Something I noticed about what I take certain internal events to mean:
Over the past 4 years I’ve had trouble being in touch with “what I want”. I’ve made a lot of progress in the past year (a huge part was noticing that I’d previously intentionally cut off communication with the parts of me that want).
Previously when I’d ask “what do I want right now?” I was basically asking, “What would be the most edifying to my self-concept that is also doable right now?”
So I’ve managed to stop doing that a lot. Last week, I noticed that “what do I want to do right now?” or “do I want to do X right now?” turns into “am I immediately able to think of interesting parts of X? Are parts of X already loaded into my mind and my brain is working on it?”
Noticing this is super helpful. Basically I was asking “am I already working on X in my head?” and then deciding to work on it explicitly. Consequences of this: If what I was working on in the morning wasn’t met with hard road blocks, I’d feel that I’d want to just do that thing for the whole day, and that switching would be “betraying my wants”. If I did hit a road block, or my mind was just DONE with the first task of the day, then I could switch.
On the opposite side, if I thought of an activity, and it didn’t immediately boot up the relevant and interesting parts, then I’d take that as “I don’t want to do this” or “Oh, I guess that feels boring right now.”
Now I can work on better predicting “If I did start doing this, how much would I like it?” and I don’t have to implicitly rely only on “Am I already working on it?”
Something I noticed about what I take certain internal events to mean:
Over the past 4 years I’ve had trouble being in touch with “what I want”. I’ve made a lot of progress in the past year (a huge part was noticing that I’d previously intentionally cut off communication with the parts of me that want).
Previously when I’d ask “what do I want right now?” I was basically asking, “What would be the most edifying to my self-concept that is also doable right now?”
So I’ve managed to stop doing that a lot. Last week, I noticed that “what do I want to do right now?” or “do I want to do X right now?” turns into “am I immediately able to think of interesting parts of X? Are parts of X already loaded into my mind and my brain is working on it?”
Noticing this is super helpful. Basically I was asking “am I already working on X in my head?” and then deciding to work on it explicitly. Consequences of this: If what I was working on in the morning wasn’t met with hard road blocks, I’d feel that I’d want to just do that thing for the whole day, and that switching would be “betraying my wants”. If I did hit a road block, or my mind was just DONE with the first task of the day, then I could switch.
On the opposite side, if I thought of an activity, and it didn’t immediately boot up the relevant and interesting parts, then I’d take that as “I don’t want to do this” or “Oh, I guess that feels boring right now.”
Now I can work on better predicting “If I did start doing this, how much would I like it?” and I don’t have to implicitly rely only on “Am I already working on it?”