words as photographs

Yesterday I decided to game in the evening. I played a quality game for a bit and went to bed at a sensible time, and had a good night of sleep. However, today I'm struggling a lot more to get started with work. I think I need to identify the moments when it is OK to game. Before a workday is probably a bad idea as it will drain my willpower to get started the next day. Or maybe it isn't the will power that is drained. It's more that I feel a lot more distant from work, as if that facet of my life is no longer well integrated with the rest. It separates me from that. It is numbing. Which is an odd feeling that I want to explore a little more. This morning I resumed listening to a podcast I started yesterday. Also a bad idea, as it further distanced me from the work I have to do. Further numbed. It also happened to touch on a point I found fascinating ( Braid is getting re-mastered and re-released next year ), and that completely absorbed my attention for far longer than exp

I fell on a trap laid by Google some 15 years ago. They appeared in the job market promoting fun work places. I somehow equated that to the ideal workplace. And not just me, as I've seen my previous employers adopt Google like measures to make the workplace fun: have some kind of games available, sweets, weird chairs, etc. This reinforces the motivations to work, or be at the work place as external things. I think to the detriment of the internal. I have since been trying to find a workplace that would promote such external motivations. Have an inspiring boss. Have focused workers around me. Have a system of rewards and punishments in place. I have always neglected working on my own internal triggers. What my conduct should be. What can I do, and how can I do it, to stay sharp and motived, absent an external trigger.

Struggling terribly to get back to work. Spent the last two days in the office, with a great work atmosphere, feeling energised and motivated. Now I'm back home, I feel completely drained and struggling very much to get going. I need to be stricter with myself again. It feels very offputting, as it was so effortless and positive during my visit to the office.

Main lessons: from a different video , the best source of motivation are values. These are constant regardless of impulse or emotion. If things need to be done because they serve a higher purpose, outside myself, then they will get done regardless of how I feel, up to a certain threshold. too boring of a task will lead the mind to wander. Too boring? Add constraints or pressures to make it more engaging. too overwhelming of a task will lead the mind to wander. Stressed about a task? Isolate the emotion that is looking to manifest. Feel it, but don't follow it. Breathe out. Calm down. Ego gets in the way. More often than not, this will be comparison. I will be comparing myself to people who inspired me in the past, or challenge me in the present. This will be breaking my concentration, because I need to get out of myself to get the job done. Fixed Point Gazing is a technique that can help. I have used gazing before to calm me down and get me in the mood. Usually by focusing at a dis

To be able to concentrate at work I must first get into the right mood. Getting to the right mood is helped by: a sense of urgency (deadline imminent) a sense of consequence (what I am to do is to have immediate, tangible result) enough sleep enough food And it is hindered by: other big things going on in my life lack of coworkers physically around a sense of loneliness and abandonment I can control for sleep, food and to a certain extent, other big things going on. The major difficulty is in managing my sense of loneliness and the permanent lack of physical coworkers around against the sense of urgency and consequence to get me going. To push me through the task, I must envision its outcome as much as possible, and desire it.

Really difficult to remain focused when I am alone. Also, and this is very important, see, is that when I work alone, it is really easy to believe the noise inside my head. There's no one to challenge it. I thought I was much better and much more deserving than I really am. I think I should be a much harder worker, when in fact my performance is below my standard. And yet, with a little effort it seems to shoot well above that standard, as I will quickly drop what I'm doing and reward myself with foolish distractions. I am accepting being foolish. Concentration is a lot like holding whatever I'm focusing on inside a bowl in my mind. Everytime I get interrupted, the bowl shakes and the contents spill out. I then have to spend some effort putting them back in. I also feel the bowl is cracked, and a lot of my focus slips through the cracks.

 Grit. Got to get grit. My sin has been hubris. For too long, I have thought myself as much smarter than I really am, more capable than I really am. Part of me believed what others were saying about me, while another part, a deeper part, knew well I was being an impostor.