= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Mass_Driver comments on My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (138)
None of this kind of shit ever works for me, because it seems to assume I'm a bright-eyed go-getter at heart, blundering about and playing video games when I know I should be writing my dissertation, and oh, if only there were an equation made of words that would show me the problem with my motivation pathways. (And if only the post title would change three times so it shows up thrice in my RSS feeds!)
Instead, it's more of an all-pervasive apathy that seems to go all the way to my terminal goals. I think "what do I really want to be doing right now? where do I want to be at the end of the day, or the end of the year?" and there's just nothing there.
HEY, I HAVE AN IDEA! LET'S SEE HOW MANY STAMPS WE CAN LICK IN AN HOUR, AND THEN TRY AND BEAT THAT RECORD!!1
Hi Postal_Scale,
I've had pervasive apathy before, and it sucks. I'm sorry you're so bored and frustrated. If you want to be less apathetic, some books I would recommend reading are What Color is Your Parachute?, Flow, and The Renaissance Soul. Parachute can help you identify tasks that you would enjoy working on, Flow can help you identify ways of enjoying otherwise boring experiences that don't require you to play Carnegie-esque self-cheerleading games, and Renaissance Soul can help you figure out how to balance a shifting array of temporary, conflicting, weakly held recreational interests.
As far as practical techniques, I sometimes fight intense apathy by going for a 60-90 minute walk in no particular direction. I'm able to power it using "anywhere but here" contempt, so it doesn't necessarily require any positive energy...but I find that after an hour or so I am usually able to identify at least one thing that I care about, and it tends to improve my mood. On the off chance that you really are in a dissertation program right now, you might want to find something concrete and immediate that you can work on for a few hours a week, like Habitat for Humanity, or a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. I have also been in graduate programs, and if I go for too long without accomplishing something tangible (however irrelevant in the cosmic scheme of things), I forget what accomplishment even feels like, and so I lose motivation to plunge ahead on abstract tasks with real but delayed payoffs.
Best wishes, Mass_Driver
Thanks for the tips. I actually used to do the "anywhere but here" walk in no particular direction thing myself, although in my case rather than a length of time I'd generally walk until i got lost.
It never really improved my mood though, it just killed time.
Once I walked for 11 hours and ended up at a venetian blind factory.
I'm considering buying Parachute and Flow, but I have a few questions about the latter. Its author has written more than one book on the topic, so I'd like to know:
a) Is this the only book among his publications that I should read? b) ...and if not, which ones should I read and what's the appropriate order? c) Are you recommending this particular book over the others by Csíkszentmihályi because you've read them all and consider it the best, or because you've only read the one and found it worth the time even in isolation?
I'm sorry; of Csikzentmihalyi's books, I have only read Flow. However, I have read at least 40 self-help books, and I would put that book in the top 4.