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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   858 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 13, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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#Procrastination thoughts:

(As always with Wellness Wednesdays, if you have never suffered from this problem, please don’t proclaim How Easy This Has Always Been For Me, You Just Need To Buckle Down And Do It.)

On ADHD-style time-blindness: Some moments are a destination, others a path to other moments. Learn to differentiate these, not mistaking a path-moment for a destination-moment… or vice versa. Playing with your sister’s kids is a destination moment, not something just to get through. Playing games on your phone with as little depth as Cookie Clicker out of boredom is a path-moment; don’t build a life around it.

On the states of mind of procrastination: I find my personality shifts depending on the state of my distractions, not the state of my work:

  • I don’t want this Now to end, because I’m harvesting Fun, even of the worst and most boring sort. Or maybe the best sort, because I’ve got a schedule but yeah, I’ve got time. I am “Not Done” playing. I am in Freud’s id mode, and my name is Not Done.
  • I don’t want people to stop me from completing my procrastination activity, because it cost me too much hassle to get to this point and I’ll be damned if I give up the progress, but time is summoning me out of Now-mode, and I know I have responsibilities to get to, and I am “Almost Done” with my distractions. I’m in Freud’s ego mode, and my name is Almost Done.
  • I am doing the needful and my distractions are outside the warp bubble of flow mode. Time and I are partners here, I am digesting time as fuel. Whatever I was distracted with, it’s in the past and “I’m Done” with it whether I finished it or not. I’m in Freud’s superego mode, and my name is I’m Done.

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