The two things I’ve found to work here are not to use negative emotions to keep me from doing things that I want to avoid, but rather to intellectually deconstruct those things until they cease to have power over me. For example, I once tried a low fat, low carb diet. Not fun, and naturally I had intense cravings for things that were sweet and fatty. So when I went to the grocery store, I didn’t avoid the bakery. I went straight there and analyzed the artistic value of the cakes—examining how the frosting had been applied, the colors that had been used and such. It cut the instinctive urge to eat them and reinforced that my diet was a mental process—whether or not it was an optimal diet was another question entirely!
The other thing is that the only way I can be optimally productive is when my productive activity is also my passion. I can find passion in many things, though some are more closely aligned with my abilities than others, some are more closely aligned with maximizing my long-term income than others, and some are more closely aligned with the greater good of humanity than others. Finding a passion that has a significant degree of alignment in all three areas has taken a while, but the results are worth it. The bottom line is, if I am doing something “productive” that I am not passionate about, it isn’t productivity that is truly meaningful to me on a basic level, so I don’t get as much emotional reward for my effort and it becomes just a form of work. I can only continue the process by distracting myself with side interests, and if I try too hard to focus on the activity eventually I will burn out. But now that my productivity has become aligned with my passion the two feelings of accomplishment and joy reinforce each other powerfully and productivity becomes rather addictive.
There is a definite argument for maintaining a degree of social engagement, but I am trying to reach out through trade organizations and find local meet-ups with others in my industry so that I get a win-win here too.
The two things I’ve found to work here are not to use negative emotions to keep me from doing things that I want to avoid, but rather to intellectually deconstruct those things until they cease to have power over me. For example, I once tried a low fat, low carb diet. Not fun, and naturally I had intense cravings for things that were sweet and fatty. So when I went to the grocery store, I didn’t avoid the bakery. I went straight there and analyzed the artistic value of the cakes—examining how the frosting had been applied, the colors that had been used and such. It cut the instinctive urge to eat them and reinforced that my diet was a mental process—whether or not it was an optimal diet was another question entirely!
The other thing is that the only way I can be optimally productive is when my productive activity is also my passion. I can find passion in many things, though some are more closely aligned with my abilities than others, some are more closely aligned with maximizing my long-term income than others, and some are more closely aligned with the greater good of humanity than others. Finding a passion that has a significant degree of alignment in all three areas has taken a while, but the results are worth it. The bottom line is, if I am doing something “productive” that I am not passionate about, it isn’t productivity that is truly meaningful to me on a basic level, so I don’t get as much emotional reward for my effort and it becomes just a form of work. I can only continue the process by distracting myself with side interests, and if I try too hard to focus on the activity eventually I will burn out. But now that my productivity has become aligned with my passion the two feelings of accomplishment and joy reinforce each other powerfully and productivity becomes rather addictive.
There is a definite argument for maintaining a degree of social engagement, but I am trying to reach out through trade organizations and find local meet-ups with others in my industry so that I get a win-win here too.