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Well, are you me? Everything you said rings true with me. From the effort/result ratio to waiting for the "feeling" to get things done all the way to the age.
by nutlab 11y ago
Well, are you me?
Everything you said rings true with me. From the effort/result ratio to waiting for the "feeling" to get things done all the way to the age.
I've been thinking about ways to fix this, though, I'm more looking into figuring out why I behave this way rather than how I can work around it.
Seems to me like, this type of behavior stems from the childhood (up until college) where being a relatively smart person allows one to keep afloat (and even shine sometimes) without spending much effort.
Then you hit college and you face the fact that you have to put the effort in, you can't just get by anymore. You sorta learn to struggle through a bit of "learning how to study" but still not at the level where you feel like you owned your studies, more like enough to get back to that 8/10 result on average. Put simply, you are now doing 5/10 effort for 8/10 results while it used to be 1-2/10 effort for the same result.
Then you move on to the real world (tm) where the effort is sometimes just as important as the result. Even if that's not the case for you, you just realize 8/10 results are sometimes not enough (for your employer, for personal satisfaction, for whatever reason).
This, combined with the fact that your pride now firmly lies in your level of intelligence, makes self-improvement really hard. How? First, you don't wanna do the easy stuff, because, well it's not worth your intelligence; so you dream of doing the hard stuff. Reading complicated books, learning a new language what have you. Then, you start unconsciously delaying doing/learning the hard stuff. You only do those if it's part of your job so you have to. You delay it, I think, because the fact that you may not accomplish those deeds in the short amount of time you think you should, proving yourself that you're not as smart as you think you are. That, is like the ghost at the end of the dark hallway. You don't even wanna risk getting into that state of mind. "I just don't have the time" or "I really haven't spent much effort on this" is a much better excuse for you than "I'm just not smart enough. Need to work harder/longer on this".
Don't know if that's the case for you, but it feels like it is for me. I'm trying to let myself go to fix this basically. It's okay to not be brilliant. It's okay to fail, make mistakes, suck at certain things while being just okay at other things. There is no implicit need to be excellent at everything you do. More importantly, "too proud to be dumb" is a bad mindset to be in. Even if you are as smart as you think you are, you are not fully utilizing your capacity by restricting yourself due to a fear of slightest failure/mistake.
That said, the ideas that you are trying sound interesting. Maybe they could also help taming this subconscious beast by my conscious idealist.
- ashark 11y agoHa! We should form a club. > Seems to me like, this type of behavior stems from the childhood (up until college) where being a relatively smart person allows one to keep afloat (and even shine sometimes) without spending much effort. > Put simply, you are now doing 5/10 effort for 8/10 results while it used to be 1-2/10 effort for the same result. Oof, yeah. It wasn't until years later that I realized my primary and secondary school experiences had led me to categorize having to study to understand something both as a kind of failure and as something akin to cheating, of all things. It's not a way of thinking I'd settled on consciously and not something I'd have framed in those terms until I spent some time reflecting on my thoughts, but sure enough, that was what my stupid, stupid mind had been doing. Totally bizarre. > This, combined with the fact that your pride now firmly lies in your level of intelligence, makes self-improvement really hard. How? First, you don't wanna do the easy stuff, because, well it's not worth your intelligence; so you dream of doing the hard stuff. Reading complicated books, learning a new language what have you. Then, you start unconsciously delaying doing/learning the hard stuff. You only do those if it's part of your job so you have to. You delay it, I think, because the fact that you may not accomplish those deeds in the short amount of time you think you should, proving yourself that you're not as smart as you think you are. That, is like the ghost at the end of the dark hallway. You don't even wanna risk getting into that state of mind. I get that. I also have to watch myself very carefully or I'll end up making lists and ranking things and researching and never actually do the activity those actions are supposed in service of. > "I just don't have the time" or "I really haven't spent much effort on this" is a much better excuse for you than "I'm just not smart enough. Need to work harder/longer on this". Bingo. > Don't know if that's the case for you, but it feels like it is for me. I'm trying to let myself go to fix this basically. It's okay to not be brilliant. It's okay to fail, make mistakes, suck at certain things while being just okay at other things. There is no implicit need to be excellent at everything you do. More importantly, "too proud to be dumb" is a bad mindset to be in. Even if you are as smart as you think you are, you are not fully utilizing your capacity by restricting yourself due to a fear of slightest failure/mistake. My approach to fighting this lately has been to deliberately seek things I know I'm awful at and work on them at least until I see improvement. Pick up a new instrument, write a program unlike anything I'm familiar with, take dancing lessons (coming up this Summer!). Eventual mastery isn't the point—just improvement. I know you're supposed to specialize in this modern economy of ours and just keep improving skills you're already good at, but I need this kind of thing, I think. It's like failure therapy.