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I'm pretty sure my respect for people who sit down at a blank page, or pick up the phone and make a difficult call (or even a call to the guy who was supposed t

I'm pretty sure my respect for people who sit down at a blank page, or pick up the phone and make a difficult call (or even a call to the guy who was supposed to trim the trees last week) stems from my deep reluctance to do the same. Whether you could blame my reluctance on anxiety, apathy, superiority or sheer laziness really depends on the day... but I really do respect those people who slog through their list of to-do items as if it were a job. And they are better at life than I am. Put me in front or a concrete problem, and I'm a fucking monster at solving it. Give me someone's phone number to call and I'd rather spend the rest of the week in a bathtub.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago
I think what you do on a daily basis has a huge impact to how you deal with this. When I was mostly focused on a single issue at a time for long strench of time, I used to be reluctant to call people and didn't really plan things for my personnal life. As my job shifted towards more organisational responsibilities and I had to start both carefully planning how I use my own time and spending a lot more time contacting people to get things done, these things started slowly expanding to the rest of my time by cheer force of habit. What is one more call to the guy who should have trimmed the tree when you have spent the day asking people why they are behind schedule? I think it goes well with the anxiety explanation. You are obviously less anxious about things which are just business as usual. I guess my take away would be that if you want to start doing something you find hard, it will get easier and easier as you stick with it, which is pretty nice when you think about it.
- noduerme 3y ago
  yeah, I've sort of observed this... my gf is in a people-centric / customer service job, and thinks nothing of picking up the phone and making life-related calls in an instant that I would probably procrastinate for days before making. I've thought maybe it was her job that led her to it. But I've also wondered if it was something in my blood. See, my father was a lawyer. As a kid I'd sit in his office and listen to him make tough phone calls one after another all day. But when it came time to talk to anyone at all at home, he always made my mother do it. I've found myself doing this with my girlfriend if we want to order food or something. Because I'll simply drink all night and delay the phone call. So when it comes to any work flag that arises, I'll call my clients obsessively until they pay attention to the problem. But if I need someone to do something for me, I basically almost can't make the call.
  - escapedmoose 3y ago
    I used to be in your position. What broke the cycle for me was that my SO realized how anxious I would get every time I had to make a phone call, so he assigned all phone-related household tasks to me until I lost the phobia via exposure/practice. It sucked until it didn’t anymore. I’m now one of those people who prefers to make a call rather than use a web form!
- dandellion 3y ago
  I don't like making calls, going to appointments, job interviews and things like that. But in terms of the effort it takes me to do it, I noticed the first is usually the hardest one. So now I just procrastinate on purpose any calls or appointments I need to make that I can defer with little negative consequences. Eventually something shows up that I know I shouldn't delay, like an appointment with the doctor, or the dentist, or something like that. I force myself to do it and take it as an opportunity to do everything I had piled up, since I know once I make the first call it'll be easier to do the others. It can cause me to have a very frantic week when it happens but after I can relax again.
comboy 3y ago
> And they are better at life than I am In my worldview, when you state that, you don't really believe that. If you did, you would do these things that you think make them better with no effort. If you drop wishful thinking, look at the situation, then it's clear that if you think they are better at life, then the actions they do are better. But if you really believed that you would choose to do them, effortlessly. Now I know there's plenty of frameworks you can look at things through and plenty of rationalizations, I'm just presenting another one. So whenever you think it would be better if you would be doing something right now which you are not doing, you have some cognitive dissonance. It's possible to debug it. Sometimes it can go pretty deep, but if you are honest with yourself then after you do the debugging, you should either arrive at the conclusion that it is not better after all, or be doing it. We are able to hold tons of contradictory beliefs, but only if we don't bring them together to our attention. Then it's just impossible. Cheapest way to resolve these, which often appears automatically, is quick rationalization - creating a special case, "yes, but", "this is different" etc. But when you are honest with yourself and observe yourself, do some debugging, it's impossible to not be doing something you want to be doing (and vice versa). For me, it often means not that now I want to do these tasks and I'm going at them, rather, I understand that e.g. I think there are more important things in life to me given the wider context and I'm perfectly fine not doing them. I have not been doing anything I wouldn't want to be doing right now for years. I sometimes needed to question my very basic values and choices to debug it. Remember that it requires dropping wishful thinking. Wanting sky to be green is just madness, only after you accept that reality is how it is you can find out what you want. Anxiety can be debugged away. (Yes, I know - brains, neurotransmitters, amygdala, this is just a random dude's framework, a tool)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- noduerme 3y ago
  I don't do things I don't want to do - I've also set my life and career up to prioritize that. Being overly accustomed to that mode may be part of the problem, because inevitably there are things you have to do that you don't want to do - and those things seem harder, even if they're trivial, when you really want to master your own time. Yet I'm pretty good at getting those out of the way. That's not my specific problem with phone calls. Phone calls always open up a Pandora's box of more problems. Perhaps if you feel like armchair diagnosing this: I clean my house almost obsessively every day; my desktop has only two text files on it called "Immediate" and "Todo"; my inbox is always cleaned out by 5 or 6pm before I let myself relax. Then I go get fucking wasted and make new friends and end up drinking in parking lots. But I can't call the fucking tree guy or the mechanic or the accountant. It's not the conversation I'm worried about. It's that I know there will be one new thing on the list. When the list is cleared, I will be free. I will take my clothes off and walk naked to the airport. [edit] I just want to clarify: I do think that I'm good at life in my own peculiar way. Just not "good at life" as most people would define it ;)

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

I think what you do on a daily basis has a huge impact to how you deal with this. When I was mostly focused on a single issue at a time for long strench of time, I used to be reluctant to call people and didn't really plan things for my personnal life. As my job shifted towards more organisational responsibilities and I had to start both carefully planning how I use my own time and spending a lot more time contacting people to get things done, these things started slowly expanding to the rest of my time by cheer force of habit. What is one more call to the guy who should have trimmed the tree when you have spent the day asking people why they are behind schedule? I think it goes well with the anxiety explanation. You are obviously less anxious about things which are just business as usual. I guess my take away would be that if you want to start doing something you find hard, it will get easier and easier as you stick with it, which is pretty nice when you think about it.

noduerme 3y ago
yeah, I've sort of observed this... my gf is in a people-centric / customer service job, and thinks nothing of picking up the phone and making life-related calls in an instant that I would probably procrastinate for days before making. I've thought maybe it was her job that led her to it. But I've also wondered if it was something in my blood. See, my father was a lawyer. As a kid I'd sit in his office and listen to him make tough phone calls one after another all day. But when it came time to talk to anyone at all at home, he always made my mother do it. I've found myself doing this with my girlfriend if we want to order food or something. Because I'll simply drink all night and delay the phone call. So when it comes to any work flag that arises, I'll call my clients obsessively until they pay attention to the problem. But if I need someone to do something for me, I basically almost can't make the call.
- escapedmoose 3y ago
  I used to be in your position. What broke the cycle for me was that my SO realized how anxious I would get every time I had to make a phone call, so he assigned all phone-related household tasks to me until I lost the phobia via exposure/practice. It sucked until it didn’t anymore. I’m now one of those people who prefers to make a call rather than use a web form!
dandellion 3y ago
I don't like making calls, going to appointments, job interviews and things like that. But in terms of the effort it takes me to do it, I noticed the first is usually the hardest one. So now I just procrastinate on purpose any calls or appointments I need to make that I can defer with little negative consequences. Eventually something shows up that I know I shouldn't delay, like an appointment with the doctor, or the dentist, or something like that. I force myself to do it and take it as an opportunity to do everything I had piled up, since I know once I make the first call it'll be easier to do the others. It can cause me to have a very frantic week when it happens but after I can relax again.

comboy 3y ago

> And they are better at life than I am In my worldview, when you state that, you don't really believe that. If you did, you would do these things that you think make them better with no effort. If you drop wishful thinking, look at the situation, then it's clear that if you think they are better at life, then the actions they do are better. But if you really believed that you would choose to do them, effortlessly. Now I know there's plenty of frameworks you can look at things through and plenty of rationalizations, I'm just presenting another one. So whenever you think it would be better if you would be doing something right now which you are not doing, you have some cognitive dissonance. It's possible to debug it. Sometimes it can go pretty deep, but if you are honest with yourself then after you do the debugging, you should either arrive at the conclusion that it is not better after all, or be doing it. We are able to hold tons of contradictory beliefs, but only if we don't bring them together to our attention. Then it's just impossible. Cheapest way to resolve these, which often appears automatically, is quick rationalization - creating a special case, "yes, but", "this is different" etc. But when you are honest with yourself and observe yourself, do some debugging, it's impossible to not be doing something you want to be doing (and vice versa). For me, it often means not that now I want to do these tasks and I'm going at them, rather, I understand that e.g. I think there are more important things in life to me given the wider context and I'm perfectly fine not doing them. I have not been doing anything I wouldn't want to be doing right now for years. I sometimes needed to question my very basic values and choices to debug it. Remember that it requires dropping wishful thinking. Wanting sky to be green is just madness, only after you accept that reality is how it is you can find out what you want. Anxiety can be debugged away. (Yes, I know - brains, neurotransmitters, amygdala, this is just a random dude's framework, a tool)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
noduerme 3y ago
I don't do things I don't want to do - I've also set my life and career up to prioritize that. Being overly accustomed to that mode may be part of the problem, because inevitably there are things you have to do that you don't want to do - and those things seem harder, even if they're trivial, when you really want to master your own time. Yet I'm pretty good at getting those out of the way. That's not my specific problem with phone calls. Phone calls always open up a Pandora's box of more problems. Perhaps if you feel like armchair diagnosing this: I clean my house almost obsessively every day; my desktop has only two text files on it called "Immediate" and "Todo"; my inbox is always cleaned out by 5 or 6pm before I let myself relax. Then I go get fucking wasted and make new friends and end up drinking in parking lots. But I can't call the fucking tree guy or the mechanic or the accountant. It's not the conversation I'm worried about. It's that I know there will be one new thing on the list. When the list is cleared, I will be free. I will take my clothes off and walk naked to the airport. [edit] I just want to clarify: I do think that I'm good at life in my own peculiar way. Just not "good at life" as most people would define it ;)