Space, Lists, and Doom

I remember reading Camus’ response in college, and considering myself intelligent for recognizing that Camus’ recommendation that we abandon hope resembled somewhat the Buddhist concept of the danger of desire.  There’s only one problem, Camus (and Buddha, too); I haven’t the foggiest idea of how to stop caring – I feel sometimes as if hope for change and desire to make those changes are the driving forces in my life.   But even though the rest of the time seems like drudgery, the slight successes give quite a high; is that better than a constant, low-level, complacent ‘happiness’? 

While I’m sure I would have invited discussion on the topic, I’m quite glad you don’t like that view, either.  I’m sure I am also instinctively flinching, but… but hey!  I want to want to try!  And stuff.  Take that, Camus!   I’m glad to have someone to punch the unwelcome ideas in the philosophical ephemera with me.

I like your idea of the use of space like that.  Interestingly enough, while reading this and thinking – especially in the thinking spaces – I got onto facebook once because I fleetingly wanted to remind Paul of something, and was distracted from that by several chains of texts.  (And distracted from those chains by other chains, and then distracted from that by my phone dying… until it was procrastination turtles all the way down.)  I think by making spaces not to do that – putting my phone out of sight or even off, Chrome Nannying the number of websites I could access, etc., I might be able to press on through things like lacking companionship or a happy lamp or a deadline.  I do think that sometimes, it’s important to just play the game – sometimes it’s important to have the brain-off period of time, or to feel not-shitty before attempting to Fix. The. Kitchen.  But I hear you.  Even though I was just given a bunch through CFAR, I, too, would like to find a way to make it easier to help my brain make me do things.  (Haha, I also need for the person around to be doing something at least a little not fun --- gruble grumble indeed.)

How interesting, that you try to get yourself to feel better by doing something when you’re feeling poorly.  If I need to get things done, I’ll push through a stomach or headache, but after a certain point, feeling bodily poorly is the death of productivity to me… and feeling emotionally poorly is sometimes worse.  With the exception of being able to use anger as fuel, if I’m feeling embarrassed, lonely, disappointed, ignored, or any other of a host of unhappy emotions, I will often feel the need to seek someone out to help me process through the feelings, and sometimes to find their root. 

To propose a slightly different take on one of your original thoughts, though, I have actually thought quite a lot about the distinction between two related terms -- “You can do whatever you want” and “You can be whatever you want”.  It was always clear whenever my mom let me know I could do whatever I wanted that it was as my profession… and I needed to finish my homework right now I don’t care if you don’t feel like it I MEAN IT YOUNG LADY!  I think that has lead, in some ways, to the near-constant martyrdom of work – I can only be what I want to be if I do what I need to do to get there, and that often means pushing through a mountain of undesirable work. 

You mentioned focusing on a goal when one runs out of steam, and then said that it helps you just to ‘think about it’.   I think I ‘think about it’ by using lists – reminding myself of the little steps I intend to take that day toward the things  I want to accomplish has really helped.  (As has the accountability system of checking in on how I did with those things that day.  Responding to you here has been a small step in my “Be happier” goal for the last three days.  While responding to you was not at all undesireable or something I was unmotivated to do, the time factor was likely in the way – as it is with your skirt.)   My friend Mal put it well to me, when I was doing my little end-of-day check in with him and found that I was disappointed with how little of my little steps I’d accomplished that day: “I find that sometimes I just need to unwind. So far I've been pretty bad at the skill of noticing and scheduling this in advance, so instead I just have a day, or several, of feeling ambitious and accomplishing a lot, then accomplishing nothing. Then feeling frustrated.”   I don’t know that hearing that really helped anything other than knowing that even rationalists struggle with this kind of thing, but I think it helped to hear about it.

The other thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot – as a spin-off of expectations for selves, has been expectations of others.    In a recent episode of Star Trek (nerd alert! also... spolier alert on those links!), the excellent Whoopi Goldberg, as Guinan, gave the advice that the worst thing we can do to each other is not live up to each others' expectations.  It got me thinking; what if I have been pre-ruining every romantic relationship I could have because they will never live up to the mental set of expectations I spend a chunk of every day creating in my head?   Are we all a little doomed to ruin our relationships just a little, because every time we're not in person, we fill in the bits we can't see about them with the information we'd like to see?   

PS:  Just in case it is useful, I wanted to mention that Mal also made reference to the Five Whys idea.   While it’s a bit time consuming (I’ve found myself not using it… maybe because I’m not motivated?), it makes me think of you every time I hear about it.  Perhaps you would not find it difficult or distant to ask why :

“The 5 Whys were invented at Toyota, and used to troubleshoot problems. So rather than fixing things at a surface level, you'd continue to ask what the cause of the problem was, and ultimately you'd reach root causes. Then, the idea is that you fix the problem a little bit at each level. If you have many problems with the same root cause, that cause will get a lot of fixing, if not, it doesn't. Which makes sense :) ...I don't think it would make sense to say The Lean Startup is "the actual book" on them, but they present it with the same intention in mind.  I first heard about them in Instant Influence, where they were used for something completely different than their original intended purpose.

In Instant Influence, they were used for purpose/motivation/inspiration. By asking someone why they might want to do something five times, you get beyond the "because I'm supposed to" or "because I said I would" and down to things like "because I want to help people" or "because I want to live to see my grandchildren".

I haven't actually used this that much, although I intend to start.

An example of 5 Whys for personal "why didn't I do this" might be (I'm gonna do this live right now with something from yesterday)

1) Why didn't I do mini-exercise instead of snacking yesterday?

I forgot it was my must do item.

2) Why did I forget?

I didn't check my to do list after I wrote it.

3) Why didn't I check my to do list?

I've lost the daily habit of checking my to do list.

4) Why have I lost the daily habit of checking?

I haven't been explicitly intending to practice.

5) Why haven't I been explicitly intending to practice?

I don't have a system in place to maintain my habits.

Wow. So there are some pretty decent actionable items in there, first to reinstall the habit and secondly to create such a system. ”