I definitely have had the experience of trying to live up to a standard and it feeling awful, which then inhibits the desire to make future attempts. I think that feeling indicates a need to investigate whether you’re making things difficult on yourself. For example, I would often attempt to learn too many things at once and do too much work at once because I thought the ideal person would basically be learning and working all the time. Then, when I felt myself breaking down it sent my stress levels through the roof because if I couldn’t keep going that meant I was just unable to be the ideal I wanted to be. Instead of asking, “okay, the way I’m doing this is clearly unsustainable, but the standard is still worthwhile, how do I change my way of thinking or going about this thing?”, I would just try to force myself to continue on, feeling constantly stressed about not failing.
But when I began to ask the question, I saw that I could decrease the work I was putting on myself to something I could actually manage all the time and that would be actually most productive in the long run. And I recognized that sometimes I’ll just be exhausted and unable to do something and that doesn’t make my whole attempt to live up to the standard a failure. This, it became easier to live up to the standard, or rather, my ideal standard shifted organically to the standard of how I think I can become the best me instead of the standard I ascribed to an unspecified ideal person who I am just not capable of being.
I definitely have had the experience of trying to live up to a standard and it feeling awful, which then inhibits the desire to make future attempts. I think that feeling indicates a need to investigate whether you’re making things difficult on yourself. For example, I would often attempt to learn too many things at once and do too much work at once because I thought the ideal person would basically be learning and working all the time. Then, when I felt myself breaking down it sent my stress levels through the roof because if I couldn’t keep going that meant I was just unable to be the ideal I wanted to be. Instead of asking, “okay, the way I’m doing this is clearly unsustainable, but the standard is still worthwhile, how do I change my way of thinking or going about this thing?”, I would just try to force myself to continue on, feeling constantly stressed about not failing.
But when I began to ask the question, I saw that I could decrease the work I was putting on myself to something I could actually manage all the time and that would be actually most productive in the long run. And I recognized that sometimes I’ll just be exhausted and unable to do something and that doesn’t make my whole attempt to live up to the standard a failure. This, it became easier to live up to the standard, or rather, my ideal standard shifted organically to the standard of how I think I can become the best me instead of the standard I ascribed to an unspecified ideal person who I am just not capable of being.
Yeah. I think this probably ties in strongly with Zvi’s post about slack.
It also feels (noncoincidentally) related to both with Zvi’s Out To Get You and some of the discussion/disagreement about EA stuff.