. Instead of appreciating what I have today, it made me less able to suppress the fears of losing them tomorrow. I am never able to enjoy anything unless I can convince myself it lasts forever, and a combination of compartmentalization, willful cognitive dissonance, wishful thinking, positive visualization and some numbing alcohol helps usually half-convince myself, so I am usually halfway happy. Good enough. I don’t know if other people work that way… if I am eating a brownie, I have to convince myself it is an infinitely large brownie and I will never have to stop eating it, or else I could not bring myself to bite into it, because I would feel too guilty for every bite making it smaller and thus robbing my future self from enjoying that brownie.
My experience is almost entirely the opposite of yours. Counter-examples are valuable. Thanks.