Agreed. Personal anecdote: once I redefined my “motivation problem” as a “depression and anxiety problem” a number of months ago, and began treating this depression and anxiety instead of wearily trying out yet another willpower hack, I have made more progress in being motivated in months than I had in the previous years.
This is exactly what I was doing- constantly looking for the system that would let me be successful while ignoring the root problems. I only accepted the anxiety when it got too bad to ignore. Can I ask what you’ve been doing that’s been so effective?
Two Disclaimers: First, I am not a doctor. Second, beware of other-optimizing. This advice is working well for me, but it may not work well for others.
The depression became obvious and major enough that I was forced to take action to stop it. The rationalizations had run dry, so I fully realized in both System 1 and System 2 that I was not “unmotivated”, I was mentally ill. Years of life hacks and half-assed lifestyle interventions had accomplished some, but not enough, so it was time for medications, which I had previously feared due to bad experiences with bupropion years earlier.
The constraints in my investigation: something effective for major depressive disorder in both the short-term to fight what I was then feeling and in the long-term to prevent relapse, non-serious side effects, anxiolytic properties, as there is comorbid OCD and social anxiety disorder (SA, also this is why I chose medications before psychotherapy), and a reasonable price. Tianeptine met these constraints, with the nice bonus of plausibly being a cognitive enhancer.
Within six weeks of use, the tianeptine decreased the depression such that it was time to focus on the next most serious drag on my productivity and happiness: OCD. Not being majorly depressed allowed me to develop exercise and meditation habits that reduced the OCD down to a similarly manageable level. The anxiolytic effects of the tianeptine and the reduced stress of not being seriously depressed probably also helped.
The depression and OCD were still there and still a nuisance, but they had become minor enough that it was time to continue prioritizing elsewhere. By then tianeptine’s anxiolytic properties had faded to mildness due to tolerance, though it has continued to be effective as an antidepressant that at least does not increase anxiety, which was my primary issue with bupropion.
Next on the list was either SA or an uncontrollable sleep cycle, both being about equally problematic. I chose to address the sleep cycle first because modafinil immediately came to mind as a plausible treatment, plus we’ve all heard of its reputation as an anti-akratic. In hindsight, I should have thought about this more thoroughly before leaping into it. Availability bias at work. Anxiety is an uncommon side effect, but I decided to take the risk. In hindsight, I ought to have realized that for people already dealing with multiple anxiety disorders, that anxiety side effect probably becomes a lot more more common. A statistics fail on my part.
So, I tried modafinil to control my sleep cycle and reduce akrasia, and instead I produced the unshakable certainty that unnamed, unseen monsters were out to get me. Whoops. Looks like my suspicion was correct that I have subclinical generalized anxiety disorder, because the modafinil had exacerbated it to unacceptable levels. The stress of experiencing this also triggered a depression relapse, so I then took myself off the modafinil. Soon enough I recovered to where I had been before trying it.
This leads me to the present. Now I am faced again with the choice of confronting either the sleep cycle problem, SA, or both. My System 1 is wary of fighting the sleep cycle again just yet after being burned last time, so SA it is. I have already taken the edge off, because of social skills training I started months ago and because of the interventions I’ve taken against OCD, but it is still serious enough to pursue a pharmacological solution.
First on my To Be Scrutinized list is kratom, as I have already been taking theanine for years now. I will investigate effectiveness, safety, cost, and personal fit. Whatever I try, I will also attempt exposure therapy alongside the anxiolytic effects of a medication. If I am successful, I will next have another go at fixing the sleep cycle, then I will either consider my options regarding the notoriously untreatable fact that I am on the autistic spectrum, or else move on to address the much decreased but still niggling depression and OCD.
i think I am inadvertedly doing something like this. Here is what I started recently:
stop drinking, the evening reward is only non-alcoholic beer
fairly heavy exercise, boxing 3 times a week and 100 pushups on other days
instead of feeling like fighting my addiction or laziness, doing the opposite, stopping fighting my better judgement (to work out and to not drink) even when I don’t feel like doing so. I don’t know how better to explain it. I am reinventing the bicameral mind basically: everything decided rationally is casted into an “upper self” that gives orders, and my normal self can only sigh and follow its orders even when it makes me feel not comfortable, still it is a submission to and not fighting the decisions of the upper self, instead of fighting the urges and instincts of the lower self
when having little to do at work, and spend a lot of time on LW or Reddit, schedule the day so that productive work is in the last 1-2 hours so I can go home with some pride and not feeling the day was worthless
counter-act the complete lack of socialization during work by listening to vocal music with interesting lyrics in the evening
However I have no idea if I am depressed or not and I strongly suspect that if your upbringing or culture is not exactly optimistic it is not such a clear cut case. I have clear anhedonia, but it does not make me passive or dyfunctional: I am able to do my duty in a “shut up and soldier on, feeling good is not required” way. I think if people don’t really expect happiness, it is hard to tell if they are depressed, if they find anhedonia normal and can function in it.
The similarity between our approaches is as you say: the realization that akrasia defeats frontal assaults with heavy casualties. The difference is that you are doing something like the “take right action without resistance” approach that I’ve encountered before in Buddhism, which matches up nicely with anhedonia (personally I am a hedonist, so this does not work for me); while I am attempting to root out the basic causes of my akrasia, down to the very sources, to change the way I feel in the first place. Both approaches have their merits, and I agree that proper choice of approach relative to the individual depends on factors like personality and culture. Have you encountered any other indirect approaches to defeating akrasia, as we are attempting at present?
The difference is that you are doing something like the “take right action without resistance” approach that I’ve encountered before in Buddhism, which matches up nicely with anhedonia (personally I am a hedonist, so this does not work for me);
That is interesting—you correctly predicted I was exposed to Buddhism (indeed practiced it for years, although this non-forced-action, wu-wei is from my earlier exposure to Taoism.
But it has nothing to do with anhedonia! First of all anhedonia is not enjoying stuff, not not wanting to enjoy stuff. It is not a choice or attitude, it is the illness. If you have or used to have depression you had it too—it is rather part of the definition itself. Second, if anything, the attitude I gleaned from Buddhism was very optimistic about fun and joy, my teacher is almost extremely hedonistic. This has more to do with my parents being blue-collar, and my cultural background is Mitteleuropa—I tried to hint on that with “shut up and soldier on”, it is a direct translation from “Maul halten und weiter dienen” (BTW my first language is not German but this saying describes the region rather well). Basically this is what you get from blue-collar parents. Don’t like your job? Shut up, you have a family to support. Soldier on. And so on.
Finally, do you think wu-wei prevents hedonism? I think if enjoyment means resting effortlessly in the here and now instead of hoping for or worrying about something in the future, it is more like a precondition for it.
Where this chain of reasoning breaks down for me is in the “without resistance” phase of “take right action without resistance”. If the resistance, both conscious and unconscious, is too strong, there will be no right action taken, whether I will it or no. So what I do instead is undermine the resistance itself. This is my precondition for taking right action. Do you see what I mean? Wu-wei prevents hedonism if wu-wei is essential to hedonism but there can be no wu-wei.
Agreed. Personal anecdote: once I redefined my “motivation problem” as a “depression and anxiety problem” a number of months ago, and began treating this depression and anxiety instead of wearily trying out yet another willpower hack, I have made more progress in being motivated in months than I had in the previous years.
This is exactly what I was doing- constantly looking for the system that would let me be successful while ignoring the root problems. I only accepted the anxiety when it got too bad to ignore. Can I ask what you’ve been doing that’s been so effective?
Two Disclaimers: First, I am not a doctor. Second, beware of other-optimizing. This advice is working well for me, but it may not work well for others.
The depression became obvious and major enough that I was forced to take action to stop it. The rationalizations had run dry, so I fully realized in both System 1 and System 2 that I was not “unmotivated”, I was mentally ill. Years of life hacks and half-assed lifestyle interventions had accomplished some, but not enough, so it was time for medications, which I had previously feared due to bad experiences with bupropion years earlier.
The constraints in my investigation: something effective for major depressive disorder in both the short-term to fight what I was then feeling and in the long-term to prevent relapse, non-serious side effects, anxiolytic properties, as there is comorbid OCD and social anxiety disorder (SA, also this is why I chose medications before psychotherapy), and a reasonable price. Tianeptine met these constraints, with the nice bonus of plausibly being a cognitive enhancer.
Within six weeks of use, the tianeptine decreased the depression such that it was time to focus on the next most serious drag on my productivity and happiness: OCD. Not being majorly depressed allowed me to develop exercise and meditation habits that reduced the OCD down to a similarly manageable level. The anxiolytic effects of the tianeptine and the reduced stress of not being seriously depressed probably also helped.
The depression and OCD were still there and still a nuisance, but they had become minor enough that it was time to continue prioritizing elsewhere. By then tianeptine’s anxiolytic properties had faded to mildness due to tolerance, though it has continued to be effective as an antidepressant that at least does not increase anxiety, which was my primary issue with bupropion.
Next on the list was either SA or an uncontrollable sleep cycle, both being about equally problematic. I chose to address the sleep cycle first because modafinil immediately came to mind as a plausible treatment, plus we’ve all heard of its reputation as an anti-akratic. In hindsight, I should have thought about this more thoroughly before leaping into it. Availability bias at work. Anxiety is an uncommon side effect, but I decided to take the risk. In hindsight, I ought to have realized that for people already dealing with multiple anxiety disorders, that anxiety side effect probably becomes a lot more more common. A statistics fail on my part.
So, I tried modafinil to control my sleep cycle and reduce akrasia, and instead I produced the unshakable certainty that unnamed, unseen monsters were out to get me. Whoops. Looks like my suspicion was correct that I have subclinical generalized anxiety disorder, because the modafinil had exacerbated it to unacceptable levels. The stress of experiencing this also triggered a depression relapse, so I then took myself off the modafinil. Soon enough I recovered to where I had been before trying it.
This leads me to the present. Now I am faced again with the choice of confronting either the sleep cycle problem, SA, or both. My System 1 is wary of fighting the sleep cycle again just yet after being burned last time, so SA it is. I have already taken the edge off, because of social skills training I started months ago and because of the interventions I’ve taken against OCD, but it is still serious enough to pursue a pharmacological solution.
First on my To Be Scrutinized list is kratom, as I have already been taking theanine for years now. I will investigate effectiveness, safety, cost, and personal fit. Whatever I try, I will also attempt exposure therapy alongside the anxiolytic effects of a medication. If I am successful, I will next have another go at fixing the sleep cycle, then I will either consider my options regarding the notoriously untreatable fact that I am on the autistic spectrum, or else move on to address the much decreased but still niggling depression and OCD.
Wow. You’ve been thorough. Note to self: modafinil is probably something I want to avoid if it can exacerbate anxiety that badly.
If you do decide to try it, start with a very low dose.
i think I am inadvertedly doing something like this. Here is what I started recently:
stop drinking, the evening reward is only non-alcoholic beer
fairly heavy exercise, boxing 3 times a week and 100 pushups on other days
instead of feeling like fighting my addiction or laziness, doing the opposite, stopping fighting my better judgement (to work out and to not drink) even when I don’t feel like doing so. I don’t know how better to explain it. I am reinventing the bicameral mind basically: everything decided rationally is casted into an “upper self” that gives orders, and my normal self can only sigh and follow its orders even when it makes me feel not comfortable, still it is a submission to and not fighting the decisions of the upper self, instead of fighting the urges and instincts of the lower self
when having little to do at work, and spend a lot of time on LW or Reddit, schedule the day so that productive work is in the last 1-2 hours so I can go home with some pride and not feeling the day was worthless
counter-act the complete lack of socialization during work by listening to vocal music with interesting lyrics in the evening
However I have no idea if I am depressed or not and I strongly suspect that if your upbringing or culture is not exactly optimistic it is not such a clear cut case. I have clear anhedonia, but it does not make me passive or dyfunctional: I am able to do my duty in a “shut up and soldier on, feeling good is not required” way. I think if people don’t really expect happiness, it is hard to tell if they are depressed, if they find anhedonia normal and can function in it.
The similarity between our approaches is as you say: the realization that akrasia defeats frontal assaults with heavy casualties. The difference is that you are doing something like the “take right action without resistance” approach that I’ve encountered before in Buddhism, which matches up nicely with anhedonia (personally I am a hedonist, so this does not work for me); while I am attempting to root out the basic causes of my akrasia, down to the very sources, to change the way I feel in the first place. Both approaches have their merits, and I agree that proper choice of approach relative to the individual depends on factors like personality and culture. Have you encountered any other indirect approaches to defeating akrasia, as we are attempting at present?
That is interesting—you correctly predicted I was exposed to Buddhism (indeed practiced it for years, although this non-forced-action, wu-wei is from my earlier exposure to Taoism.
But it has nothing to do with anhedonia! First of all anhedonia is not enjoying stuff, not not wanting to enjoy stuff. It is not a choice or attitude, it is the illness. If you have or used to have depression you had it too—it is rather part of the definition itself. Second, if anything, the attitude I gleaned from Buddhism was very optimistic about fun and joy, my teacher is almost extremely hedonistic. This has more to do with my parents being blue-collar, and my cultural background is Mitteleuropa—I tried to hint on that with “shut up and soldier on”, it is a direct translation from “Maul halten und weiter dienen” (BTW my first language is not German but this saying describes the region rather well). Basically this is what you get from blue-collar parents. Don’t like your job? Shut up, you have a family to support. Soldier on. And so on.
Finally, do you think wu-wei prevents hedonism? I think if enjoyment means resting effortlessly in the here and now instead of hoping for or worrying about something in the future, it is more like a precondition for it.
Where this chain of reasoning breaks down for me is in the “without resistance” phase of “take right action without resistance”. If the resistance, both conscious and unconscious, is too strong, there will be no right action taken, whether I will it or no. So what I do instead is undermine the resistance itself. This is my precondition for taking right action. Do you see what I mean? Wu-wei prevents hedonism if wu-wei is essential to hedonism but there can be no wu-wei.