Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

https://swapnilchauhan.com/blog/procrastination-and-the-fear-of-not-being-good-enough

by swapxstar • 2 years ago

656 276 2 years ago

swapnilchauhan.com

DeepYogurt• 2 years ago

Getting started is the hardest step. Thank you for sharing!

codemogul• 2 years ago

How do you eat an elephant? Small bites.

When everything seems like a elephant... start with small bites.

And get a good way into the elephant before you start measuring how well you are doing the eating.

falcor84• 2 years ago

I never liked that joke. Obviously, as an individual, you can't eat an elephant in small bites, as (assuming it's dead) it will start spoiling very soon after you started biting into it (and if it's still alive, you might have an even bigger problem).

So the actual solution would probably involve a lot of logistical planning and preparation on how you would carve it efficiently and then refrigerate and/or distribute all the pieces.

Not doing so, and only thinking one bite at a time, would be a massive waste of the elephant.

bluecoconut3• 2 years ago

Worrying what others think resonates with me a lot. Every few weeks I try to motivate myself to write more online (HN, X, blogs) and consistently get “self sabotage” stuck. (Been going on for >2 years)

The article just says they pushed through and “put it aside”, but that has never seemed to quite work for me. I can push through once or twice, not enough to build a daily habit/obsession like I want.

Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this hurdle?

deathtrader666• 2 years ago

I always remind myself that even the celebrated works supposedly have glaring holes in them. If they can get popular and be cherished, then my work too doesn't have to be "water-tight" at all times.

imtringued3• 2 years ago

Just think about the human batteries in the matrix movie. Anyone who heard that thought the machines were using human brains as biocomputers, but no, they actually insist on the battery explanation.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

I have no idea if it will help, but the amount of nitpicking I see when people post things online is much more than the amount of nitpicking I’ve seen in the actual PhD defenses I’ve attended, or the research paper peer reviews I’ve gotten back. Of course, it is always possible that you’ll bump into, like, the one person who has much more experience than most professors in a topic, on the Internet. Alternatively, maybe the professors, being experts, can find the positive contribution in imperfect projects.

akomtu• 2 years ago

Write under a pseudonym?

phito• 2 years ago

It might be your unconscious deciding that it's not worth doing? Posting things online is rather useless and often brings more negatives than positives.

matwood• 2 years ago

It took me way too long to realize this but most people don’t think or care about you. I’m not saying this in a bad way, but only worry about those that matter like your family and friends. No one else thinks about you anyway, so don’t preoccupy yourself worrying about what they think.

adriand• 2 years ago

Also: accept that what you make is ephemeral. No one pauses in the middle of building a sand castle on the beach and wonders if their sand-sculpting skills are adequate. Anything you make, even if it becomes one of humanity’s most cherished works (extremely unlikely!) is not going to be here for very long. So enjoy the process, put it out in the world, and maybe a person or two will appreciate it before the waves wash it away.

swapxstar4• 2 years ago

Yes, I think I am starting to realise that. And that is really helpful in this journey.

JumpinJack_Cash2• 2 years ago

> Every few weeks I try to motivate myself to write more online

Bro run! Spending time online is a sign of depression. And even if you are among the few in which this isn't true (which I doubt) talking and writing about stuff way above your head (not in the IQ sense but about stuff you have no control over) will get your there.

e1gen-v• 2 years ago

Do you actually enjoy the process of writing online?

Because for me I’ve realized there’s a difference between enjoying actually doing a hobby versus just fantasizing about what it would be like to be good at it.

Maybe that’s not what you’re experiencing, but I’ve tried to get into hobbies and have run into the feeling you describe. Eventually I would drop the hobby because I just didn’t enjoy doing it.

Ps congrats on writing online :)

bluecoconut3• 2 years ago

I like writing to myself / talking to myself... but I'm trying to convert that internal captured thought / language into brand value and useful information in a wider contexts.

Good points about recognizing the fantasy of doing something vs. the actual work might be part of this.

also, lol meta, thanks!

swapxstar4• 2 years ago

I don’t think I have figured out whether I enjoy the process of writing itself.

But what I know for sure is that I have a lot of thoughts and ideas as well as opinions and the idea of putting them down and expanding upon them really really intrigues me.

I also believe that it will really help grow.

mfscholar• 2 years ago

If you're looking to set up a habit cycle, I'd recommend three steps:

1. Find a cue that will remind you to start writing, e.g. having your morning coffee

2. Write any amount of time; say 30min or so

3. Reward yourself. I just have a little snack, but it could be anything

Works great for me, and I found once I changed some small habits, it was also easier to do better overall. This advice is from the book "The power of habit" by Charles Dhuigg

detourdog• 2 years ago

My writing prompt is HN. I wait until I see a prompt to respond to.

sshine• 2 years ago

Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this hurdle?

Since nobody suggested this:

Write for yourself, locally. This removed my writer's block.

After writing for myself for about a year, I blogged consistently for two years.

I've since lost the kadence and want to get back to it, but now priorities have come in the way.

Now I usually write for my local tech community.

I know there's a dozen people who like to learn things if there's an easy way. That motivates me a lot

There's another hurdle of having a clear idea of the target audience; when you're the target audience, it gets a little fuzzy. So it has helped me to think of either "what I'd like to read 6 months from now if I had to learn this after partially forgetting it". Or someone else concrete I'm not actually obligated to share my writing with. Just so I can aim my writing better.

bluecoconut3• 2 years ago

I write for myself a lot, roughly ~5000 words a day in notes, messages to self, etc. I have no problem writing and talking to myself.

It's the editing process and formalizing it for public consumption.

Either, the actual work of doing the cleanup feels too labor intensive, or I've already moved onto the next obsession, and am chasing that new idea.

Do you have a process for turning the local writing into more public writing?

mch82• 2 years ago

Focus on your docs, code, and blog because they’re under your control. Write for yourself. Write for the people who use your work. Publish smaller chunks of work. Add value to your real network.

X, HN, and other socials are far less important. You have no control over whether the algorithm decides to amplify your content. Most work that’s foundational to society isn’t popular on socials today and won’t ever be. There’s a lottery chance you’ll get picked for amplification. Winning that lottery is great, but playing the lottery is not investing in your future.

luckydata4• 2 years ago

Keep doing it until you get better at it. Not caring about what others think is a skill.

ncr100• 2 years ago

Ask for AI to help be your writing buddy?

Not for content, but for process?

hop_n_bop• 2 years ago

The Pomodoro technique works well. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and focus only on your writing for until the timer goes off; or longer if you like.

bayofpigs• 2 years ago

Love Pomodoro timers so much had AI make an web app to link them together. You can customize and use it here: https://1recipe.com.

godelski• 2 years ago

You might be burnt out.

dartos• 2 years ago

I recently started a blog after having the same feeling for years.

What changed for me was accepting that my posts aren’t going to be polished and it’s okay if they don’t front page HN.

I just jot down notes, organize them in an outline and publish it.

I figure eventually, as I feel more comfortable with it, I’ll polish up my posts more and more.

tolerance• 2 years ago

I feel this. Here are some thoughts I've had that have allowed me to toss one leg over the hurdle we share.

* Limit your self-promotion: If you feel unnerved by the criticism of the opaque masses of the internet (e.g. Hacker News) then do not present your work to them. If you absolutely must share your writing with anyone, why not share it with people who you actually know? Rather, don't self-promote at all, share your work with people who embody the readers who you had in mind upon writing it.

Which leads to my next thought...

* Unless you are representing some sort of institution that the public trusts and you are obliged to sustain this trust, why write with the public (read: the opaque masses of the internet) in mind at all. The "reader who you have in mind" while writing is the equivalent of the "dream spouse" who you may have imagined: They just so happen to possess all of the virtues that coincidentally complement your own and all of their faults are can be conveniently managed within your scope of reasoning. The good thing about the reader/writer relationship is that it is inherently polygamous so feel free to write for yourself and for yourself alone and whichever readers fit the description that you have envisaged in your mind to whatever degrees will be drawn to what you have to say accordingly and if it doesn't work out then there's always someone else, somewhere, who fits the description of someone who one way or another is just a kind of living complement to your own personality. Such is I suppose a component of romance in man's sojourn on earth.

The blog posts that inspire me to write the most are the one's that are impersonally personable. Writing that is obviously written by a human being who is sharing their experiences but in a way that is totally indifferent to my own interests. That isn't to say that it comes across as self-absorbed but that it is like the behaviors among children on the school yard. He's playing jacks. He's spinning tops. They're playing four square. They're beating each other into a pulp along the tree lines. But no one's doing so as if they intend for me want to join in.

The blog posts that I find the most boring read as though they presume an audience and are even written in a way that presumes scathing criticism from said audience. A lot writers have become dispossessed of their ability to express themselves in earnest ways because of this. I don't necessarily fault the opaque mass of humans who express a wide range of reactions to the thoughts of others because society is not a monoculture in spite of efforts toward the contrary.

If you are writing just to "build a brand" but the process isn't clicking internally maybe it's your spirit resisting the sociopathic impulses of your carnal desires. A lot of lifeless blogs I come across are such because I feel like I can sense that they are writing only to gain an audience who can raise their capital. So while the content may be informative it is lifeless and I feel little sympathy when a reader criticizes the author's work in a way that is indifferent to the spirit of the author and the author feels dismayed. It's not that your intended audience is revolting against you. You haven't even told them who you are. They are rejecting your business or your pining for employment that you have woven into your interpersonal communications.

And good for them!

nox101• 2 years ago

for me it's not fear of being good enough. it's that for me a blog post takes 4 to 20 hours. 4 if it's just text. Write, rewrite, proofread, etc. 20 if I need to draw diagrams or make examples.

if it's just a paragraph of thought then it might as well be on social media

mips_avatar• 2 years ago

I think maybe polish is getting in the way. There's so many really beautiful blog posts out there, well researched, and the author can represent themselves as an expert. But more often than not the really deeply true information I tend to find is a quick little hacker news comment written quickly.

Now a hacker news comment can only contain so much, so sharing your truth a little broader might require some additional medium (graphics, code example, video) but you can clearly articulate yourself well in a HN comment, so maybe think of the blogs as just a little more than a HN comment?

caseyy4• 2 years ago

Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this hurdle?

This might give you something to work with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102050. Maybe you're confusing natural and reasonable behaviour with self-sabotage? They look the same from some perspectives (such as perfectionism and people-pleasing).

Sparkyte2• 2 years ago

Sometimes I feel like someone already wrote what I am writing and it doesn't feel good to just work on something I know could be critiqued hard because an alternative exists.

hinkley3• 2 years ago

Hemingway said once that the trick to getting writing done was to stop writing when you know what happens next.

Other writers have talked about being compelled to write to get an idea out of their head that’s stuck there. I think they’re much the same thing. You’re essentially leaving yourself in that obsessed state until you can sit down again.

If you try to sit down with just a long term goal in mind you’re torturing yourself. And likely creating negative reinforcement of future stuckness. Write the bit in front of you, pause when you have an idea what’s next, not when you run out of steam.

neofrommatrix• 2 years ago

Does the fear of judgment occur even when you are behind an anonymous username?

achempion• 2 years ago

If you need to force yourself to write, why write at all? Did you use any technique to write this comment?

tame3902• 2 years ago

Worrying what others think resonates with me a lot.

- There are lots of blog posts and youtube videos about this topic. Try whether any will help you.

- If you post, go down the rabbit hole of your thoughts. What will happen? Keep going with "and then" as far as possible. Then replace negative thoughts with more positive ones. Those have to be believable and not just blindly positive. E.g. replacing "everybody will hate this" with "a lot of people will hate this, but some will really enjoy it" is already progress.

- As a child, did you have a caregiver or teacher that gave you the feeling that if you make mistakes, they will stop loving you? Make it clear to your adult self that you are deserving of love no matter what.

- Do you have types of writing which are easy for you? No matter the answer, why is that?

- Create something intentionally bad without publishing it, and sit with your bad feelings for a while. Usually that reduces the anxiety.

- If you post something, explore your feelings. Is that like nervousness before an exam, general anxiety or something completely different. This might give you a clue, why you struggle.

- Imagine a friend would come to you with this problem. What advice would you give them? How would you react to something you posted if somebody else wrote it?

- Be kind to yourself. Changing this is a long journey.

almatabata• 2 years ago

One thing that helped me was accepting that it is not that I might fail but that I will fail initially.

I will produce bad articles because to become good you have to start with your current skill level which probably sucks if you are average. To become good you have to write. Nothing beats actually doing it. But knowing that everyone published something stupid at some point helps me accept that I will also go through that process as well. Everyone failed, everyone will fail and it is fine to fail.

And no matter how good you become you will still fail from time to time. You never graduate from it. Look at the famous movie directors, writers and journalists. Are all their works great? Is each of their work always better than the previous ones? Of course not. Some works will be amazing and insightful, some might be mediocre. Even the very best will have their ups and downs, so why not you?

Each time I publish a post I already accept it might be subpar.

lancesells• 2 years ago

I've never had much of a fear of not being good enough for others but I've had a fear of not being good enough for myself. I don't know if this will get you over the hurdle but here's what really opened up my work and had me procrastinating less as an artist was:

The act and the process of creating art is what I enjoy. The outcome of that work and sense of accomplishment is fleeting, not that important, and a little out of my hands.

Once I realized this I just make more things, take more chances, and find myself making "better" work than I ever have. So just spend your time doing the thing you like doing. If you don't actually enjoy the process then you probably aren't meant to do it, regardless of the outcome or the accolades.

protoman3000• 2 years ago

From own experience I can say:

Forget about trying to change this from the perspective of thoughts. Cognitively understanding that you should "just" stop worrying about what other people think about your work might not bring you far.

Instead, realize that anxiety is a bodily phenomenon and as such needs to be addressed with the body. That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.

JumpinJack_Cash2• 2 years ago

> That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.

It also means alcohol, drugs, shrooms, ketamine, MDMA, Research Chemicals, uppers, downers, amplifier substances , smoothering substances, focus enhancers, dissociatives...

I mean the modern society seems like coming up with some trends such as the war on drugs, the vice taxes and all the patronizing BS, only to discover that there is a reason why those things exist and we indulged in them for as long as we have been around in the first place

fourier54• 2 years ago

while they do have therapeutic effects (some, I wouldn't say alcohol does), I don't think they should be proposed as methods to relax stress. Too many downsides and are not sustainable as regularly used substances. Yes you do feel great in a night of MDMA but the feelings you have the following days almost negate the positive aspects.

reubenmorais• 2 years ago

I think some of those substances can have positive in a very narrow set of circumstances. Being vigilant and only using them in those scenarios can be just as hard as the hard solutions you were avoiding in the first place, like sleep, diet, exercise, cleaning up your routine, etc. I'll add some color on how some of those can go wrong, hopefully this saves someone else from having to learn it first hand:

Alcohol - messes up your sleep, without which your mind will never be operating as clearly as it could. If you frequently mix it with other substances, it'll also turn into a trigger, making you crave said substances every time you have a drink. Use with moderation.

Shrooms - these are really nice, but like most psychoactive substances, they'll definitely get in the way of focusing on hard tasks. Doing something fun gets more fun with shrooms, doing something hard gets harder. Use with moderation. Indulge, don't escape. I'd give the same advice about LSD.

Ketamine - has an extremely broad profile of effects depending on dosage. You can mitigate this a bit by correctly measuring and dissolving it in nasal spray, but even then tolerance builds up very quickly and you end up compensating by doing more. It has a small dosage window where it'll be an indulging drug, just adding a pleasurable shift to your perceptions, but then as soon as you go over that window, it will turn you into a little dissociated zombie, unable to hold an interesting conversation with someone who isn't on the same ballpark of high as you are. It can cause serious damage to your urinary tract. Indulge, don't escape. Try to use once per month at most.

MDMA - can be amazing at low dosages, but evidence indicates it is neurotoxic in most doses you'll run into in parties. When it starts to come down you will want to do more, so if you're trying to be careful make sure you have measures to prevent you from doing so. Hangovers can be brutal, specially on higher doses. At higher doses it'll make you confused and mess up with your short term memory, but your social confidence will still stay high, so you can turn into an obnoxious person rambling about something for the third time in half an hour to whoever is unlucky to be nearby. Indulge with a lot of caution, don't escape. Use lower doses. Give it a 3 month break between uses.

Research chemicals - unless you are the researcher, stay away from these. Some drugs have very different effects to others that are chemically very similar and often impossible to differentiate with standard test kits you'll be able to buy and use without being a chemist. Reliable information on their effects, dosage, interactions is difficult or impossible to find — not only for you, but also for your EMT or doctor, in case you need medical assistance.

Uppers - addictive, can cause re-dosing, will fuck up your sleep and your appetite. Suppress orgasms (and often erections). Stress your heart muscles and your arteries and veins. When taken for productivity, will give you short-term gains that turn into holes you'll need several weeks to dig yourself out of. Use with extreme caution.

Amplifier substances - in my experience, there's no such thing. You can do substance X today and have an amazing "amplified" time, and then do the same dose again a week later in a different setting and have a real bad time, constantly in your head, seeing the negative interpretation of everything. The things which make it more likely for a substance to be an amplifier can't be fixed with more substances: how well are you sleeping, eating, exercising? Are you mulling over some difficult conversation instead of just having it? Are you surrounded by people you like who are good to you?

srid• 2 years ago

Going from the cognitive to physical is a big jump, because you get to entirely ignore the affective which is the spanner in works.

In regards to anxiety, this is what works best for me: https://actualism.app/

ordu• 2 years ago

Instead, realize that anxiety is a bodily phenomenon and as such needs to be addressed with the body. That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.

It is not a bodily thing, just there is a bodily feedback loop: you feel anxious, it leads to a bodily reaction, your senses register it, you feel more anxious. Sometimes dealing with the body and breaking the feedback loop is enough, but for me personally it works for 10 minutes or so. If I hadn't overcome the psychological reasons of my anxiety, I feel myself anxious.

Cognitively understanding that you should "just" stop worrying about what other people think about your work might not bring you far.

May not bring or may bring. It depends... People are different, so different methods are best for them. I deal with things mostly in a psychological ways. My general method for anxiety is to make my anxiety into a fear, by finding the thing that makes me anxious (this step is standard way of psychotherapists to deal with anxiety). Then I imagine that the thing happened and how will I adapt. Mostly I find out that this thing is not as bad as I perceive it, it cannot kill me, it cannot hurt me physically, I can deal with associated social costs, or if I cannot... For example sometimes I can reframe the situation: my goal is not to send the rocket to the Moon (with 10% chance of a success), but rather to do a test launch, to find out how my rocket perform (here we get ~100% chance of a success).

I need to accept the possibility of a failure, and understand that the possible failure is not terminal, it is just possible and acceptable setback. People tend to dramatize and say that some failures are not acceptable, but if people really had a possibility of an unacceptable outcome (lets say it is a painful death for all involved and their families) then the most rational thing to do would be to stop the activity that could lead to this outcome. When I allow myself to buy the dramatization I face anxiety issues.

umutisik• 2 years ago

Great observation. I have observed the same thing in my own life.

The solution: do things that you really believe people need. Then you owe it to them to find out if you actually are “good enough”, and you don’t care what others think because all you care about is whether the people who need it are happy with it.

adamnemecek• 2 years ago

[flagged]

bbor4• 2 years ago

  If I had to sum up the reason in one word, it would be laziness.

Wild to read this from a modern perspective. It's like reading about women being shamed for being 'hysterical', or religious peasants blaming their natural sexual feelings on demons. It just doesn't hold up to scrutiny...

What is 'laziness' when applied to something that you clearly want to do? How can someone want something, yet simultaneously choose to not want it? Turns out the answer is simple, and the nerds have known it since 1801[1]: you don't exist. Your continuous, unified self is an illusion brought about for instrumental reasons.

Treat yourself like a system to be optimized, not an ineffable soul to be brought away from vice through logic. If you were tasked with improving a malfunctioning software system, you'd be laughed out of the room for starting with "well, clearly, the system is just sinful, and choosing to make mistakes."

[1]: Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, Chapter I.2.II.1: "Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason"

  Now to these conceptions relate four paralogisms of a transcendental psychology, which is falsely held to be a science of pure reason, touching the nature of our thinking being. We can, however, lay at the foundation of this science nothing but the simple and in itself perfectly contentless representation “i” which cannot even be called a conception, but merely a consciousness which accompanies all conceptions. By this “I,” or “He,” or “It,” who or which thinks, nothing more is represented than a transcendental subject of thought = x, which is cognized only by means of the thoughts that are its predicates, and of which, apart from these, we cannot form the least conception. Hence in a perpetual circle, inasmuch as we must always employ it, in order to frame any judgement respecting it. And this inconvenience we find it impossible to rid ourselves of, because consciousness in itself is not so much a representation distinguishing a particular object, as a form of representation in general, in so far as it may be termed cognition; for in and by cognition alone do I think anything.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap7...

For the more empirically minded that are understandably resistant to such an unnatural conception, try to find discussions of "laziness" in these articles. I'd be surprised:

https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/executive-function

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23224-executi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_dysfunction

MrMetric2• 2 years ago

It's unfortunate that I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to see any mention of ADHD or executive dysfunction, when the linked post describes what is clearly a form of executive dysfunction! Instant temporary treatment is a stimulant such as caffeine (which has annoying side-effects) or amphetamine salts (commonly known as adderall). Long-term treatment is exercize, which can be as simple as balancing on one leg for ten minutes every day or using an elliptical machine. Running outside is a decent option, but take care to avoid damaging the knees, which will happen by running on hard surfaces.

Dr. Russell Barkley has good explanations of what different prescription ADHD drugs do, which I find gives insight into what's going wrong when you have an executive dysfunction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnS0PfNyj4U

In particular, the emotional blunting effect of stimulants erases the thought that what you do might not be good enough. You no longer care about what others think, so you can just do what you want to do. I personally find this also makes me a callous asshole if I'm not careful, which I believe is related to the modern epidemic of coffee zombies.

LoganDark3• 2 years ago

How is exercise a substitute for stimulant drugs? I've never seen this proven before; I've only seen correlations between people who are able to consistently exercise and people who have less severe ADHD, but that doesn't teach us anything we didn't already know (namely that consistent exercise is made more difficult by ADHD).

rustcleaner• 2 years ago

Nothing like righteousness to justify poor social behavior. Humans have this tendency, which is why sick people are 'lazy' and society is punitively oriented for behavior correction and norm reinforcement.

luckydata4• 2 years ago

I just want to appreciate how the author used the sane "fear of not being good enough" instead of the idiotic "impostor syndrome" that everyone uses to mean the same.

grugagag2• 2 years ago

What’s wrong with impostor syndrome? Perhaps overused term but that for a good reason, many people are battling the same insecurities while others are confident on hot air. Very few have a backing for being confident.

luckydata4• 2 years ago

Because impostor syndrome was a term supposed to describe a medical phenomenon that proved not to exist. Around my parts we call that "bullshit".

cortesoft• 2 years ago

"Imposter syndrome" is just the term we have given to "fear of not being good enough". What is wrong with coming up with a term for that fear?

luckydata4• 2 years ago

I don't agree with medicalization of normal human experience. It's not a syndrome if it happens to everyone and it's perfectly normal. It's also a way to justify being a pussy, which is a sentiment I don't condone under any circumstance.

atmavatar• 2 years ago

While hard work may pay off in the future, laziness always pays off now :)

loopdoend• 2 years ago

Even if the "future" is say, 5 minutes away. I procrastinate about the dumbest, smallest shit.

caseyy4• 2 years ago

And laziness in a way is very natural and healthy. Resting, digesting, being present is boon to longevity, vitality, and creativity. Mindless production has been put on a pedestal too much in recent years.

justsomehnguy• 2 years ago

Lazuness is a tool, thats why I'm on the 10th year implementing a simple script

pessimizer• 2 years ago

Perfectionism is a problem that a lot of us have, and it stops us from failing enough times to perfect ourselves. Finishing a failure is a success. Somebody reading your blog entry and hating it is successfully attracting a reader. Somebody telling you how terrible something you wrote was is successfully attracting a reader and inspiring a reaction.

If the substance of the bad review hurts, it means you've communicated something clearly enough that it was easy to pick apart. If you understand and accept the criticism about how you were wrong, now you have a better chance of being right.

This is Hillary Rettig's specialty; she largely focuses on being kind to yourself, and getting out of your own ass. The world isn't ending when you fail.

https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/the-seven-secrets-of-t...

bsenftner• 2 years ago

Our industry really needs to learn about about self conversation audits:

An ever present sense of pressure, feeling imposter syndrome and that bleeding into self criticism and anxiety is 100% fixable, and this information needs to be much wider distributed within society.

Dr. Aaron Beck and Dr. David Burns introduced the concept of “cognitive distortions” - they identified various methods humans use to lie and deceive themselves in their self conversations.

Dr. Burns publishing of a book titled “Feeling Good” that kick started the entire Cognitive Therapy movement, which is the idea that one can talk themselves out of unhappiness with the right guidance.

It is all about learning how to identify self deception; once one learns how to be truthful in your own self conversation, the emotions and unrealistic expectations fall away leaving a more stable and logical individual.

Here’s a summery, but be careful searching this topic online as the “fraudster community” loves to prey on people seeking self help information.

Filtering. We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.

Polarized Thinking (or “Black and White” Thinking). In polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white.” We have to be perfect or we’re a failure — there is no middle ground. You place people or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray or allowing for the complexity of most people and situations. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

Overgeneralization. In this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.

Jumping to Conclusions. Without individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling toward us. For example, a person may conclude that someone is reacting negatively toward them but doesn’t actually bother to find out if they are correct. Another example is a person may anticipate that things will turn out badly, and will feel convinced that their prediction is already an established fact.

Catastrophizing. We expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as “magnifying or minimizing.” We hear about a problem and use what if questions (e.g., “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me?”). For example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events (such as their mistake, or someone else’s achievement). Or they may inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until they appear tiny (for example, a person’s own desirable qualities or someone else’s imperfections).

Personalization. Personalization is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to the person. We also compare ourselves to others trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc. A person engaging in personalization may also see themselves as the cause of some unhealthy external event that they were not responsible for. For example, “We were late to the dinner party and caused the hostess to overcook the meal. If I had only pushed my husband to leave on time, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Control Fallacies. If we feel externally controlled, we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, “I can’t help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work overtime on it.” The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. For example, “Why aren’t you happy? Is it because of something I did?”

Fallacy of Fairness. We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won’t agree with us. As our parents tell us when we’re growing up and something doesn’t go our way, “Life isn’t always fair.” People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel badly and negative because of it. Because life isn’t “fair” — things will not always work out in your favor, even when you think they should.

Blaming. We hold other people responsible for our pain, or take the other track and blame ourselves for every problem. For example, “Stop making me feel bad about myself!” Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.

Shoulds. We have a list of ironclad rules about how others and we should behave. People who break the rules make us angry, and we feel guilty when we violate these rules. A person may often believe they are trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they have to be punished before they can do anything. For example, “I really should exercise. I shouldn’t be so lazy.” Musts and oughts are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs should statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.

Emotional Reasoning. We believe that what we feel must be true automatically. If we feel stupid and boring, then we must be stupid and boring. You assume that your unhealthy emotions reflect he way things really are — “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

Fallacy of Change. We expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.

Global Labeling. We generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. These are extreme forms of generalizing, and are also referred to as “labeling” and “mislabeling.” Instead of describing an error in context of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to themselves. For example, they may say, “I’m a loser” in a situation where they failed at a specific task. When someone else’s behavior rubs a person the wrong way, they may attach an unhealthy label to him, such as “He’s a real jerk.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. For example, instead of saying someone drops her children off at daycare every day, a person who is mislabeling might say that “she abandons her children to strangers.”

Always Being Right. We are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even loved ones.

Heaven’s Reward Fallacy. We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.

References:

Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders. New York: New American Library. Burns, D. D. (2012).

Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York: New American Library. Leahy, R.L. (2017).

Cognitive Therapy Techniques, Second Edition: A Practitioner’s Guide. New York: Guilford Press. McKay, M. & Fanning, P. (2016).

Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem. New York: New Harbinger Publications.

caseyy4• 2 years ago

The author might be struggling with people-pleasing and perfectionist tendencies.

People-pleasers often do things because other people would like them more if they did these things. As such, the reward for work like writing a blog article is positive external reinforcement/approval or minimising the risk of confrontation, disapproval, or even aggression. If their work pleases few people (not enough readers), they may feel like it wasn't worth doing, or if their work attracts criticism, they may feel guilt or shame for doing it. Fear of these consequences fuels procrastination.

Writing should be about the innate purpose of writing. It is to learn, to express yourself, to communicate. If one wishes to do these things, then there is almost never procrastination, as these actions always bring only positive rewards. There is no negative outcome to learning, to expressing yourself in written form, and communicating. Sure, the type of things you learn, express, or communicate could bring some negative consequences, but those actions on their own do not. They bring good results and feel good to do.

Perfectionism exaggerates the expectations one would put on themselves and their work. So people-pleasing may become people-impressing, people-delighting, and people-sweeping-off-their-feet. Anything less may bring the shame, guilt, and disappointment, and then "procrastination" becomes pretty much guaranteed. Because it's not really procrastination, it is a natural and very rational decision to not engage in activities that would bring only a bad outcome. Humans, generally, really don't want to hurt themselves. We learn not to touch the hot stove, just as we learn to not do things that don't meet our (sometimes delusional high) expectations.

Everything in procrastination is a lot more logical and explainable than it may seem. People-pleasing/conflict avoidance + perfectionism combo is common in tech workers. This has taken me decades to learn, now it helps the programmers I train, and I hope it helps you. Of course, everyone's life is a bit different, so don't have an unreasonable expectation that what I said applies to you 100%. It may only apply 20% and still be helpful.

daoboy• 2 years ago

This post made me feel defensive. Which is a good time to stop and reflect. Thanks for sharing the thoughtful advice

caseyy4• 2 years ago

That's wise and quite emotionally mature. I'm only sharing some thoughts and not attacking anyone. So if it feels a bit like an attack, perhaps one of your core beliefs is being challenged. :)

vitaflo• 2 years ago

If their work pleases few people (not enough readers), they may feel like it wasn't worth doing, or if their work attracts criticism, they may feel guilt or shame for doing it.

Likewise, even if the work is a resounding success and showered in positivity, there is now an internal pressure to do even better in the future otherwise you will disappoint your new followers in your next work.

All of this in my mind is fear of the outcome as opposed to the joy of the journey. The satisfaction must come from doing the work, not from the outcome of it. It's the only way to really break the cycle.

Rendello• 2 years ago

It goes from chasing value to desperately trying to find value in the world, searching your memory for something worth anything.

dexwiz2• 2 years ago

I really think we do a number on kids expecting a 100%, perfection, as a goal. And then only give them one chance to achieve it, but ask them to do it day after day for years. It creates some really unhealthy coping mechanism.

DilutedMetrics• 2 years ago

It really warped my perspective when I moved out of the USA to Europe as an adult and found out that's not how school works elsewhere in the world. Still coping with it lol.

ezequiel-garzon• 2 years ago

Could you elaborate? I always found the "grading on a curve" a distinctly American approach that leads to grade inflation and an overall lower academic level. Now, granted, the US provides very unique opportunities for students that want to go above and beyond, but that's another story.

spuds• 2 years ago

I struggle with this myself, especially around writing. My solution, from a coding perspective:

If I had a massive new app to build, it would indeed feel overwhelming if I felt like I just had to sit down and build it. I think we get extra stuck on that with writing, as it often feels like we just need to go from an empty page to a well-reasoned and edited blog post, with a lot of ambiguous struggle in between.

With programming, I start breaking it down into pieces of functionality, and smaller ones, until I have a list of concrete things I can actually get my head around and write the code for. I keep on doing those small things, build the structure around them, and eventually I have my app.

I do the same with writing now. Not an outline really, but a list of concepts I want to get across, then smaller ideas. I write out a few of those, often a paragraph at a time. The structure starts to reveal itself, and soon enough I have a new blog post.

I think the key here is arriving at something small enough that it doesn't feel overwhelming. New app or blog post feels like way too much in the moment, and my body and mind to everything possible to avoid it (procrastination). Writing out a paragraph, coding a function - very doable.

Sparkyte2• 2 years ago

I agree with this, but when working with a team I always feel motivated to see the progression made. Rarely do solo developers work well with others and rarely do collaborative developers work well by themselves. It really depends on the dynamic of the environment and the goal of the team.

hinkley3• 2 years ago

Which is a pretty pickle when you’re trying to hire devs. A candidate with a large GitHub repo may actually not be the team player you’re looking for.

Schiendelman• 2 years ago

Welcome to product management! :)

docmars3• 2 years ago

Great points! Sometimes setting what feels like a lower bar for what you want to accomplish is the best way to get things done.

"I'm just going to spend like 20 minutes writing out this small feature and then call it a day", and doing that like 50 times throughout your side project, will result in a completed side project! :)

Even if it feels really lame, I catch myself thinking: "Well that's not very much to get done," I force myself to knock it out. If I can compare a small feature to emptying the dishwasher -- it only takes 5 minutes -- it makes the task feel a lot more manageable.

Maybe a better analogy is: put just 1 or 2 cups away from the dishwasher, and leave the rest, and don't beat yourself up about it. You know you'll return to put the rest away later.

alsetmusic• 2 years ago

I procrastinate about everything. But one stark exception to the theme of “not being good enough” was looking for a new job after layoffs in 2023. It wasn’t that I thought I wasn’t good enough. My experience and resume is pretty solid. I procrastinated because of how shitty the experience is dealing with companies on LinkedIn who get flooded with applications that either a real person might not read (due to software filters) or someone lacking a real understanding of tech won’t accurately asses my skills.

I ended up getting a great job that I was really happy to land. But I only applied sporadically because just the thought of having to endure the slog was mentally painful.

Fear of what others might think didn’t stop me from building effective automation at the command line. It prevented me from publishing my work on GitHub. It took being in the job market to push me past that as I wanted to let my work speak for itself for technical reviewers during the screening process.

On a different note, present-tense me is always harassing future me with ambitious plans set as reminders. The sense of failure from constantly pushing them off is demoralizing. Some of that came from depression (I’m in treatment now) and some was a byproduct of being a high-achieving alcoholic. The latter sapped my mental fortitude and turned me into a passive streaming consumer. Each time I quit drinking, projects abound as my mind clears up.

Apologies for trembling a bit. Procrastination is one of my greatest challenges, now that I’ve corrected so many other self-sabotaging behaviors. It’s one that I still haven’t really begun to figure out how to address. But hey, I’m doing pretty well otherwise, so there’s that.

bitwize• 2 years ago

Get up early on the first of the month and post on that month's "Who wants to be hired?" Hackernews thread. I got a job this way, and the experience sure beat StalkedIn.

StefanBatory• 2 years ago

I grew up with parents who had anxiety. I had to be perfect, I couldn't make any sort of mistake because they'd get angry at me.

Naturally, I ended up not even attempting doing anything, because the punishment for not doing something and making a mistake was the same.

encomiast• 2 years ago

I understand how this feels. If this was me, that 'October 19, 2024' line would already be gnawing away at my psyche. 'I said I was going to write more, it's almost been a month…'.

This is one of the reasons I took the dates off of my posts (even though I think they might be useful to readers).

inglor_cz• 2 years ago

From someone who published nine books and over a thousand articles in the last ten years: writing begets writing.

If you fall off the bandwagon, returning to the activity is tedious. First lines feel like hard work, as if you were a totally unfit person trying to climb a steep hill.

Then it gets slowly better and if you can persist and write for several days, you are "in the flow" again.

sbergjohansen• 2 years ago

To anyone interested in further exploring this theme I warmly recommend "The Courage to be Disliked" by Kishimi and Koga.

swapxstar4• 2 years ago

That sounds interesting. Will check it out. Thanks!

siva7• 2 years ago

Hey HN, what do you recommend against coder's block? I often freeze when wanting to write code.

vdvsvwvwvwvwv• 2 years ago

Debugging is great. If I get block because the code is too complex, debugging is a good way to interact and understand the code. It starts to make more sense.

Console logging is still coding too! Debugging can be console logging or stepping through with a debugger. Or even run the program with different inputs.

dexwiz2• 2 years ago

Write out what you want to do in a single line. Then make a list of items needed to achieve that. Then split each of those items into 3s. Then split each of those items into 3s, again. Do this enough, and you will have the code you want to write. Then it just becomes a pseudo > real code transition, and LLMs are pretty decent at that.

amonith• 2 years ago

Maybe because you care about what others think you actually tell yourself that you need to write and read more to become "better" (not necessarily than others, just "better" as a person because you feel inadequate) and your body tells you that it's not actually what you want?

The solution might be to use the internet less and enjoy the offline life some more, not to "overcome the hurdle".

pooingcode• 2 years ago

Im struggling with this once I reach the point I can release a project. It’s a sort of writers block I guess.

hshshshshsh23• 2 years ago

I suffered from this.

The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant ideas about himself OP has created.

I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of work now. Whether it's great or petty.

OP needs to work on the ego. Or figure out a situation where OP has to ship things no matter what. Which is hard unless you are jobless and can't figure a way out apart from building useful things that people pay for.

calstad• 2 years ago

I know it’s a bit of a personal question, but can you elaborate on your ego diluting experience?

hshshshshsh23• 2 years ago

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway.

So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that.

Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and every moment is intense. Sunsets are absolutely beautiful that you cannot describe through words. Spending time in nature is surreal. You do the right thing instead of doing things to validate your narrative. The dopamine hit I used to get when I used to do certain things is gone( i use to confuse these dopamine hits as me doing something right). This unlocks doing things more from Intuition and less from memory. There is less fear. There is more flow. More creativity. No regard for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know and not believe.

That said it's not all great stuff. You also have to work through some existential questions which you were previously isolated by the ego. Like mortality. Impermanence of everything. Aging body. What happens after death. Nature of awareness. Why I am aware. Is awareness eternal and it's implications etc etc.

mangomountain• 2 years ago

This is spot on for the audiobook I’m listening to “Mindset: The Psychology of Success” , it’s resistance to effort that preserves belief in effortless ability and prevents any real progress

Jerrrrrrry• 2 years ago

I am suffering from this.

Every word you wrote stabbed me in my past, which means dissonance, somewhere.

Subconscious self-sabotage to rip the proverbial band-aid off, induced manic/delirium from a small infection, rumination/paranoia, catatonia.

Took less consciousness away from my delaying of problems. My ego didn't handle it, the manic iD, did.

I had successfully ran away from all my problems, failing upwards just enough to irk out a cowardly existence.

If Moses had an antibiotic, or had flossed more, the 4(0?) days of desert-delirium may not had been so fearlessly familiar.

after day 4-5 of catatonic rumination and paralyzing anxiety: I cried aloud, "just give me an ounce of strength"; that let me ruminate as to why:

I was asking for help: I am not allowed to. why not? skip that token, backprop later.

Why an ounce? and why of strength? and why am I asking aloud? and who am I asking?

...

Why an ounce? Why not a ratio of my body mass? Why not an arbitrary....because I have 0.

Zero what? Strength?

Why am I asking for strength? Because I am a coward.

and Occam's Razor clicked, all my problems stemmed from cowardice.

I awoke to find myself identifying with "depersonalization" for once, which was embarrassing. But embarrassing/cringe is dissonance, so my ego deconstruction began.

Morality is cowardice in disguise. <-- Stuck here, unable to proceed. Too axiomatic.

  Or figure out a situation where OP has to ship things no matter what. Which is hard unless you are jobless and can't figure a way out apart from building useful things that people pay for.

Not out of the woods yet, but at least I know I am in a familiar forest.

3abiton• 2 years ago

This mirros my experience during my studies. The first few years were excruciating.

hshshshshsh23• 2 years ago

Yes. I am just at my first year. It has been really bad in beginning. Now I am getting used to it slowly.

slibhb2• 2 years ago

It's hard to get more ironic than farming upvotes on the internet talking about how you transcended ego or whatever.

masspro• 2 years ago

Or maybe they just wanted to share something connected to the article

lazide4• 2 years ago

One of the biggest and hardest lessons in Buddhist (monk) practice is that self deception is as fundamental, and as hard to avoid, as breathing.

uoaei2• 2 years ago

Moreso than riding a moral high horse while violating etiquette and explicit guidelines?

hshshshshsh23• 2 years ago

Never claimed I transcended ego. I said my ego was diluted. Of course I have ego. It's just much more less than I used to have.

tjpnz• 2 years ago

That hurt. Is there a name for this?

shrubble• 2 years ago

It’s an interesting concept; I am in the process of learning Scheme and I am not very good at it at the moment.

I can see that my ego is getting in the way of doing more practice; the reading of Scheme books is much easier than writing some simple programs such as the practice ones at RosettaCode…

jwrallie• 2 years ago

By “accidentally went through” do you mean without a specific trigger or cause? Or do you mean there was one (or more) but you had no control over it?

sfn42• 2 years ago

Kind of sounds like they accidentally had a big dose of shrooms or something like that.

Arisaka1• 2 years ago

This speaks volumes for me. I always wondered how as a kid I would bust my face until I can be good at the hardest video games because those happened to be purchased as a present or from myself. And also I have font memories of my first IT job building software for work and would make something working in a few hours.

And my conclusion so far is: standards. I didn't had standards of what constitutes "fair difficulty", "good code", and more. So I would just give myself reps in both activities to become better without care.

Now that I'm older I second guess myself and worry about the things I attempt to build or play, all the time: "is this best practice?", "am I building it right?", "this game is too hard, it must be because it's unfair or poorly game designed".

And so I've decided to give myself room to enjoy myself without a single care in the world: I completed a game called "Metaphor Refantazio" on Hard, without looking at guides, without worrying about "best team comp", "where to get best gear" etc. and when I got stuck instead of looking things up I took a step back, looked what classes and gear I had to work with and figured things out on my own.

Don't get me wrong: the ideas and approaches I came up with were far from optimal (I can find videos of people killing the hardest bosses in one turn). But what matters is that they were my ideas. This game had been therapeutic for me in many ways, and this was only one.

But my point is, just like doing this makes you a better gamer, doing this in moderation can make you a better programmer. I'm not talking about "pretend the standard library, books and docs don't exist" but I mean "pretend tutorials on YouTube don't exist". I feel like tutorial hell can stem from exactly the same insecurities and desire for higher standards.

DoingSomeThings• 2 years ago

The video game example resonates. I realized recently that I load up walkthroughs by default. Before I’ve even turned the game on, I’m already following someone else’s ideas of best practice.

I think it comes from a misplaced belief about saving time and optimizing for “best” solutions. Taking a less optimal path is scary, even in a game with 0 real world consequences. I’ll consider that next time.

blueyes• 2 years ago

"Reading and writing more" are just aspirations. Those don't translate well to new behaviors. BJ Fogg (Stanford prof, behavioral scientist) lays out how to build new behaviors in Tiny Habits. You need to make them easy and attach the easy thing to something you already do regularly. (When I sit down to lunch, I read one page...) https://tinyhabits.com/

Secondly, your mind is interfering with its own work. Tim Gallwey talks about this in the Inner Game of Tennis (which is not really about tennis! ;). Your critic is not allowing you to "run hot" and put down some words that are less than perfect. It would be helpful to find something to focus your mind on, a simple count, like key strokes or word count. Alternatively, there's the practice of Morning Pages from the Artist's Way. Just let yourself write anything for a while. It's not for publication. You need to open the gates and you can do that by lowering the stakes involved with putting a word on the page.

Inner Game

https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance...

Artists Way

https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/01431...

I wrote about some other stuff here that helps.

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/a-few-ideas-that-made-my-life-...

1jss• 2 years ago

Thanks for sharing your story here! I think your comments and answers are thoughtful and well stated. I don't share the Buddhist worldview but can relate anyways in terms of art. When learning to model in 3D I started looking at things around me differently. Instead of looking at a chair and in my head thinking "chair", I looked at it as a shape and a surface with a texture (not thinking those words, just looking). This opened up a world of beauty, not only in natural objects, but also in man made things, especially in metals. The key change was to not categorize or label the things but instead become vulnerable to their features and let them move me. It had unexpected but pleasant everyday effects, such as stopping at a door I always used and in awe contemplating the door handle.

hshshshshsh23• 2 years ago

That is quite interesting. What you stumbled upon yourself is a technique used by many meditation teachers to help in awakening. I think the the idea is the moment you categorize something you stop knowing what the thing is and replace it with belief. Glad you are having fun with it :)

nefrix• 2 years ago

Why did you delete the links? Your comment regarding the ego stayed with me, and today I wanted to access again the links you shared, and saw that were deleted.

hshshshshsh23• 2 years ago

Do you mean mean this one ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42103115

I also recommend Waking up with Sam Harris. That's what got me started.

Liquix• 2 years ago

"The most thunderous sound arises out of quietude." - Zhaungzi

"The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind." - Albert Einstein

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that." - Stephen King

In other words unplugging, making time to read books, and allowing yourself to be bored are all good ways to stimulate the creative mind.

saltcod• 2 years ago

This piece was short, but it reads well. You’re definitely not a non-writer. You should keep at it. Look forward to reading more.

ksassnowski• 2 years ago

This resonates so much with me. I’ve even written a blog post a few years ago with almost the same title[0].

It hasn’t really gotten better since then even though I’ve built even more cool stuff since then (hell, I even was #1 on HN for a whole day earlier this year).

[0] https://www.kai-sassnowski.com/post/never-good-enough/

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

One thing to keep in mind is that the vast, overwhelming majority of people in the world, or even your town, don't know who you are and will never be aware of anything you do. This goes even for people who are relatively well known in their field. It's nearly daily I see some story here about someone who is apparently "well known" and my reaction is "Who? I've never heard of this person."

Don't worry about being good enough or what other people will think. The truth is almost nobody even cares.

redbell• 2 years ago

This ties into my fear of not being good enough. I’m constantly worried about what others might think of my writing. If I don’t think it’s great, how can I expect anyone else to?

I believe this belongs under the term Perfectionist Dilemma, as defined by Adam Miller [1]:

   The perfectionist dilemma is when a creator values the quality of a finished product, such to the extent that it inhibits their ability to iterate, change, and even produce. For many, it’s the ultimate writer’s block, invoking a fear that the finished product isn’t or won’t be as originally intended.

> When I read articles on Hacker News about people doing incredible things and writing brilliantly about them, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed.

I totally agree with this. I believe it's an instinct feeling, so I'm accepting it as it is.

_________________________

1. https://medium.com/@thatadammiller/the-perfectionist-dilemma...

tonymet• 2 years ago

[flagged]

mattfrommars• 2 years ago

TIL: there are randoms in the world who feel the exact what I feel, on daily basis for past three or four years.

It is frustrating. One recent mindset change I have adopted that reduces the feeling of overwhelming is:

1. Say it out loud, "I have plenty of time" and breathe deeply

2. "I have to work within constraint for which I do not have control of"

3. Can things be a lot more worse then they are? Fortunately, the answer to this has been 100% yes. Things can be worse in terms of developing complicated medical condition to family complication.

4. There always be be 'noise', work on reducing it and accept the 'distractions' are noise. Since distraction is noise, ignore it instead of giving into it.

Aeolun3• 2 years ago

1. Say it out loud, "I have plenty of time" and breathe deeply

The older I get, the less this is true, but the less I stress about it. There’s a great many things I’ll be able to accomplish, but never everything that I would want to. And that is fine.

hackable_sand5• 2 years ago

For real?

The older I get the more it is true.

jctdrs• 2 years ago

"Recently, with a bit of encouragement from a friend"

Thank you friend..

michael-online• 2 years ago

The first three minutes of this Ira Glass interview are pure gold, and I listen to them at least once a year to remind myself to keep fighting.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE

rsktaker5• 2 years ago

I think when I've read things I liked, it's because I was sort of writing when I was reading if that makes any sense. I know I'm stretching the meaning of the words a bit, but it feels to me like whenever I've read words that I've written and don't really feel what I'm talking about, it's because I'm a different person now and so the words aren't really my own.

But as I'm writing, the words are full of meaning, to just me, and I'm really saying something honest that I know is honest. After a while though, they seem dead.

So I write all the time (literally, and all over the place too) and I don't really care to share it because the words I've written aren't even all that impressive to me - it's more how I feel about the words I'm writing.

Or maybe I'm just saying that. I feel like when people say (share with others) that they think something, it's actually just a ploy to trick themselves into thinking that way - because being the person that would genuinely think that way is an attractive thing for them.

What can I say.

marcuscreo• 2 years ago

This resonates with me so much!

The only thing that has worked for me to overcome my crippling fear of writing shitty blogs on the Internet, is to write more shitty blog posts.

I write every day, publish every day, send them to my email list, every day.

90% of them are crap. Next year I hope 80% of them will be crap. And so on.

I have also noticed that when I send a particularly crappy one, I don’t get a lot of unsubscribe or hate, because people just wait for the next one. I’m guessing the 3500 people on my list generally want to receive them, or they would leave.

Most of them are crappy in particular ways: two personal, too broad, too vague, too long, Too $hort, two philosophical, two tactical… You get the idea.

Publishing often allows me to try a wide variety of approaches, lengths, styles, tones, topics, without fear that I am doing “wrong.“

If you want to connect, drop me a line at marcus@marcusblankenship.com. Always happy to support a fellow writer.

theseagin• 2 years ago

If the plan is to put more effort and just do better I'm afraid, you will fail again, sooner or later. Not because effort does not count, because it's too vague. You can write two lines with a pen that weighs 20 kilos, that will be a lot of effort but you've only written two lines. What can you do instead:

1. Trouble writing because you want something perfect:

Write crap, sit down and tell yourself I'm going to write one line, that's it. Just one line. But do it everyday.

2. Care too much about what others think:

If others perception of what you write is hindering you, just don't share everything you write. In this early a stage the point is to get good. Occasionally you'll write something that you'll be really proud of, share that. Not every word that comes out of our heads is pure magic, we all think and write a lot of crap. Welcome.

ilidur• 2 years ago

Review: The author uses this article to say why they're not writing as much as they want. They break it down into two reasons: self judgement of quality, and the quality bar set by articles and projects in their sphere of reading. It ends with having acknowledged the issues, the author is ready to write more.

Opinion: having seen this with many friends I think the author does good to acknowledge it, but the main thing to figure out is why they're writing. To be prolific at writing does not need to imply prolific at publishing.

I've actually started to write these review style comments because far too often the articles posted here don't have substance and interesting debates happen around bad data. So I wanted to see a change and critique the content not just the general concepts behind it. I now write more without having to accept my contributions are significant. But also create a network effect where friends read my reviews instead of being swayed by the upvotes and comment sizes, or worse the algorithm.

r17n• 2 years ago

I really like this idea. I hope this catches on.

irjustin• 2 years ago

Something that's not really answered in this post but maybe in another one is - why are they writing?

I used to have the exact same ambitions, blocks and difficulties writing (you can see on my blog).

Turns out, I just don't like writing. It's something that many smart minds extol as a great practice, which I 100% agreed, but once I gave it a serious go for myself, just didn't really enjoy the journey, product nor the outcome.

Usually, you need to like one of those elements otherwise there's a good chance you're not doing the thing for yourself, but because someone else is giving you the reason.

Do try though, because you won't know until you do.

hilbert42• 2 years ago

"Turns out, I just don't like writing."

For many of us writing is tough and quite hard work so it's understandable why many don't write much.

For instance, when I look back at my posts on HN—which I rarely do because it's embarrassing—I see typos, wrong word usage and grammatical errors that I didn't notice at the time. I only wish I could correct them.

I had a colleague who is now deceased but he could take pages and pages of handwritten notes and they were perfectly legible, logically coherent and could be essentially typed into papers with little or no editing. I envy his ability, I only which I could write with such accuracy and fluency.

I've often wondered why I can't do that. It seems to me that too many concepts come into my head at once and I lack the ability to sort them quickly and write them out in a linear/coherent fashion with enough speed.

The result is that editing can take more time than the actual writing. It's somewhat of a disincentive, so much of what I'd like to write doesn't get written.

It's interesting to compare say Mozart and Beethoven in this regard. Looking at Mozart's handwritten scores one sees page after page of almost perfect notes without cross-outs or alterations. On the other hand some of Beethoven's scores are such an unholy mess they're almost illegible.

On evidence, it seems the mental processes of both these geniuses worked in quite different ways.

Edit: it seems to me whether one likes writing or not one has to do so to communicate efficiently and effectively. I've often wondered how many great ideas have been lost because they were never documented.

globular-toast• 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm with you. Whatever you do, you need to like it. So many people try to start new habits like writing, reading, exercise etc, but if they don't like it, they will invariably stop before too long.

I think the first thing people need to do if they want to start a habit is find a way to like it. If you want to exercise most, then cycle to work. As you'll enjoy it more than being stuck in a metal box you've now made exercise a habit. If you want to read more, you need to find books you like and ways of reading them that you like (paper, ereader etc).

If you want to write more you need to first find a way to write that you like. You might like writing with pencil and paper. Seriously, try this. But you might prefer a WYSIWYG word processor. You need to try it. Then find something you enjoy writing. Fiction? Blogs? A private journal or memoir?

Bottom line is if you don't like something you won't keep it up.

moth-fuzz• 2 years ago

I have a problem with how procrastination and perfectionism, this sense of being 'not good enough', is almost universally phrased as not being good enough for others. For caring too much about others' opinions. And that the solution is to just Do Art For Yourself :tm:.

I've tried that. I've tried shunting out everyone else's opinions. But then of course, if you lock me in a room with me, myself, and I, you now have 3 of my biggest critics all in the same room.

I don't really care what others think, never really did, and none of these anti-procrastination or anti-perfectionism pieces help when it's my own standards that I'm not meeting.

lapitopi• 2 years ago

I was in a similar boat, and this book[1] helped me a lot. It deals with the roots of procrastination, which lie in poor mood management and the lack of self-compassion. If you want to go deeper into self-compassion, I found this book[2] very helpful.

[1] Procrastination - Fuschia M. Sirois PhD [2] Radical Acceptance - Tara Brach

echelon• 2 years ago

I definitely feel this more than worrying about others' perception.

Paradoxically, I also often feel that some tasks are _too easy_ and won't start them because they're simple, uninteresting, or unrewarding. I feel like I can execute them perfectly, so I put off getting started.

wswin• 2 years ago

Actual failure is not trying https://youtube.com/watch?v=OZEPbyIA8XI

la64710• 2 years ago

There is no new insight in this blog .. why did it get so many upvotes? Clearly I must be missing something.

bimguy• 2 years ago

I read a Virginia Woolf recently, To The Lighthouse. In which the mother describes her teenage children as having "incurable laziness". Which I found hilarious.

twodave• 2 years ago

I think self-reflection is an underdeveloped skill. Everything from weight management to pre-occupations (or even addictions) to getting work done to eating healthy —these are all problems that require self-reflection to recognize.

And then once the issue has been identified, the next thing to do is seek help. One of the great lies that everyone believes is that nobody understands me. I’m on my own. I have to fix this myself.

Bullshit.

So whether you just talk to a friend, attend a support group, pay for professional help, etc., these are all very effective at helping those who desire change to actually change.

asdfman1232• 2 years ago

My tricks for beating procrastination are:

1) Give yourself permission to do bad work.

If you're stuck, just start writing whatever junk is in your head. Make it hilariously bad! Write like a total idiot.

But often that alone is enough to unstick you. Having very rough work is infinitely better than staring at a blank page.

2) Procrastinate "a little bit"

Rebrand some procrastination as manageable short breaks, stop beating yourself up, and take control back from your rebellious subconscious. That way, you're working with yourself, not against it.

3) Always be asking yourself, "What's the smallest thing I can do RIGHT now?" and doing it.

E.g. you might not know how to write a full paper, but you can write down all your random ideas on a sheet of paper. Do that. Then once you're done with that, the next step might be writing an outline. Then, expanding each outline into a short paragraph...

But don't think that far ahead, just do the smallest thing now!

jdironman• 2 years ago

I feel like this also applies to software development. I have a friend, who is a perfectionist. they're really smart! a lot smarter than me actually. with that being said total output and progress towards a goal we both share is higher on my end because I'm as they put it "more industrious". I don't say this as a brag, but more people have different struggles to get started and different motivations. I'm not motivated by the big picture, I'm motivated by the challenge in front of me. others might be motivated by the big picture and not the smaller challenges. either way, I think recognizing that fact, and your motivation, alone is a step in the right direction.

Jerrrry• 2 years ago

How do you know you're not in a local minima?

the whole one digs can be deepened similar to Zeno's Paradox by procrastinating a little bit with bad small distractions allowing time to exponentiate small problems into untractable ones.

It is a little reductionary, almost akin to telling depressed people to have a slightly better today than the day before; not necessarily wrong but just rephrasing the problem.

It is correct, but only by definition.

asdfman1232• 2 years ago

You should also have another loop in your head, along with the one asking "what's the smallest thing I can do right now," asking "what's the most important and daunting thing that needs to be done right now."

That actually reveals another procrastination tip I forgot to mention: do the hardest stuff first. "Eat the frog" is what I tell myself.

Also, that's not quite how Zeno's paradox works.

hjaveed2• 2 years ago

I have suffered from this myself. The only way to move forward is to take action and not worry about the end result or outcome. I write to share my ideas now, document and also to make myself accountable

hjaveed2• 2 years ago

I have suffered from this myself. The only way forward to your point is to take action and not worry about the outcome or how others perceive it. I write now to share, document and also to make myself accountable

simonw2• 2 years ago

I will repeat my standard advice for writing more: lower your standards, and allow yourself (in fact force yourself) to publish things despite knowing that they could be better if you just changed a few more things...

Also, write about things you've learned and projects you've built: both of those are topics where you aren't expected to provide shining new insight never seen before online: https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/6/what-to-blog-about/

bbor4• 2 years ago

Love the overall message, and you’ve obv got the HackerCreds to back it up, but I’ll throw an obligatory “what does it mean to force oneself to do something?” IMHO the idea that you can ‘force’ yourself to do things puts a moral/normative element in the discussion that does more harm than good. It makes one feel like they somehow chose failure, when it inevitably arrives.

We all agree that are limits to self control, otherwise people would force themselves to work all the time, or not be depressed/anxious, or snap out of ADHD - or, hell, not to feel grief. “Encouraging”, “welcoming”, and “promoting” the defeat of perfectionism-based procrastination seems more helpful in the aggregate, IMHO

simonw2• 2 years ago

Force may be too hard a term, but basically I mean that you should bias towards publication even when you're not yet happy with what you've written, and constantly remind yourself that publishing content that isn't 100% perfect yet is a virtue that should be celebrated. The alternative is a folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all.

montagg• 2 years ago

Ship just before you feel it’s perfectly ready is how I do it. Your instincts are tuned to protect you, and you have to be willing to thank them for their input but ship anyway to prioritize learning by doing.

But this is not shipping things half-baked. It’s recognizing the point where your standards are wasting energy more than adding value.

kmod• 2 years ago

I think people here might like Oliver Burkeman's books where he talks about this stuff a lot. I loved his book "Four Thousand Weeks", and there is a new follow-up "Meditation for Mortals" which I have not read yet but seems to be well-received.

He's one of the few people I've seen address what I think is the key difficulty with this sort of stuff: that you can think think that you're addressing procrastination/perfectionism when actually you are engaging in it (with a target of fixing your procrastination/perfectionism). It's a difficult situation to break out of, because it seems like any effort to break-out would necessarily have this sort of grasping, but I think he (and Buddhist meditation) talk a lot about that key challenge.

laptopdev• 2 years ago

A lot of people apparently have similar self-beliefs. Recognize these are beliefs. Identify and map out your current belief system so that you can analyze it for what it is. That's what you have to do when you are uncertain, is map things out. When you develop more self awareness you can choose different belief systems, like in the matrix.

GVRV• 2 years ago

Just like the author, I wanted to read and write more. As I'm taking a year long sabbatical, I just started writing (badly) at https://www.gaurav.io/blog/. The idea is to write a post every weekday (excuse the last 2 weeks – it was Diwali) even if I think it's a terrible post. The value is in getting the post published, not publishing something great, at least for now.

I'm doing something similar with reading – 50 pages minimum everyday. I've read more books in the last 4 months than in the last 4 years by just keeping the streak alive.

ingen0s• 2 years ago

Let’s goooo!!!

stef_8412• 2 years ago

"Done kills Doubt".

stef_8412• 2 years ago

Done eats doubt for breakfast

perlgeek2• 2 years ago

I've been listening to a psychology podcast, and they label every "should"-statement as a cognitive distortion.

While I do read articles here and there, it’s far less than I should.

Formulating it as a "should" abstracts away who wants it, and makes an artificially abstract norm out of it.

But what is actually? It's probably just something that the author wants. Not doing something I want feels less bad than not doing something I should. There are lots of things that I want and don't get or don't do, I'm already used to that.

It's a bit like the passive voice in writing, it hides who does something, or should do something.

Some "should"s are also what we think that others want us to do, often just assuming that without asking.

And so on. If you assume that every "should" is a thinking error, some go away, some become "want"s. It's a good first step, I recommend it.

gsuuon• 2 years ago

I (too recently) realized "shoulda, coulda, woulda"'s are generally useless, and to focus on only "need, want"s. If it doesn't fit into these two categories then it's not important enough to think about.

CastFX• 2 years ago

"Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall B. Rosenberg is a wonderful book (I picked up from HN) that explores this concept very well.

Definitely recommend a read

docmars3• 2 years ago

Some "should"s are also what we think that others want us to do, often just assuming that without asking.

Yep, and to take it further, I'd argue this kind of thinking is a reflection of any shortcomings that you think others perceive in you. It's an inadequacy complex.

You think about others saying: "Bill doesn't read enough. He isn't intelligent enough. He isn't informed enough. He spends too much time doing other things..." -- says who? Sometimes this can come from loved ones or colleagues priding themselves in their own hobbies or activities. Other times it can come from past criticism you've received from friends or family.

There is so much freedom in doing something for yourself (because you know it's right) versus pleasing others, when it doesn't really benefit others.

As an example, I don't cave to the pressures of working out because I know I'd only be doing it to impress others. I'm at a healthy weight, but I play recreational sports instead to get my exercise, because I enjoy doing it. I also benefit from socializing with others and being outside doing something competitive.

pwrstick• 2 years ago

Which podcast?

perlgeek2• 2 years ago

The "feeling good" podcast by David Burns: https://feelinggood.com/list-of-feeling-good-podcasts/

I came across it in this remarkable interview in the "Clearer Thinking" podcast https://podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/192/david-burns-... After that I was really curious if his claims about success in therapy were plausible or wildly exaggerated, and my conclusion so far is: it seems he really is legit, but his students aren't able to fully replicate his success, so it seems it's only partially the "TEAM CBT" model, and partially that Dr. Burns is an exceptionally good therapist.

docmars3• 2 years ago

When it comes to writing, one of the best decisions I've made is to just start typing what I think, and then go back and proofread it, make edits sentence-by-sentence, figure out if things could be worded better, and finally, trim some fat if whatever I end up with feels too lengthy.

It helps you learn your own thought patterns and understand whether your logic is sound or not.

And you're right, getting started is the name of the game. Someone brilliant once said: beating "procrastination" is really just imagining yourself starting the task, instead of being in the middle of it or finishing it.

Instead of picturing the document full of paragraphs after writing for several hours, what does it look like for you to sit down at your desk or couch to write? Do you need coffee first? What's a good motivator for getting started? Can you find a new trigger to motivate you, like a snack? Some people like to reward themselves after doing a task, which can help, but I find myself saying: "Ooh, I'm going to brew some coffee before I start" and that gets me excited to follow through with whatever I set out to do.

riqbal4• 2 years ago

I had same issues as you have outlined about writing before I read someone say "don't worry about others and just write for yourself" and all my fears about writing went away. So just write for yourself and I can guarantee you that others will read what you write.

aashutoshrathi• 2 years ago

this resonates a lot with me. looking forward to more blogs from you and start writing myself.

godspeed

heavyjoe• 2 years ago

McClelland’s Three Needs Theory: Power, Achievement, and Affiliation. I had suffered from this until i realized that my main motivation (learned from all my experiences in the past) for everything i do is Affiliation. And more or less what is written here "I’ll never get anywhere if I’m paralyzed by the fear of what others might think. It’s time to put that aside and focus on my own growth." is what helped me get some distance to what others may think.

jeter02• 2 years ago

I have to remind myself procrastination is a fear problem and not an ability problem. Asking for help. Fear of getting more stuff to do. It prevents me from getting a sh*tty first draft down and from that. ONly thing I have found is like body doubling even in the form of coffee shop and people not even doing. I think there are frameworkds too. It is just sometimes fear can preventing using the many tools. Also a plan of "What does done look like". Great topic.

brianjking• 2 years ago

All I can say is dear god am I in this post or what.

jonesn11• 2 years ago

My personal opinion is that the procrastination the guy is experiencing is due to an underlying mental health challenge

comatoast• 2 years ago

This is just ADHD. Look up the symptoms (there's a lot more than just "can't focus sometimes").

Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

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