Symptoms: You frequently find yourself unmotivated to work on your most important tasks. You feel that you have to force yourself to do basic tasks like laundry that are important for basic functioning.
Mental Reflex: Check Desire
Trigger: You’ve thought about doing something that would feel valuable to you.
Action 1: Imagine Vivid Outcome
Description: The goal of this mental to move is to, in as vivid detail as possible, imagine what it would be like for this task to be complete.
Form: Two important things when you’re imagining the outcome. Firstly, you should be imagining the state where there are no more outcomes to do. If imagining taking out the trash, don’t imagine the moment when you’ve put it on the curb, imagine the trash is already on the curb and you’re back inside, looking at it. Secondly, imagine as vividly as possible. You want sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. You want to be viewing the scene in first person. The goal is to imagine it so vividly you can get a sense of how it will feel when complete.
Exercise: List 3-5 things you’d like to do, that feel a bit aversive and you can complete in 15 minutes or less. For each of them, imagine your vivid outcome, get to where you can instantly do the move with good form.
Action 2: Desire Check
Description: The goal of this mental move is to get a broad gestalt of how you’ll feel once you complete a task, its’ done on the vivid outcome that you imagine.
Form: It can be very easy to get caught up in all of the subtle feelings around a specific outcome. You want to get good at chunking those feelings together to get the gestalt. You should get a broad sense of whether all of you desires to create this outcome (Unqualified Desire), All of you desires not to create this outcome, you don’t have any feelings one way or the other, or you have mixed feelings about the outcome.
Exercise: For each of your items in your list, take your vivid outcome, and do a Desire Check, until you feel like you can do it with good form.
Reflex: If you think of an item that feels valuable to you, then Imagine Vivid Outcome and Desire Check
Exercise: Imagine a version of yourself that finds this mental reflex easy, fun, and intrinsically rewarding. In your head, as that person, rehearse 5 times a situation in the recent past or the future, and how you would react as that person.
Mental Reflex: Install Resolve
Trigger: Unqualified Desire
Mental Move: Desire Contrasting
Prerequisite: You’ve already checked desire and have unqualified desire for your vivid outcome. If you don’t have unqualified desire, you’ll need another mental reflex designed to create unqualified desire.
Description: The idea here is that you’re going to, in your mind, create a tension between what is and what could be. Your mind will then move to close that gap, creating resolve for your task.
Step 1: Make the imagine of your vivid outcome and the feeling of unqualified desire strong and stable in your mind.
Step 2: Bring up the imagine of the current state of your project, and any feelings associated with that, while still holding the vivid outcome and unqualified desire stable.
Step 3: Overlay what is on top of what could be. If it’s an image of your current state and end state. Make the end state transparent and overlay it on top of current state. If it’s a feeling, imagine the feeling of what could be moving towards the feeling of what is in your body, and overlaying on top. Same for sounds, proprioception, etc.
Step 4: Notice your brain wanting to resolve that tension. Let that process happen, and stabilize the resulting resolve to work on the task.
Exercise: For each item on your list that had unqualified desire, do your desire contrasting move. Let yourself do one small step towards each task based on your resolve, before letting that resolve go and moving to the next task.
Reflex: If unqualified desire, then desire contrasting.
Exercise: Imagine a version of yourself that finds this mental reflex easy, fun, and intrinsically rewarding. In your head, as that person, rehearse 5 times a situation in the recent past or the future, and how you would react as that person.
Meditation Exercise
For 10 minutes, you’ll ask yourself “What’s important to do?”
You’ll notice what comes up for you and do your desire check.
If you feel unqualified resolve, you’ll do your desire contrasting to feel resolve.
Then you’ll drop your resolve, and repeat from the beginning
Each time, make micro-corrections, how can you make your form better on the next go around?
Deliberate Work Session Exercise
Brainstorm tasks you can make progress on in five minutes or less.
Set a five minute timer.
Use desire contrasting to create resolve.
Work until the timer goes off.
Repeat 5 times for 5 different tasks
At the end, ask yourself what about your form was great, what you’d like to improve for the future, and what you learned about this cognitive strategy.
Conscious Work Session Exercise
Go through a normal work session, using pomodoros.
At the end of each work session, ask yourself if you succesfully used this cognitive strategy when you needed it. Ask yourself what was good about your form, and what needed to be improved.
Try to remain a bit more conscious of these items in your next pomodoro.
Cognitive Strategy: Desire Contrasting
Symptoms: You frequently find yourself unmotivated to work on your most important tasks. You feel that you have to force yourself to do basic tasks like laundry that are important for basic functioning.
Mental Reflex: Check Desire
Trigger: You’ve thought about doing something that would feel valuable to you.
Action 1: Imagine Vivid Outcome
Description: The goal of this mental to move is to, in as vivid detail as possible, imagine what it would be like for this task to be complete.
Form: Two important things when you’re imagining the outcome. Firstly, you should be imagining the state where there are no more outcomes to do. If imagining taking out the trash, don’t imagine the moment when you’ve put it on the curb, imagine the trash is already on the curb and you’re back inside, looking at it. Secondly, imagine as vividly as possible. You want sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. You want to be viewing the scene in first person. The goal is to imagine it so vividly you can get a sense of how it will feel when complete.
Exercise: List 3-5 things you’d like to do, that feel a bit aversive and you can complete in 15 minutes or less. For each of them, imagine your vivid outcome, get to where you can instantly do the move with good form.
Action 2: Desire Check
Description: The goal of this mental move is to get a broad gestalt of how you’ll feel once you complete a task, its’ done on the vivid outcome that you imagine.
Form: It can be very easy to get caught up in all of the subtle feelings around a specific outcome. You want to get good at chunking those feelings together to get the gestalt. You should get a broad sense of whether all of you desires to create this outcome (Unqualified Desire), All of you desires not to create this outcome, you don’t have any feelings one way or the other, or you have mixed feelings about the outcome.
Exercise: For each of your items in your list, take your vivid outcome, and do a Desire Check, until you feel like you can do it with good form.
Reflex: If you think of an item that feels valuable to you, then Imagine Vivid Outcome and Desire Check
Exercise: Imagine a version of yourself that finds this mental reflex easy, fun, and intrinsically rewarding. In your head, as that person, rehearse 5 times a situation in the recent past or the future, and how you would react as that person.
Mental Reflex: Install Resolve
Trigger: Unqualified Desire
Mental Move: Desire Contrasting
Prerequisite: You’ve already checked desire and have unqualified desire for your vivid outcome. If you don’t have unqualified desire, you’ll need another mental reflex designed to create unqualified desire.
Description: The idea here is that you’re going to, in your mind, create a tension between what is and what could be. Your mind will then move to close that gap, creating resolve for your task.
Step 1: Make the imagine of your vivid outcome and the feeling of unqualified desire strong and stable in your mind.
Step 2: Bring up the imagine of the current state of your project, and any feelings associated with that, while still holding the vivid outcome and unqualified desire stable.
Step 3: Overlay what is on top of what could be. If it’s an image of your current state and end state. Make the end state transparent and overlay it on top of current state. If it’s a feeling, imagine the feeling of what could be moving towards the feeling of what is in your body, and overlaying on top. Same for sounds, proprioception, etc.
Step 4: Notice your brain wanting to resolve that tension. Let that process happen, and stabilize the resulting resolve to work on the task.
Exercise: For each item on your list that had unqualified desire, do your desire contrasting move. Let yourself do one small step towards each task based on your resolve, before letting that resolve go and moving to the next task.
Reflex: If unqualified desire, then desire contrasting.
Exercise: Imagine a version of yourself that finds this mental reflex easy, fun, and intrinsically rewarding. In your head, as that person, rehearse 5 times a situation in the recent past or the future, and how you would react as that person.
Meditation Exercise
For 10 minutes, you’ll ask yourself “What’s important to do?”
You’ll notice what comes up for you and do your desire check.
If you feel unqualified resolve, you’ll do your desire contrasting to feel resolve.
Then you’ll drop your resolve, and repeat from the beginning
Each time, make micro-corrections, how can you make your form better on the next go around?
Deliberate Work Session Exercise
Brainstorm tasks you can make progress on in five minutes or less.
Set a five minute timer.
Use desire contrasting to create resolve.
Work until the timer goes off.
Repeat 5 times for 5 different tasks
At the end, ask yourself what about your form was great, what you’d like to improve for the future, and what you learned about this cognitive strategy.
Conscious Work Session Exercise
Go through a normal work session, using pomodoros.
At the end of each work session, ask yourself if you succesfully used this cognitive strategy when you needed it. Ask yourself what was good about your form, and what needed to be improved.
Try to remain a bit more conscious of these items in your next pomodoro.