{"id":7427,"date":"2013-08-23T17:46:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T17:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=7427"},"modified":"2017-06-23T15:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T15:20:32","slug":"0084-unproductivity-anguish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0084-unproductivity-anguish\/","title":{"rendered":"0084 \u2013 remember the anguish of being unproductive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Argh I&#8217;m so angry with myself. I was distracted and unproductive today, taking way too long to do the little work that I did. It has a clear effect on my mood, I&#8217;m frustrated, disappointed, unhappy. I feel like an unfit guy letting down his platoon- which is kind of essentially what I am, in a psychological fitness sense.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t dwell on this, that&#8217;s unhelpful and goes nowhere. Measures must be taken. I need to disconnect and cut away all distractions. I know that getting off Facebook is helpful. I need to do the same for quora reddit tumblr&#8230; That seems difficult. It would make more sense to set aside some sort of generative ritual for content- write and edit when disconnected from the internet.<\/p>\n<p>I found myself thinking about education earlier and how frustrating it is to learn things that you&#8217;re not interested in. I was thinking about how I was learning the guitsr yesterday night, making progress by focusing on some really concrete simple goals- learn a riff, learn a chord, that&#8217;s it. Bigger things are harder.  So yeah I really need to chunk things into smaller tasks because it&#8217;s really hard to get go the elephants in the room. <\/p>\n<p>So angry. So angry. Have I ever been this angry in a video game?  I suppose it&#8217;s vaguely equivalent to facing a boss over and over again and making  little to no difference. Dying over and over again. It means that you&#8217;re not ready. You&#8217;re not good enough. You need to get out and go level. So I really need to reduce everything to the bloody basics and kill the rats. God I&#8217;m so angry with myself!!! This will not do, this is not who I want to be. There is a part of me that needs serious demolishing. It&#8217;s sickening. It&#8217;s an illness. A kind of hostage situation. Need to calm down. I find myself grasping at straws and even looking for ways to blame other people for the shitty state in in. How pathetic is that? Jeez. I suppose the word vomits should be a slight consolation but they&#8217;re not,  I don&#8217;t fully feel it yet.  Why do I even think or care about guitar?  I suppose it&#8217;s a path of less resistance thing. I should be able to get all my shit done at work so that I can truly relax and do my own thing when I&#8217;m home, spend time with the wife etc.<\/p>\n<p>I have issues, really. How many times must you acknowledge something before it really feels&#8230; real? I need to put things down in writing. Gah this feels so juvenile. Let it go, let it go. There is only this moment.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t really know what to write right now. Kinda stumped. Saw something on GetMotivated about a guy asking for examples of what it&#8217;s like to get off Facebook. Btw did I mention that I was tempted to get back on Facebook? Jesus no. I created a work account, the only thing on that profile is my work Page.<\/p>\n<p>===<\/p>\n<p>I missed two vomits- one because I was rather stressed and upset with myself for being unproductive and another because I had run out of battery- forgot to charge my phone. But I&#8217;m right back on this, I&#8217;m going to get right back on track because I think clearly this is good for me and I&#8217;m not really doing anything better with my transit time to and from work anyway.<\/p>\n<p>I had a rather startling realisation yesterday- which is that I tend to &#8216;crash&#8217; in productivity after lunch, and I think that has to do with my eating habits. I think I&#8217;m not eating enough,  or eating right. I&#8217;m tall and skinny and have low blood pressure- I can get a little bit giddy\/dizzy\/lethargic quite easily. I tend to skip breakfast which I&#8217;m now thinking is a bad idea. Will have to experiment with this.<\/p>\n<p>The things holding me back are the same things- distractions, lack of routine and lack of structure. I need to avoid falling into the trap of &#8220;Yay I acknowledge my problems, well done me, I&#8217;m such an acknowledger. Pat on back.&#8221; This will not do. Knowledge has to lead to action or it&#8217;s essentially worthless (for all practical purposes other than feeling better about oneself). The opposite extreme is equally untenable- there&#8217;s no sense in excessive self-flagellation. It makes more sense to get shit done than to spend time and energy punishing oneself for not getting sit done.<\/p>\n<p>I made some progress on the guitar the past couple of days. It&#8217;s like a little personal victory. I&#8217;ve also been doing pushups when I get home which is a good thing. But these things are not enough and they&#8217;re not focused on the things I really ought to be doing. I have messed up priorities. I think I have a vague sense of what my priorities should be but I&#8217;m not acting accordingly. The solution can&#8217;t be to waste time on productivity porn. I have to know what needs to be done, work-wise, and do it. I&#8217;m planning to do it later when I get home. Will I do it? I think I&#8217;ll have to disconnect from the internet. I have to do my dailies- I keep writing off the importance of doing dailies for everything from niggling work bits to pushups and water consumption. I need to build my focus muscle. These word vomits are helpful but they&#8217;re not enough. Okay. That&#8217;s that.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to talk about social issues. My opinions on things like lgbt and manning and snowden are inconsequential, they&#8217;re distractions, the lazy unfocused mind assuning control. While playing guitar I remembered the importance of practicing the basics very carefully, very slowly. I have never really learnt to do this at an industrial scale and this is above all else what I need to be doing. How much time and energy can a person waste talking about what they ought to be doing instead of doing it? In my case the answer seems to be a lot, infinite, limitless. I know that gamification helpd so I should stick to it.<\/p>\n<p>A part of my mind is saying you should use these moments to think directly about work but meh I&#8217;m not sure if I should do that.  I should probably do work-based word vomits independently of my personal ones, and I shoulf probably make it a part of a routine. My lack of commitment to routines is a worrying thing and it&#8217;s a part of me that I have to brutally murder and distance myself from. Willpower is limited, cognitive resources are limited, so I really have to allocate them as ruthlessly as possible. My work could get a lot more interesting and exciting if I did my job at a scale of magnitude better then I&#8217;m expected to.<\/p>\n<p>Getting off Facebook is proving to be insufficient. It&#8217;s one data point and it&#8217;s proof that I&#8217;m happier when disengaged from unscheduled small talk. I should experiment with disengagement from pretty much everything else. Shouldn&#8217;t be that hard to do, it&#8217;s the sticking to it that&#8217;s the challenge. I&#8217;m thinking I should build off of this vomit habit. I should use these as meditative mind-clearing re-focusing exercises everyday to keep me on track because I definitely need help. I definitely can&#8217;t do this by doing what I&#8217;ve always been doing. Some sort of change is necessary and arguing &#8220;small or big&#8221; is potentially a wasteful and elaborate distraction. (Let&#8217;s get it out of the way: small is maybe easier but perhaps less effective, big is traumatic and might possibly get rejected by the broader subconscious&#8230; which sounds like bullshit but I think is a real political concern, a consideration that cannot be ignored if I&#8217;m serious about change.)<\/p>\n<p>These considerations cannot be at the expense of action. Ready shoot aim. I am rash and abrasive about many things but surprisingly not about this. I&#8217;m a shy pathetic Conservative when it comes to personal change and this will surely not do when there is much changing that needs doing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Argh I&#8217;m so angry with myself. I was distracted and unproductive today, taking way too long to do the little work that I did. It has a clear effect on my mood, I&#8217;m frustrated, disappointed, unhappy. 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