I’m motivated this week. My choice of the word week should be telling.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that I go through an oscillating pattern between big motivation and crippling, procrastinatory depression, with a short and elusive middle-ground usually indicating that I’m slipping into the depression phase.  This happens somewhere between three and four times per year. Let’s say sqrt(12) times, that way the interval between the meltdowns in months and the number of meltdowns per year have the same scalar component.

I don’t think I’m bipolar, the frequency of the cycle is too low. I think the issue is more that I have a nasty procrastination habit that is only defeated by unreasonable optimism. Sort of how alcoholism is the only disease that people are allowed to get mad at you for, procrastination is the only psychological disorder I can think of that brings out the most non-constructive help in myself and those around me. “Stop procrastinating! Don’t be lazy, just fucking do it,” and so on. Words like that were driven so deeply into my head as a kid that I don’t even need anyone to say them in order to hear them anymore.

And that’s what causes the the meltdowns: I slack off for at least two days in a row (I’m surprisingly capable of recovering from only a single day of procrastinating as long as I focus on not letting it go any farther), which leads me to beat myself down about my procrastination issues, which provokes my depression issues, which leads to more procrastination, et bloody cetera, until the meltdown. After a week or so of being capable of little more than staring, something will inspire me and I’ll whip back into shape, rearrange my environment with a fresh set of motivational hacks, and go hyper-productive for several weeks until the first time I miss two days of productivity in a row again.

This wasn’t that big of a problem years ago, but ever since the goddesses of cohabitation blessed my home with someone to drag down with me, it’s become an issue. My fiancee deserves better, is what I’m saying, so, somehow, I need to fix this cycle. More precisely, I want to. But how do I keep myself riding on the momentum of my post-crash motivation once it starts? Or is that even the answer? Is the problem more that I still punish myself for procrastinating?

I’m not really looking for advice here, mostly because no one seems to be able to do any better than, “Why don’t you just not procrastinate?” I blame puritan America, “the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation or holidays,” and its idea of a “work ethic” for that. It’s just so remarkable that this society has trained itself to believe that doing work is the ethical thing to do. If you’re not working, you’re bad! If you’re not making your disproportionate contribution of blood and sweat in exchange for the gracious handouts from the upper class, you’re lazy! And because of that line of thinking, any time someone gets into the habit of not diving head first into unpleasant tasks — even if they’re otherwise productive! — they get labeled a procrastinator and shunned.

I’m not sure what I hoped to accomplish by writing this. All I know is that I’m productive right now, and I have no idea how to ensure I’ll stay that way. Does anybody have any advice that favors the carrot over the stick for once?

First person to say, “Well, if you’re already thinking you’re going to fail, then of course you’re going to,” gets a tetherball pole up the nose.

Opinion, Philosophizing, Self Help 1 Comment »

Are you having trouble staying motivated in a sea of excuses? Do you constantly procrastinate? Do you find yourself sacrificing your dreams to keep up with the endless minutea of modern life? Then try my brand new, patented “Tough Shit! Do It Anyway!” method!

Kids keeping you up late and not giving you a chance to exercise? Tough Shit! Do It Anyway!

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With my new method, you can go from this:

To this:

…In just three or four years of dedicated hard work!

Art, Humor, Self Help 1 Comment »

Advice bloggers take note: I know you mean well.

People look to you for guidance, and you give them the tips they crave. This one wants to start running and can’t seem to get into the habit: 6 Steps to Starting a Jogging Regimen. This one wants to lost weight but keeps slipping: 10 Tips to Get You to Stick to Your Diet. This one wants to get into freelancing but doesn’t have the energy to learn how: 8 Things You Need to Do to Start Your Freelancing Career. Tips and steps. Tips and steps.

But readers, you do not need tips. You’ve read them already, on multiple blogs, and you still have problems. Clearly, the list of tips is not the right path. What you need is a healthy dose of perspective. You need to know the real hurdle between yourself and a better life.

Here is the root cause of all of your life’s problems: There is something wrong with you and you need to change.

That crunch you just heard is the sound of my feed subscribers all clicking “Mark As Read” simultaneously.

This is not what you want to hear, and it is not what the PR guy in me wants to tell you, but it is what you need to understand. Tips are a good place to start, but the time of self-help pandering has to end eventually. You have the information, you know what you have to do. If things still do not go your way, that is because you are the problem and you have not yet changed.

Given that knowledge, you now face a choice.

#1: See the problem, and know that it cannot be fixed. This is completely true. You cannot change. All hope is lost.

#2: See the problem, and recognize it for what it really is: an opportunity. This is completely true. Where there are personal flaws, there is a road by which your life can improve.

Throughout all of the problems in your life, the one thing each disaster has in common is you. Change yourself, and you can change your life.

Opinion, Self Help Add Comment »

How many times have you sat down in your cubicle, punched in at the clock, or put your purple-logoed hat on, faced the day before you, and sighed, wishing that you had that big idea that would finally emancipate you from the workaday grind? The next popular novel, or video game, or website— It doesn’t seem that difficult! People come up with ideas all the time! But somehow, your ticket out never arrived. What are you doing wrong?

The problem with coming up with an idea is that you don’t know what it is yet. It isn’t even lurking in your subconscious, waiting for you to notice it. It’s just. Not. There. And waiting for it to come along on its own isn’t going to do you any good. The only way to put it there is through old fashioned, brute force thinkin’, and that is where most people stumble and give up. Thinking is hard, especially when you don’t have any guidance as far as what direction to think in.

That lack of guidance, however, is what you must embrace if you’re going to actively coalesce your Big Idea. Some ideas will just happen naturally, yes. Against the odds, even the Big One might happen that way. But the only way to raise your chances at a great idea is to make an effort, and that means opening your mind to thoughts you would ordinarily suppress. Just as an egg does not realize its full potential until it is broken, so too must you break open your head on the side of a skillet. I’ll wait while you do that.

There are two situations in which I come up with the majority of my ideas. The first, and most common, is when I do it by necessity. If I need to come up with a topic for a post on Bathtub Brewery, for example, I’ll sit down, stare into space, start thinking arbitrarily about beer, and just let my mind go from there. Beer becomes barley becomes farms becomes cows becomes grass becomes green becomes Green Party becomes Politics becomes this post. This works well when you’re on a deadline and need something now, but you aren’t going to find your Way Out of the Machine this way. In order to do that, you have to go take a dump.

The second, far less common idea-generating scenario is any instance in which I’m simply sitting around, not focused on anything in particular, just letting thoughts and images ebb and flow through my head like happy little parasites. This happens much too infrequently for most people: We are constantly on task, cranking out one widget so that we can move on to the next one, never giving our minds a moment to just chill. But this is when you’re more likely to find your Big Idea!

Lifehack posted a great article at the beginning of this year about how to give your mind the wander time it needs. Though the angle they take is geared more towards todo lists, this would also work as a daily “creativity meditation”. Sit in a quiet, private place with a notebook for 15 minutes, let your mind wander, and any time something in your thoughts congeals to the point where you can write it down, write it down, forget about it, and move on. At the end of those 15 minutes, you may have five new ideas, or fifty, or none, but you’ll have given yourself a chance to brainstorm, which is all anyone can ask of themselves.

The best part is, you already have a 15 minute block of privacy set aside for yourself every day: It’s called pooping. I’m serious. If the idea of spending time each morning thinking for thinking’s sake seems hard to fit into your schedule, then stop bringing a magazine to the bathroom with you, and start bringing a notepad. If you can do this every day, then maybe that Big Idea will finally come out of you!

Opinion, Philosophizing, Self Help Add Comment »