What have you recently tried, and failed at?

Emile

Kaj Sotala said:

[I]f you punish yourself for trying and failing, you stop wanting to try in the first place, as it becomes associated with the negative emotions. Also, accepting and being okay with the occasional failure makes you treat it as a genuine choice where you have agency, not something that you're forced to do against your will.

So maybe we should celebrate failed attempts more often ... I for one can't think of anything I've failed at recently, which is probably a sign that I'm not trying enough new things.

So, what specific things have you failed at recently?

Kaj Sotala said:

[I]f you punish yourself for trying and failing, you stop wanting to try in the first place, as it becomes associated with the negative emotions. Also, accepting and being okay with the occasional failure makes you treat it as a genuine choice where you have agency, not something that you're forced to do against your will.

So maybe we should celebrate failed attempts more often ... I for one can't think of anything I've failed at recently, which is probably a sign that I'm not trying enough new things.

So, what specific things have you failed at recently?

"GTD is basicly for people who have no problems with procrastination, they just do tasks in a wrong order (less important ones first)"

People don't do nothing when they procrastinate.

"How exactly did you fail in your previous attempts with GTD? My typical failure mode is simply giving up and ignoring the system."

Basically, I didn't actually use the system. I suppose this could be a failure on my part rather than a failure due to bad software. Thinking about this now, I'm surprised that I was able to rationalize things for so long saying that the problem was imperfect software.

I suppose the problem is that the software does not definitely tell me which option is better, and so I don't commit to any option. Then, I just choose options based on what seems most relevant to work on at the time. I suppose the problem of definitively saying that one option is better than the other can't be solved (actually, this is a bit of a rationalization). But, I can still commit to options without strong certainty in the options because I am sure that it would be really coincidental if the thing I decided to work on in the moment were actually the most important thing I could be doing...

People don't do nothing when they procrastinate.

It's not literally nothing, but I'd say they often do some "infinite task" -- a thing that can expand to take all available time, and can be used to avoid anything else. Modern example is web browsing, but classic example could be e.g. house cleaning. Avoiding is the critical component of procrastination, but it can be masked by wasting all the time and then saying "no, I don't avoid it, I just don't have enough time, because I have so much work". Sometimes the waste of time is obvious,... (read more)

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What have you recently tried, and failed at?

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What have you recently tried, and failed at?

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