2023-01-05

Hey, I got up before 7 today which is great. Took me a while to get out of bed. What helped was doing a small increment, like wearing left sock, then right sock. Then my girlfriend came in and switched on the light. That was what got me out of bed eventually. At the moment it feels like the voice that forces me to do stuff is weaker. It is not as present, and it is easier to ignore. RIght now, I have to work urgently. I also have a morning routine that I can execute partially. One part of the morning routine is going to the toilet. I subsconsciously don’t want to do it because it would entail going downstairs into the cold. So I sit here and wait for the motivation to come. I can envision myself doing it, but there is a barrier to translating it into action. In the past months, this inability really seems to have escalated. I don’t think that this is confirmation bias after reading about executive dysfunction. This inablilty was there before I read that. (Although it might be, still!) I called it “feeling out of control” before, and the post from 2022-12-28 describes it very accurately.

Well, but I have to act, I have to climb the wall. I already put my clothes on, got up, sat down at the computer. Now I will do 20 push-ups, drink a glass of water, go to the toilet, make the bed, and sit down to work.

OK, I did all of that. Now I need to get started working. How do I do that? Today, in 5 hours and 40 minutes I will have to present the design and “skeleton” of an initiative website. I won’t be able to code it up now completely. But I may be able to finalize the design. So, to finish this task, I need the following deliverables:

  • [ ] Figma mockup for desktop
    • [ ] Above fold
      • [ ] Heading
      • [ ] Subheading
      • [ ] CTA
    • [ ] More details block
    • [ ] Worst companies block
      • [ ] search bar
      • [ ] list / tile view of companies
    • [ ] Webinar
      • [ ] Announcement
      • [ ] Link
    • [ ] Signatory list
  • [ ] Figma mockup for mobile
    • [ ] Above fold
      • [x] Heading
      • [x] Subheading
      • [x] CTA
    • [ ] More details block
    • [ ] Worst companies block
      • [ ] search bar
      • [ ] list / tile view of companies
    • [ ] Webinar
      • [ ] Announcement
      • [ ] Link
    • [ ] Signatory list
    • [ ] Mobile Nav

Now that I am writing this down I feel a strong discomfort. I really want to take out my phone and stop working. But it is really urgent, so it keeps me going. I wish there were tools to help me with this, really good tools, tailored to my needs. But I hold myself back from making them, ironically.

We have a list of deliverables, now it is time to actually write down how it could look. I will probably do it this way:

  1. [ ] Paper sketch for mobile
  2. [ ] Paper sketch for desktop
  3. [ ] Figma sketch for mobile
  4. [ ] Figma sketch for desktop

I am again confronted with an urge to stop working. I thought about my suboptimal performance, how someone else might do it better and then I’d rather procrastinate.

Again, the fears are calling me to stop. I am thinking that I will never reach the same skill level as others, because I am stuck trying to even get to work. To this I tell myself: “We underestimate how much can be done in a year and overestimate how much can be done in a month”. This leads me to 4 ideas:

  1. Writing helps me get back to focus. I don’t need to pull out some addictive distraction, I just need to have my editor ready.
  2. I could write a list of responses and rational answers to all the negative things I tell myself. Call it encouragement list or whatever.
  3. Extending this, I could write simple, easily digestible guides with checklists (checklist could be submittable) on how to act in a certain situation. For example, to get started working, a step-by-step guide to breaking down a task, establishing deliverables, etc. (May need 2023-01-04)
  4. A life-encompassing time visualizer. I struggle with visualizing time, seeing into the future and planning how long things will take. Doing these things gives me anxiety because I realize how little time I actually have. Too bad that these are all things that distinguish humans from monkeys. I need to get better at it, and the help of external tools may be an effective solution. This would be an example of tools for self-awareness. But how do I get started with building such a tool, when I struggle to do the simplest tasks?

But I digress. Going back to work. I layed down on the ground, due to my revolt to starting working. I lay there and hear voices (my own voice), increasingly aggressively tell me: “Nikita!”, “Nikita, get up!“. I got up. To do the paper sketch on mobile, I need to:

  1. [x] get up
  2. [x] go to backpack
  3. [x] tak out piece of paper
  4. [x] go sit back down
  5. [x] draw lines for mobile sketch
  6. [x] start sketching

One thing that kept me from procrastinating was having my phone away from me. I am keeping it this way.

I had breakfast. I layed down and almost fell asleep. Now I am back up.

I started watching this video: https://www.arndtpechstein.eu/post/blurring-the-boundaries-between-humans-technology-and-biology-tedxtehransalon

It gave me hope. There are 2 things that I see from here:

  1. He said that the antidote to fear are positive visions of the future.
    • going back to the tool for self awareness, how about a written down positive vision board or some generative AI that produces positive visions from current actions
  2. He said that we currently have a human vision crisis. This is the same thing as I said a long time ago, when I was reading Nietzsche, discovering that “happiness” can’t be our common purpose and that we need a global pupose for humans.

I met Arndt in person when I was in Berlin. He is incredibly articulated, smart and open. I tried to get him to regularly meet up with me to talk about my soon to be Bachelor project and he actually agreed (kinda) — “We can meet once, surely. But I am quite busy so I can’t make promises regarding regular meetups.”

/ blog