I\u2019d get home from school every day and I\u2019d avoid doing my homework for as long as possible. Why? I didn\u2019t like homework, I guess. It seemed boring, tedious, unimportant. And I <\/em>assumed<\/em><\/strong> I\u2019d be able to do it really quick whenever I finally decided to do it.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019d tell myself that I\u2019d get it done before going to bed, and go on to watch anime, play video games, read books, etc. I spent all my time in the Dark Playground<\/a>. Next thing I\u2019d know it would be 1am, and I\u2019d be really tired and sleepy with nothing done. I\u2019d sit with my books for maybe 30 minutes to an hour, sometimes with a can of coffee or Red Bull. And I\u2019d have the sinking feeling that I was somehow \u2018mysteriously\u2019 in a terrible, no-win situation.<\/p>\n Eventually (maybe around 2am), I\u2019d get exhausted and try to bargain with myself. \u201cI can\u2019t work like this. Let\u2019s sleep for a couple of hours, set an alarm for 4am, and get it done before school starts.\u201d I\u2019d almost always sleep through the alarm, or wake up groggy and decide that sleep is more important. Finally my mum would come into my room and wake me up to go for school. At this point I\u2019d be panicking and anxious. I\u2019d try to get my work done on the bus on the way to school, or I\u2019d try to sneak off and do it somewhere. If I knew that the teacher was going to be especially mad at me, sometimes I\u2019d convince myself I was sick. Sometimes I\u2019d actually fall sick, and I\u2019d feel sorry for myself for having to suffer so much.<\/p>\n I simply assumed that I\u2019d be able to do my homework really quickly when I decided to. I systematically, consistently, repeatedly miscalculated how much time I would require to do the work. I never bothered to measure how much time it took me, and I\u2019d get burnt over and over and over. And when I\u2019d fail, it would never occur to me that my assumption might be wrong. It was like an optical illusion, a persistent bug in my mental software.<\/p>\n Why? It seems to me that it\u2019s because it was easier and more comforting to maintain the illusion than to confront reality.<\/p>\n This weird habit has stuck with me my entire life so far. To this day I continue to overestimate how much I can do in a given time period, even when it\u2019s now work that I recognize as important to me. I constantly assume that I\u2019m somehow special, and that this time is different. The cycle of denial and bargaining is troublingly similar to the sort of patterns we see in alcoholics and drug addicts.<\/p>\n The Ray Dalio quote says it all: I was refusing to accept and deal with reality.<\/em>(This is still a problem.)<\/p>\n Specifically, the reality of my own personal capacity and ability. It was somehow comforting or self-assuring to believe that I possessed some sort of superhuman capability, that one day I would wake up and be overcome with inspiration and completely decimate my todo list and take care of all my obligations all at once. (Hyperbole and a Half covers this quite well<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The longer I live, and the more experience I accumulate, the more painfully obvious that this isn\u2019t the case and will never be the case. I make fun of people who play the lottery, and yet inside my head I\u2019m playing some kind of lottery too. I keep betting on vanishingly tiny odds that I\u2019ll be able to do something I\u2019ve never actually done before, and I keep getting burnt for it. I suffer from a sort of Gambler\u2019s Fallacy\u2013 this dogged belief that somehow I am special, somehow I\u2019m going to beat the odds, my day will come, yadda yadda.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s the first trap. Believing in something that isn\u2019t true, partially because it\u2019s comforting, because it\u2019s easy, and because it enables me to feed my addiction(s). It\u2019s a lie that that the wily saboteur<\/a> in my head tells myself.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s a second trap. After several failures in a row, and being confronted by the nasty outcomes of said failures\u2013 angry teachers, angry parents, stress, frustration, shame, etc\u2013 I often have a \u201cmoment of awareness\u201d. A moment where I temporarily open my eyes and go \u201cWow, this is messed up.\u201d<\/p>\n The correct thing to do would be to go, \u201cI should do something to fix this,\u201d and then execute the fix. But that\u2019s hard, and boring, and painful.<\/p>\n The simpler, easier thing to do is to get fixated on my feelings. I feel bad. I feel guilty. I feel ashamed. I feel embarrassed. I resent myself. I beat myself up internally as some sort of penance for my sins. THIS IS A TRAP.<\/em><\/strong>It feels like there\u2019s some sort of important emotional labor going on, but it actually achieves nothing. In fact, it actually distracts<\/em> from the actions needed to be taken in order to rectify the problem.<\/p>\n Imagine an alcoholic crying and pleading with her loved ones, saying \u201cI messed up, I\u2019m so terrible, I\u2019m so sorry,\u201d and then getting drunk again afterwards because she feels so bad. That\u2019s basically what happens.<\/p>\n Consider how, in the broader scheme of things, the intensity and seeming sincerity of the self-flagellation is actually far less relevant than the subsequent actions that the person takes. And yet somehow there\u2019s often this strange impulse to focus on how big and important the feelings are.<\/em><\/p>\n Beating yourself up over your failures is every bit as egotistic as convincing yourself you\u2019re amazing.<\/strong> This seems like an unpleasant thing to say, but I\u2019ve found it to be true. And that\u2019s not a coincidence\u2013 the more unpleasant the truth, the less likely anybody\u2019s going to intervene, and now you\u2019re trapped in this delightful ego bubble of Poor Little Me.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk for a second about how people react to seeing a person like this. There are a few responses:<\/p>\n The ego likes all<\/em> of these responses. When comforted, it feels good, and nothing gets done about the problem. When confronted, it gets defensive, and now we\u2019re fighting about other things instead of addressing the problem. When ignored, it continues to fester in its filth.<\/p>\n The only real solution I\u2019ve seen is a sort of enlightened, questioning engagement. (My boss is really good at this. He has a way of simply asking questions in a non-accusatory tone, which my ego has no idea how to deal with. He\u2019d ask, \u201cHow come this didn\u2019t get done when you said you\u2019d do it?\u201d, and my brain would think, \u201cBecause I\u2019m a horrible person!\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200awhich is the ego talking, again. But he\u2019d ask it in such a neutral, curious tone that he\u2019d get me curious too, and make me realize that I personally avoid identifying the real causes. Because the real causes are boring to behold and painful to deal with\u2013 it boils down to things like sleep, nutrition, keeping a schedule and sticking to it, all the little things that require effort that don\u2019t immediately yield nice payoffs.)<\/p>\n The ego, or the saboteur, whatever you want to call it\u2013 is only interested in narrow, unenlightened self-preservation. <\/strong>It wants to maintain the status quo, and it will cry and whine and rage and scream to do it. There\u2019s a parent\/child dynamic<\/a> at play here, whether internally inside the person\u2019s head, or between the person and others. And the goal of the child is to get away from the \u201cproblem\u201d or \u201cpain\u201d of being held accountable. It will do whatever it takes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve ever witnessed children manipulating their parents in order to get ice-cream or fast food, you\u2019ll know how horrifying it can be. It sometimes literally looks like the child is possessed by some sort of demon. Then think about how there\u2019s a demon inside you too\u2013 it cooperates when you do what it wants, but otherwise it raises hell.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a third trap beyond the first two layers.<\/strong> The one where you think you\u2019ve finally got it. Where you recognize the first two traps, and you\u2019re convinced that you\u2019ve got it figured out, that it\u2019s not going to get you anymore, so you don\u2019t need to \u201cpolice yourself\u201d. [1] And so you happily, confidently write a blogpost about it and share it with the world, problem solved!<\/p>\n Nope, that\u2019s another trap. Everything about the ego resists examination, introspection, accountability. This is such a reliable, predictable thing that you can practically navigate by it: Whenever you start to feel like you\u2019ve \u201csolved the problem\u201d, realize that you\u2019re being hoodwinked. Instead, develop a taste and appreciation for doing the work.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve actually written many variants of this blogpost many times over the years. \u201cI didn\u2019t do well because I didn\u2019t study<\/a>\u201d [2013], \u201cKilling the Saboteur<\/a>\u201d [2014], \u201cSearching under streetlights<\/a>\u201d [2015]. Evidently, my ego really enjoys doing this sort of thing. Time spent writing about a problem and outlining a problem is time spent not addressing the problem. Commiserating feels good, but it ends up feeding the ego too.<\/p>\n The only way out is to confront and accept reality. <\/strong>To navigate not by feelings (which are misleading and manipulative if you have a saboteur in your head like I do), but by evidence. For me, this means taking a good hard look at my calendar every day, keeping track of the work I\u2019m doing, seeing what my output actually is, how much I can actually do. It means developing a taste for pain and discomfort. It means revisiting and reviewing how each day goes, so that I can make adjustments and learn from my mistakes and do better.<\/p>\n And it means ending this essay here, and getting my ass to work.\u00a0\ud83d\ude1b I hope this is helpful to somebody.<\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n [1] I\u2019m not saying that you DO need to police yourself. That\u2019s very loaded language, and it\u2019s designed to fail the same way unsustainable diets are designed to fail. You need to discipline <\/em>yourself, the way a musician or comedian is disciplined\u2013 they improvise on stage, but they put in decades of deliberate practice beforehand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a kid, I was stuck in a very silly cycle. I\u2019d get home from school every day and I\u2019d avoid doing my homework for as long as possible. Why? I didn\u2019t like homework, I guess. It seemed boring, tedious, unimportant. And I assumed I\u2019d be able to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[576],"tags":[607],"class_list":["post-11247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-self-repair","tag-bestof"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/beat-self.jpg?fit=630%2C420&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-2Vp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The funny thing is, I never really questioned the assumption stated earlier.<\/h3>\n
What exactly is going on here?<\/h3>\n
\n