The one trick that comes to mind is that if I notice myself feeling guilty about not doing X, then I instantly tell myself that I’m not allowed to do X for the rest of the day, and am indeed obligated to do something else. I think that the mechanism behind that is that it allows me to think about X without feeling guilty about not doing it, which makes it more likely that I’ll have natural motivation for doing it the next day.
Of course this trick doesn’t work on things that you really do need to have done by the end of the day. But if it is not absolutely urgent, and the outside view suggests that you wouldn’t get the thing done today anyway, then you might as well take the rest of the day off with a clean conscience. It also helps to remind yourself that by managing to successfully take a guilt-free day/evening off, you’re making an investment to your future productivity, so you have full reason to enjoy it without feeling guilty. (I guess this could lead you to feeling guilty about feeling guilty. Fortunately that has never happened to me.)
Having a generally good mental health also helps, so all the basic advice about that also applies: eat well, get enough sleep and exercise, maintain your social life, etc.
The two things I’ve found to work here are not to use negative emotions to keep me from doing things that I want to avoid, but rather to intellectually deconstruct those things until they cease to have power over me. For example, I once tried a low fat, low carb diet. Not fun, and naturally I had intense cravings for things that were sweet and fatty. So when I went to the grocery store, I didn’t avoid the bakery. I went straight there and analyzed the artistic value of the cakes—examining how the frosting had been applied, the colors that had been used and such. It cut the instinctive urge to eat them and reinforced that my diet was a mental process—whether or not it was an optimal diet was another question entirely!
The other thing is that the only way I can be optimally productive is when my productive activity is also my passion. I can find passion in many things, though some are more closely aligned with my abilities than others, some are more closely aligned with maximizing my long-term income than others, and some are more closely aligned with the greater good of humanity than others. Finding a passion that has a significant degree of alignment in all three areas has taken a while, but the results are worth it. The bottom line is, if I am doing something “productive” that I am not passionate about, it isn’t productivity that is truly meaningful to me on a basic level, so I don’t get as much emotional reward for my effort and it becomes just a form of work. I can only continue the process by distracting myself with side interests, and if I try too hard to focus on the activity eventually I will burn out. But now that my productivity has become aligned with my passion the two feelings of accomplishment and joy reinforce each other powerfully and productivity becomes rather addictive.
There is a definite argument for maintaining a degree of social engagement, but I am trying to reach out through trade organizations and find local meet-ups with others in my industry so that I get a win-win here too.
I’ve been living like that for a long time, but just recently started noticing it.
Do you have any specific advice for how to do this?
The one trick that comes to mind is that if I notice myself feeling guilty about not doing X, then I instantly tell myself that I’m not allowed to do X for the rest of the day, and am indeed obligated to do something else. I think that the mechanism behind that is that it allows me to think about X without feeling guilty about not doing it, which makes it more likely that I’ll have natural motivation for doing it the next day.
Of course this trick doesn’t work on things that you really do need to have done by the end of the day. But if it is not absolutely urgent, and the outside view suggests that you wouldn’t get the thing done today anyway, then you might as well take the rest of the day off with a clean conscience. It also helps to remind yourself that by managing to successfully take a guilt-free day/evening off, you’re making an investment to your future productivity, so you have full reason to enjoy it without feeling guilty. (I guess this could lead you to feeling guilty about feeling guilty. Fortunately that has never happened to me.)
Having a generally good mental health also helps, so all the basic advice about that also applies: eat well, get enough sleep and exercise, maintain your social life, etc.
The two things I’ve found to work here are not to use negative emotions to keep me from doing things that I want to avoid, but rather to intellectually deconstruct those things until they cease to have power over me. For example, I once tried a low fat, low carb diet. Not fun, and naturally I had intense cravings for things that were sweet and fatty. So when I went to the grocery store, I didn’t avoid the bakery. I went straight there and analyzed the artistic value of the cakes—examining how the frosting had been applied, the colors that had been used and such. It cut the instinctive urge to eat them and reinforced that my diet was a mental process—whether or not it was an optimal diet was another question entirely!
The other thing is that the only way I can be optimally productive is when my productive activity is also my passion. I can find passion in many things, though some are more closely aligned with my abilities than others, some are more closely aligned with maximizing my long-term income than others, and some are more closely aligned with the greater good of humanity than others. Finding a passion that has a significant degree of alignment in all three areas has taken a while, but the results are worth it. The bottom line is, if I am doing something “productive” that I am not passionate about, it isn’t productivity that is truly meaningful to me on a basic level, so I don’t get as much emotional reward for my effort and it becomes just a form of work. I can only continue the process by distracting myself with side interests, and if I try too hard to focus on the activity eventually I will burn out. But now that my productivity has become aligned with my passion the two feelings of accomplishment and joy reinforce each other powerfully and productivity becomes rather addictive.
There is a definite argument for maintaining a degree of social engagement, but I am trying to reach out through trade organizations and find local meet-ups with others in my industry so that I get a win-win here too.