Interest follows focus. You’re obsessing about your lack of productivity, and so your interest shifts to productivity, and away from the material.
Focus on the material, even if you do nothing. Especially if you do nothing. Refuse to do anything. Ponder. Think. Analyze. Make plans. Try experiments. Piddle around. See what happens.
Do only and whatever interests you about the material. Refuse to work toward the goal. See how that works out. Forget about success or failure, and do what you want. Pay attention.
Go with your interest in the material, and quash thoughts of success/failure or improving productivity. Failure/success will take care of themselves.
It strikes me that this tribe, myself included, is meta compulsive, and habitually switches into meta analysis mode. Most people think too little. We think too much, spiraling off into meta levels. Do. Do not try. Just focus on the material. That will likely bring interest, as it brings questions and possible solutions.
I’ve been working on my car lately. I find myself compulsively wanting to work on it more. How do I fix this? How do I fix that? What could I do there? I’m trying to remind myself to spend time more productively.
The problem is, whatever we do, we could be doing something else more productive. Gotta put those meta thoughts aside if you ever want to get anything done. I think the Getting Things Done guy has a good plan in that regard—write a note, and review it at a schedule time. Don’t get sidetracked now, handle that thought later.
I cannot agree with this more strongly. I was burnt out for a year, and I’ve only just begun to recover over the last month or two. But one thing that speeded my recovery greatly over the last few weeks was stopping worrying about burnout. Every time I sat down to work, I would gauge my wanting-to-work-ness. When I inevitably found it lacking, I would go off on a thought spiral asking “why don’t I like working? how can I make myself like working?” which of course distracted me from doing the actual work. Also, the constant worry about my burnout surely contributed to depression, which then fed back into burnout.…
It took me a really long time to get rid of these thoughts, not because I have trouble purging unwanted thoughts (this is something I have extensive practice in), but because they didn’t seem unwanted. They seemed quite important! Burnout was the biggest problem in my life, so it seemed only natural that I should think about it all the time. I would think to myself, “I have to fix burnout! I must constantly try to optimize everything related to this! Maybe if I rearrange the desks in my office I won’t be burnt out anymore.” I thought, for a long time, that this was “optimization” and “problem solving”. It took a depressingly long time for me to identify it for what it really was, which is just plain old stress and worry.
Once I stopped worrying about my inability to work, it became a lot easier to work.
Of course, there’s some danger here—I got rid of the worry-thoughts after I had already started to recover from burnout. They weren’t necessary, and my desire to work could just take over and make me work. But if you really have no desire to work, then erasing such thoughts could just lead to utter blissful unproductivity.
It took me a really long time to get rid of these thoughts, not because I have trouble purging unwanted thoughts (this is something I have extensive practice in), but because they didn’t seem unwanted. They seemed quite important! Burnout was the biggest problem in my life, so it seemed only natural that I should think about it all the time. I would think to myself, “I have to fix burnout! I must constantly try to optimize everything related to this! Maybe if I rearrange the desks in my office I won’t be burnt out anymore.” I thought, for a long time, that this was “optimization” and “problem solving”. It took a depressingly long time for me to identify it for what it really was, which is just plain old stress and worry.
Bingo. When you have a seemingly intractable problem, always remember to ask yourself if what you’re trying to do to solve the problem is making it worse. That’s where intractable problems come from.
That’s a really interesting comment! “Interest follows focus […] focus on the material”, “You’re obsessed about you lack of productivity, so your interest shifts to that and then it’s all you think about” are insights that seem obvious but that I’d never heard before.
Interest follows focus. You’re obsessing about your lack of productivity, and so your interest shifts to productivity, and away from the material.
Focus on the material, even if you do nothing. Especially if you do nothing. Refuse to do anything. Ponder. Think. Analyze. Make plans. Try experiments. Piddle around. See what happens.
Do only and whatever interests you about the material. Refuse to work toward the goal. See how that works out. Forget about success or failure, and do what you want. Pay attention.
Go with your interest in the material, and quash thoughts of success/failure or improving productivity. Failure/success will take care of themselves.
It strikes me that this tribe, myself included, is meta compulsive, and habitually switches into meta analysis mode. Most people think too little. We think too much, spiraling off into meta levels. Do. Do not try. Just focus on the material. That will likely bring interest, as it brings questions and possible solutions.
I’ve been working on my car lately. I find myself compulsively wanting to work on it more. How do I fix this? How do I fix that? What could I do there? I’m trying to remind myself to spend time more productively.
The problem is, whatever we do, we could be doing something else more productive. Gotta put those meta thoughts aside if you ever want to get anything done. I think the Getting Things Done guy has a good plan in that regard—write a note, and review it at a schedule time. Don’t get sidetracked now, handle that thought later.
I cannot agree with this more strongly. I was burnt out for a year, and I’ve only just begun to recover over the last month or two. But one thing that speeded my recovery greatly over the last few weeks was stopping worrying about burnout. Every time I sat down to work, I would gauge my wanting-to-work-ness. When I inevitably found it lacking, I would go off on a thought spiral asking “why don’t I like working? how can I make myself like working?” which of course distracted me from doing the actual work. Also, the constant worry about my burnout surely contributed to depression, which then fed back into burnout.…
It took me a really long time to get rid of these thoughts, not because I have trouble purging unwanted thoughts (this is something I have extensive practice in), but because they didn’t seem unwanted. They seemed quite important! Burnout was the biggest problem in my life, so it seemed only natural that I should think about it all the time. I would think to myself, “I have to fix burnout! I must constantly try to optimize everything related to this! Maybe if I rearrange the desks in my office I won’t be burnt out anymore.” I thought, for a long time, that this was “optimization” and “problem solving”. It took a depressingly long time for me to identify it for what it really was, which is just plain old stress and worry.
Once I stopped worrying about my inability to work, it became a lot easier to work.
Of course, there’s some danger here—I got rid of the worry-thoughts after I had already started to recover from burnout. They weren’t necessary, and my desire to work could just take over and make me work. But if you really have no desire to work, then erasing such thoughts could just lead to utter blissful unproductivity.
Bingo. When you have a seemingly intractable problem, always remember to ask yourself if what you’re trying to do to solve the problem is making it worse. That’s where intractable problems come from.
That’s still a step up from the given alternative of miserable unproductivity.
I suspect it is possible to be blissfully improductive forever, and that thought alone can dominate my attention for weeks.
That’s a really interesting comment! “Interest follows focus […] focus on the material”, “You’re obsessed about you lack of productivity, so your interest shifts to that and then it’s all you think about” are insights that seem obvious but that I’d never heard before.