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Some thoughts since I should have started working an hour ago.. right now the only thing working for me is to "practice" what I have to do since I no longer der

Some thoughts since I should have started working an hour ago.. right now the only thing working for me is to "practice" what I have to do since I no longer derive satisfaction from most of what I have to do each day to survive. I tell myself that I'm practicing doing chores so that I don't devote conscious attention to them, I pretend at going to work, going through my mountain of mail to pay bills, etc etc. I just remembered where I was going with this: the practicing helped me remember learning certain tasks like brushing my teeth. So now I replay good memories of a task as I perform it instead of concentrating on the task itself. The higher the percentage of time spent NOT thinking about what I'm doing, the easier it is to start the task next time. Maybe this doesn't make sense if you don't struggle with anxiety or haven't burned out yet. But for people who have, changes happen in the brain where it's hard to forget what happened, so you come out of the experience a different person, disillusioned. The games help overcome the mental logic that (often correctly) predicts bad outcomes after years of negative reinforcement loops. Spending more time daydreaming helps restore the feeling of novelty and being young.

kortex 4y ago
Wow, this is exactly the comment I needed right now! I've long connected the source of procrastination with some kind of avoidance/learned helplessness behavior, but haven't been able to make much progress towards actually doing anything about it. "Just start doing it, even if it's only a tiny bit or done poorly" doesn't work when the stimulus of "start it" is exactly what is causing feelings of distress. I really like the idea of "practicing in order to devote less consciousness to it". I think this works well for a lot of low-thought tasks that aren't very mentally stimulating. Not sure about those where it requires conscious effort (paying taxes) but it's certainly a new avenue I haven't tried before.

kortex 4y ago

Wow, this is exactly the comment I needed right now! I've long connected the source of procrastination with some kind of avoidance/learned helplessness behavior, but haven't been able to make much progress towards actually doing anything about it. "Just start doing it, even if it's only a tiny bit or done poorly" doesn't work when the stimulus of "start it" is exactly what is causing feelings of distress. I really like the idea of "practicing in order to devote less consciousness to it". I think this works well for a lot of low-thought tasks that aren't very mentally stimulating. Not sure about those where it requires conscious effort (paying taxes) but it's certainly a new avenue I haven't tried before.