When you have a self-image as a productive, hardworking person, the usual Marshmallow Test gets kind of reversed. Normally, there’s some unpleasant task you have to do which is beneficial in the long run. But in the Reverse Marshmallow Test, forcing yourself to work too hard makes you feel Good and Virtuous in the short run but leads to burnout in the long run. I think conceptualizing of it this way has been helpful for me.
Yes! I am really interested in this sort of dynamic; for me things in this vicinity were a big deal I think. I have a couple half-written blog posts that relate to this that I may manage to post over the next week or two; I’d also be really curious for any detail about how this seemed to be working psychologically in you or others (what gears, etc.).
I have been using the term “narrative addiction” to describe the thing that in hindsight I think was going on with me here—I was running a whole lot of my actions off of a backchain from a particular story about how my actions mattered, in a way that weakened my access to full-on leisure, non-backchained friendship, and various other good ways to see and do stuff.
One of the tricky bits here IMO is that it’s hard to do non-backchained stuff on purpose, by backchaining. Some other trick is needed to get out of a given trying-to-link-everything-to-a-particular-narrative box.
Critch has two older blog posts I quite like on related subjects:
Before, I was a person who prided myself on succeeding at marshmallow tests. This caused me to frame work as a thing I want to succeed on, and work too hard.
Then, I read Meaningful Rest and Replacing Guilt, and realized that often times I was working later to get more done that day, even though it would obviously be detrimental to the next day. This makes the reverse marshmallow test dynamic very intuitively obvious.
Now I am still a person who prides myself on my marshmallow prowess, but hopefully I’ve internalized an externality or something. Staying up late to work doesn’t feel Good and Virtuous, it feels Bad and like I’m knowingly Goodharting myself.
Note that this all still boils down to narrative-stuff. I’m nowhere near the level of zen that it takes to Just Pursue The Goal, with no intermediating narratives or drives based on self-image. I don’t think this patch has been particularly moved me towards that either, it’s just helpful for where I’m currently at.
When you have a self-image as a productive, hardworking person, the usual Marshmallow Test gets kind of reversed. Normally, there’s some unpleasant task you have to do which is beneficial in the long run. But in the Reverse Marshmallow Test, forcing yourself to work too hard makes you feel Good and Virtuous in the short run but leads to burnout in the long run. I think conceptualizing of it this way has been helpful for me.
Yes! I am really interested in this sort of dynamic; for me things in this vicinity were a big deal I think. I have a couple half-written blog posts that relate to this that I may manage to post over the next week or two; I’d also be really curious for any detail about how this seemed to be working psychologically in you or others (what gears, etc.).
I have been using the term “narrative addiction” to describe the thing that in hindsight I think was going on with me here—I was running a whole lot of my actions off of a backchain from a particular story about how my actions mattered, in a way that weakened my access to full-on leisure, non-backchained friendship, and various other good ways to see and do stuff.
One of the tricky bits here IMO is that it’s hard to do non-backchained stuff on purpose, by backchaining. Some other trick is needed to get out of a given trying-to-link-everything-to-a-particular-narrative box.
Critch has two older blog posts I quite like on related subjects:
Fun does not preclude burnout
Embracing boredom as exploratory overhead cost
My best guess at mechanism:
Before, I was a person who prided myself on succeeding at marshmallow tests. This caused me to frame work as a thing I want to succeed on, and work too hard.
Then, I read Meaningful Rest and Replacing Guilt, and realized that often times I was working later to get more done that day, even though it would obviously be detrimental to the next day. This makes the reverse marshmallow test dynamic very intuitively obvious.
Now I am still a person who prides myself on my marshmallow prowess, but hopefully I’ve internalized an externality or something. Staying up late to work doesn’t feel Good and Virtuous, it feels Bad and like I’m knowingly Goodharting myself.
Note that this all still boils down to narrative-stuff. I’m nowhere near the level of zen that it takes to Just Pursue The Goal, with no intermediating narratives or drives based on self-image. I don’t think this patch has been particularly moved me towards that either, it’s just helpful for where I’m currently at.
Pain is Not The Unit of Effort as well as the “Believing in free will to earn merit” example under Beliefs as Emotional Strategies also seem relevant.