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.
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.