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[INTP] Getting s**t done is a powerful mood enhancer

ocean

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INTP here. Used to waste my life studying the Casimir effect and ancient Japanese explained in modern Japanese while I worked for a few k a month as a wage slave inside an air conditioned cubicle with no friends and not enough sex. I deeply regret those days but I am thankful for the massive suffering bestowed upon me to help me grow, this time not as a mind but as a lifeform, with all the self-defense overhead that entails.

Now my drug is getting s**t done. I'm tired of chasing dreams made of air, ideas no one else is smart enough to understand or deep enough to care for.

Getting s**t done is a powerful mood enhancer. When you do stuff you feel good about yourself, you see a bright future ahead of you, you feel strong and prosperous. When you carry out your tasks with discipline, your ability to muster discipline grows and completing more tasks becomes easier. You build emotional momentum in a way.

Conversely, if you screw up on one task, that makes you weaker and increases the chances you will screw up the next one. Very quickly not carrying out the plans you yourself laid out makes you weak. You have no excitement to build on. You think "even if I do everything right, I already wasted half of the day, I won't be able to give myself a 100% score". I realize this may seem like taking life too seriously or being too hard on oneself or being neurotic or whatever. However almost all spiritual growth comes from self control. Ben Franklin kept a list of disciplines and ticked each one daily to prevent himself from falling back and becoming lazy. Martial arts are also based on repetition and discipline. Anything that allows the ego to dominate the ID is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I have a few tips and interesting points about getting s**t done.

1. When you know a task is coming up, it will seem boring, daunting, a great energy expenditure. No task is ever as hard as your mind makes it look like just before you have to do it. For instance, going to the gym. Couldn't sleep well, my eyes hurt, I try to take a nap to have enough energy to work out with sufficient intensity, someone wakes me up. I then go out, but I feel like crap, come back, try again, and now I can't sleep because I'm thinking about something. Eventually I decide, enough - this is a task I am going to see through, even if I have to feel like crap doing it. I drink a coffee and go. When I get there I start working out, forget about the tiredness, my metabolism accelerates, and it's not even 10% as hard as I imagined it would be. Another example. I know I have to find another supplier for a specific part for my business. I procrastinate. This is going to require tons of time, effort to negotiate a price, blah blah. EVENTUALLY I give up and focus the mind cannon directly to the problem. In 10 minutes it's almost solved. Nothing is as hard as it seems when your body wants to be lazy. Start the task and it becomes challenging and maybe even fun. Best of all, when you're done you feel successful, prosperous, increased, energetic instead of guilty, weak and pessimistic.

2. Planning and execution must be separated as much as possible. There's nothing worse than trying to plan as you go along. You must plan first. As you do so you must not focus on execution, but just jot down ideal outcomes. Do not worry about efforts - pretend it's someone else's to-do list. Only then can you create an ideal plan without laziness getting in the way. Execution: once you start to execute, unless there is an unforeseen problem or opportunity, do not change the plan. Follow the plan like a drone - it is not something you can challenge or elaborate on. There are no excuses for not carrying out the plan. Dividing planning and execution prevents you from modifying the plan to stay within your comfort zone. When you plan, don't worry about effort. When you execute, imagine the plan is the law and you have no choice in the matter.

3. Choose your pleasures and your battles. As you execute you will meet obstacles, subchallenges, opportunities, and more. Avoid solving problems that weren't on the plan. If an important to-do item is encountered, add to tomorrow's list. Do not modify the plan to squeeze in other stuff. Any modification to the plan disrupts discipline and when discipline is disrupted it may take days or weeks to recover the emotional momentum. Only when you can honestly rationally say, I've encountered something totally urgent and more important, and it's not laziness getting in the way, then you are allowed to change the plan but in that case, better sit down and rewrite the plan and then continue executing it, than beginning to improvise without any structure.

That's all for now.
 

Halla74

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Great post! :nice:

I too experience an endorphin release upon getting s**t done.

My worst experiences in procrastination are tasks at the office that I have no real interest in, or homework assignments that I have no real interest in. I never have an issue getting to the gym, I love it very much. :D

My Dad always said "Have a plan, and execute the plan" ala your bullet #2.

Re-prioritization is a double edged sword, isn't it? It's either (a) an opportunity for apathy, or (b) a chance to do things better than before based on new information, and having time to re-shuffle the deck (aka your task list).

Cheers,

-Halla
 

gromit

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Yeah I agree... doing stuff is exhilarating.

Also, when I'm having trouble getting motivated on something super mundane that I feel like I'm supposed to do, I will sometimes just do something else that needs to get done that is more appealing to me, instead of just sitting there doing dumb things to procrastinate. The momentum from accomplishing the more appealing task will often give me the energy to tackle the unappealing task. And even if it doesn't, at least I've gotten the first thing done, which is better than nothing.

WHy did you put this post in the NT rationale, ocean?
 

highlander

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I approve of this thread and the OP. :) The one thing though is that you do have to be flexible to tweak the plan as you go along. Nothing unfolds exactly the way you predict. This is what contingency is for.
 

FDG

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Meh, I don't know. What if you just get shit done as your natural state? I don't generally experience tasks as being potentially daunting, unless they are really daunting (climbing mountains to the top, etc - I mean physically daunting). Being so inflexible about carrying out a given task would feel extremely innatural, since my natural state is already one where I'm doing something - unless I'm tired. I wouldn't recommend the OP approach as an universal measure.

Moreover, if you're not failing any task, that likely means you're not doing something that's hard enough for your skill-level.
 

Moiety

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Meh, I don't know. What if you just get shit done as your natural state? I don't generally experience tasks as being potentially daunting, unless they are really daunting (climbing mountains to the top, etc - I mean physically daunting). Being so inflexible about carrying out a given task would feel extremely innatural, since my natural state is already one where I'm doing something - unless I'm tired. I wouldn't recommend the OP approach as an universal measure.

Exactly. I get told I tend to give up on things too easily....but I also don't seem to get the kick out of getting "things I don't wanna do" done. I feel no sense of accomplishment for being stoic.
 

coconut

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When you do stuff you feel good about yourself, you see a bright future ahead of you, you feel strong and prosperous.

Yes, I've noticed this too. Nothing is more mood-enhancing than looking back over a day and having a bunch of stuff done. Do you think this is developing your J tendencies? I feel like I should say, "Welcome to the dark side..."
 

FDG

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Exactly. I get told I tend to give up on things too easily....but I also don't seem to get the kick out of getting "things I don't wanna do" done. I feel no sense of accomplishment for being stoic.

Yeah, I don't know, like getting a really good grade - I'll feel happy for 20, 30 seconds; then I'm more likely to feel a little bit sad about spending time for something that gave me so little "happiness". Just as comparison, hiking in an extremely beautiful scenery, becoming friends with interesting people or developing an innovative idea are tremendously more gratifying for me than "getting shit done", which is something that I feel like I do as "default".
 

Neobick

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Funny thing is, Js are flooding this thread.

My problem with getting things done is, I dont know what I want. Why comform to being successful in a way that society wants us to be successful, yeah life would be easier but I love to analyse, I love to think, I love to not do. Dont get me wrong, I have job, I am about to start university, but I got no enjoyment of finishing something, just relieve that its over. I get enjoyment out of considering all the possibilities.

I may be stuck with the easy life, not earning millions, not having lots of chicks but personal goals are subjective. I am not smart enough to be a professor or a researcher, so I take the job with least amount of work for the most amount of pay. Dont need excess luxury, but its smart to have a back-out plan.

Your guide is good for people wanna comform to societies ideals, not saying they are bad, but they arent for me.
 

mrcockburn

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Oh yeah... it is. I guess people follow that Newtonian (or Plutonian, whatever) law: Objects at rest stay at rest, objects in motion stay in motion. And motion produces runners' high. :p

Congratulations on the enlightenment! :smile:
 

mrcockburn

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Yeah, I don't know, like getting a really good grade - I'll feel happy for 20, 30 seconds; then I'm more likely to feel a little bit sad about spending time for something that gave me so little "happiness". Just as comparison, hiking in an extremely beautiful scenery, becoming friends with interesting people or developing an innovative idea are tremendously more gratifying for me than "getting shit done", which is something that I feel like I do as "default".

So you have yourself on autopilot? How did you do it? People like that are so lucky. Think about it, if you get all your shit done, you can freely enjoy the scenery all you want. It's like a reward.

I do stupid nonsense like that first, so I'm used to those simple pleasures, which are further tainted by my stress about "shit" I've kept procrastinating.

If I get a really good grade, I'm in gloat mode for at least a week. Especially since I don't study as much as I should.
 

gromit

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When I learned MBTI that was the way they explained J vs P.

J = work before play
P = I can play any time I want.

Obviously these are tendencies... people can teach themselves self-restraint or how to chill out some of the time.
 
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