Hi Ava, first time commenter. I like what you're saying about stuckness but I have a slightly different perspective, as someone who's been pretty successful in my career (Senior Director at a tech company, mid-50s M) but who's always struggled with procrastination. When I'm deep in the swamps of being stuck, the "engineering" approaches -- break it down to small parts and do the first small part, or slightly more psychologically, CBT -- don't work, because the resistance is to *doing the thing*, and no matter how you break it down into small steps or consciously reprogram yourself, all of that resistance transfers to the first step and tries to stop you doing even the smallest thing you can. The thing that works for me short-term when I'm stuck is deadline panic, when it's literally impossible to not do the thing. But the thing that's worked for me long-term is self-compassion / IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy): talk to the part that's trying to block you as if it's trying to help; understand how it thinks it's helping you; agree that the things it's trying to protect you from are scary. And also talk to the part that wants you to do so much! It often thinks that your life will go catastrophically wrong if you don't do all the things, and that creates an atmosphere of pressure that sets off the other part. Talking to both those parts helps lower the stakes to a point where it becomes incrementally easier to get started on things. I worry that advice about "enduring the psychological comfort of [doing the steps]", while it works short term, over time just increases the stakes in a way that will push the procrastinating part to resist more and more.
I know there's a trade-off and on any given day, there's a thing that needs to be done, and just pushing through is the best way to get done RIGHT NOW what you need to do RIGHT NOW. I just found that over time it put me more in opposition to myself. I didn't get practice in sitting with the discomfort, I got practice in pushing through and hating it. For me, a more therapy-oriented and less discipline-oriented approach is the only way I've found to help things get better.
(I appreciate that your original text above is more nuanced than what I'm responding to btw -- I'm mainly responding to the facet of it that didn't really mention understanding the feelings that lead to being stuck, which I have personally found to be key)
I still deal with it, but I *suffer* from it less... it certainly seems less hard to get down to things than it used to, *and* the process of getting down to things is less painful. Has being gentler with myself been a productivity miracle? No, but I am slightly more conscious about how I choose to use my energy and I basically never feel like killing myself any more, so I'll take it.
I wish it asked the location immediately, because I spent a few minutes filling in the form before the location question came up and I realized it's available only in New York and San Francisco.
I finished reading “why greatness cannot be planned, the myth of the objective” by stanley and lehman, two AI researches and they outline something that some of us have always intuitively known and perhaps it will resonates a lot with the way you have planned to go about your life (highly recommend). If it’s one thing I know for certain now is that handling the anxiety of the unknown and allowing discovery and the stepping stones to reveal themselves to me has proven much more beneficial and a better fit for me than a top down approach. especially for people that have trouble understanding what feels good this type of going about things is the healthiest way imho
Hi Ava, first time commenter. I like what you're saying about stuckness but I have a slightly different perspective, as someone who's been pretty successful in my career (Senior Director at a tech company, mid-50s M) but who's always struggled with procrastination. When I'm deep in the swamps of being stuck, the "engineering" approaches -- break it down to small parts and do the first small part, or slightly more psychologically, CBT -- don't work, because the resistance is to *doing the thing*, and no matter how you break it down into small steps or consciously reprogram yourself, all of that resistance transfers to the first step and tries to stop you doing even the smallest thing you can. The thing that works for me short-term when I'm stuck is deadline panic, when it's literally impossible to not do the thing. But the thing that's worked for me long-term is self-compassion / IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy): talk to the part that's trying to block you as if it's trying to help; understand how it thinks it's helping you; agree that the things it's trying to protect you from are scary. And also talk to the part that wants you to do so much! It often thinks that your life will go catastrophically wrong if you don't do all the things, and that creates an atmosphere of pressure that sets off the other part. Talking to both those parts helps lower the stakes to a point where it becomes incrementally easier to get started on things. I worry that advice about "enduring the psychological comfort of [doing the steps]", while it works short term, over time just increases the stakes in a way that will push the procrastinating part to resist more and more.
I know there's a trade-off and on any given day, there's a thing that needs to be done, and just pushing through is the best way to get done RIGHT NOW what you need to do RIGHT NOW. I just found that over time it put me more in opposition to myself. I didn't get practice in sitting with the discomfort, I got practice in pushing through and hating it. For me, a more therapy-oriented and less discipline-oriented approach is the only way I've found to help things get better.
(I appreciate that your original text above is more nuanced than what I'm responding to btw -- I'm mainly responding to the facet of it that didn't really mention understanding the feelings that lead to being stuck, which I have personally found to be key)
Love this.
Do you still deal with procrastination? How has it evolved as you’ve worked through this?
I still deal with it, but I *suffer* from it less... it certainly seems less hard to get down to things than it used to, *and* the process of getting down to things is less painful. Has being gentler with myself been a productivity miracle? No, but I am slightly more conscious about how I choose to use my energy and I basically never feel like killing myself any more, so I'll take it.
I wish it asked the location immediately, because I spent a few minutes filling in the form before the location question came up and I realized it's available only in New York and San Francisco.
I finished reading “why greatness cannot be planned, the myth of the objective” by stanley and lehman, two AI researches and they outline something that some of us have always intuitively known and perhaps it will resonates a lot with the way you have planned to go about your life (highly recommend). If it’s one thing I know for certain now is that handling the anxiety of the unknown and allowing discovery and the stepping stones to reveal themselves to me has proven much more beneficial and a better fit for me than a top down approach. especially for people that have trouble understanding what feels good this type of going about things is the healthiest way imho