A Book, a Real-Life Book

I’ve been reading. Or, more precisely, I’ve been listening to a book while driving. “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson seems to be helping my mindset. It’s not perfect. It has echoes of /r/wowthanksimcured in that sometimes his advice for action is… “just do it.” I’m woefully oversimplifying, but you get the point.

I’ll get to a couple of thoughts from my ~2/3 completion in a bit, but for now I want to talk about my reading habits. Look, I’m lazy; not in one of those proud of being lazy ways either. I am deeply ashamed of my procrastination habits and have come to rely on my general, I dunno, smartness to get things done. Some time ago I might have said that I work better under the pressure of a tighter deadline, so the work that I do in an hour, despite having 3 days to do it, is just as good as if I had filled the full 3 days. That’s bullshit, but it was my rationalization. Now, I just get pissed at myself for procrastinating, but still do it. It’s not the worst in the world, and I’m working on it, but you get the picture.

Back to reading. My non-work reading of late has consisted of tweets, skimming blog posts if they seem interesting (usually found on twitter), and falling asleep to the third book of the Wheel of Time after about 3 pages (kindle pages, so probably half a real page). That’s bad. I don’t have a fully developed action plan to address this but here’s what I’ve come up with on a fast crappy brainstorm session: finish this book while commuting, avoiding podcasts until then; write a little bit about what I’ve read. It doesn’t have to be a blog post, just jot some stuff down in my phone’s notes app or in a notebook; get the fuck off social media except in a strictly regulated fashion. I haven’t figured that fashion out yet, but I’m thinking something like 10 minute increments during commute (the line standing part), lunch, opposite commute, and an evening sesh sometime. I’ll work the gritty details out tomorrow (there I go procrastinating). No one’s going to read this so I’ll just commit it and write more tomorrow. Fortunately I have phone notes from right after I read.

Here I am roughly 14 hours from writing the previous paragraph and I’ve failed a couple of times… and that’s ok. More importantly, I’ve made the decision not to open twitter or reddit several times and it’s those decisions that are going to move the proverbial needle in the right direction, toward less mindlessness.

VCR Questions

Manson describes things that he can do with ease that others have massive trouble doing as VCR actions. As a kid he would mess around with the VCR to the point that he knew it inside and out and was the only one in his household that could program it. When he would breeze through setting up the VCR, his parents would marvel at his ability and ask “How did you do that?” It seems easy, but it’s certainly not when there’s other baggage in the way. Better examples of life relevant VCR questions are “How do I ask my grown children to move out?” “How do I ask for a raise?” To the one asking, there is an almost insumountable obstacle in the way, the feeling of abandoning your children, and the fear of rejection. To a casual observer, the answer is simple, just go tell them; just ask. This is really where my problem lies with the book. If it were as simple as just doing it, whatever it may be, I would have already done it. However, the simple act of reading the book and keeping my mind on combatting my actions tied to negative values. Even writing this, perhaps especially writing this, is keeping my mind focused for a bit more time than reading the 280-character thoughts of people I admire.

That said, how do I maintain focus for even 10 straight minutes working or reading or writing, whatever? Just do it I guess. I think it means making the decisions I talked about earlier. Nope… stay here… keep writing… don’t open twitter. Like I said, I’ve failed several times, and I’ll do it again, but every successful popped procrastination bubble is another minute or so that I stay on task and another tiny little step toward getting better at staying on task in general. I think its also important to take a lesson from mindfullness meditation that I’ve done on occasion and need to do more. “Failures” such as they are need to be dismissed and easily forgiven. Clicking on twitter and scrolling for 3 minutes is a failure, but it doesn’t mean I’m a failure or anything approaching that. Just as in guided mediation I’m supposed to dismiss thoughts as they manifest in my head. I can dismiss a distraction desire as well. The thing is, “just do it” is usually framed as beginning the task is accomplishing the task. Manson describes a prolific author who starts with “200 crappy words per day” and obviously continues, but the goal is 200 crappy words. This isn’t my problem. I often get started and then stop within 30 seconds. Maybe I’ll do that twice and then recognize that even if I get started again, what’s the point if I’m just going to stop in less than a minutes. The “just get started” mantra needs to be altered slightly for me. When I sense a desire to be distracted, to check my email real quick or to go social-media-ize, I need to recognize the desire for what it is - part of my nature - dismiss it and move on. This has probably happened 10 times in writing this paragraph, but I just finished. Random thought, I think I need to use windows instead of tabs if I want multiple web pages open. I find myself looking up to see if my email count has incremented.