People are different, I guess. “Deciding” to do something on Friday night has little correlation with whether I will actually do it on Friday night, or at all. It mainly just makes me feel bad when I haven’t written the essay as of Saturday morning.
See, there’s a part of me that really doesn’t like writing essays—actually, not writing essays in particular, as I’ve mostly fixed that problem, but just being productive, doing effortful things. If I try to power through it, that part of me complains so loud that I’m very motivated to rationalize doing whatever it is later. Giving it advance warning just makes it complain louder, if anything. But it’s easily distracted.
I can’t identify with what you say about resenting being “tricked”. I actually feel pretty good when I successfully circumvent the part of me that doesn’t care what happens tomorrow. Now, ideally, I’d like to train the complaining part of me to just shut up when I do productive things, but that’s not easy, and I suspect I’ll need to experience many successes first so that I can associate trying with good things.
That’s a very interesting difference. I find that being psychologically prepared to do something productive makes it way easier. If I trick myself into going for a swim by telling the lazy part of myself that I’ll just go for 20 minutes, you can bet that if 20 minutes is up and I try to motivate myself to keep going, there will be several sub-components of my mind screaming ‘but you promised!’ This is even more true for things that aren’t habits for me. (Exercise is something I do pretty easily by pure habit.)
People are different, I guess. “Deciding” to do something on Friday night has little correlation with whether I will actually do it on Friday night, or at all. It mainly just makes me feel bad when I haven’t written the essay as of Saturday morning.
See, there’s a part of me that really doesn’t like writing essays—actually, not writing essays in particular, as I’ve mostly fixed that problem, but just being productive, doing effortful things. If I try to power through it, that part of me complains so loud that I’m very motivated to rationalize doing whatever it is later. Giving it advance warning just makes it complain louder, if anything. But it’s easily distracted.
I can’t identify with what you say about resenting being “tricked”. I actually feel pretty good when I successfully circumvent the part of me that doesn’t care what happens tomorrow. Now, ideally, I’d like to train the complaining part of me to just shut up when I do productive things, but that’s not easy, and I suspect I’ll need to experience many successes first so that I can associate trying with good things.
That’s a very interesting difference. I find that being psychologically prepared to do something productive makes it way easier. If I trick myself into going for a swim by telling the lazy part of myself that I’ll just go for 20 minutes, you can bet that if 20 minutes is up and I try to motivate myself to keep going, there will be several sub-components of my mind screaming ‘but you promised!’ This is even more true for things that aren’t habits for me. (Exercise is something I do pretty easily by pure habit.)