Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Life Advice => Topic started by: RoguelikeRazuka on December 10, 2015, 03:30:35 pm
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I know that the best way to get something done is to just keep doing it. Though in order to keep doing something one needs to just start doing it first. And this is a big problem for me. How do I stop being so amoeba-like and get more purposeful and motivated? What are your suggestions?
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Find something you like to do. Then start with that and keep working when you're done with the first thing.
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What specifically do you want to do?
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Don't worry about it, you'll think of something eventually.
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I know that the best way to get something done is to just keep doing it. Though in order to keep doing something one needs to just start doing it first. And this is a big problem for me. How do I stop being so amoeba-like and get more purposeful and motivated? What are your suggestions?
The story of my life.
I wanted to draw. I made a new years resolution 2 years ago and it actually worked for a month or two and i even managed to graduate from preschjooler like drawing to average junior high grade (still terrible).
It worked for like... 2 months before i lost all the motivation i had when starting.
New years eve is close so you can try that as well.
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Well, think of it like this: Is this how you want to spend your time? Because if it isn't, you'll have to either look past your laziness or somehow form a magical union with it that allows for the incredibly rare Slack Working (also known as slorking). Sadly, most of us have to make do with the former. :v
Personally, i'd be entirely okay with slacking off all day if i didn't know that it would lead to my life going exactly nowhere, so i'm only about 70% okay with it. So, i gotta figure out what those last 30% want, else i'll only be 70% okay AT MAX for the rest of my life. I am not okay with not being fully okay, so therefore i will (sometimes) work past my laziness to reach a higher percentage of okay. In the interest of reaching a higher max level of okay about this existence and its accomplices, it might be worth temporarily sacrficing a bit of current okay percentage.
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Do you have a job? I recommend a job.
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People do what they want, so find a way to make whatever you 'want' to do more appealing than sitting around all day, I guess.
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Having got involved in some activity, I may literally get sunk into it, spending a lot of time over the same thing. But once I take a little break some hours after, it's almost impossible for me to force myself to get to the work again.
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Two words: Ulysses Contract.
Side effects may include self-hatred after initiating said Contract.
Basically, you set things up so that there's an undesirable consequence if you fail to complete your goal(write down some nasty secret of yours in a closed letter, give it to a friend of yours, tell him that if you don't do [X] within [X TIME] that he/she should open the letter and put its contents up on Twitter).
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I know that the best way to get something done is to make someone else do it for you
FTFY
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I know that the best way to get something done is to just keep doing it. Though in order to keep doing something one needs to just start doing it first. And this is a big problem for me. How do I stop being so amoeba-like and get more purposeful and motivated? What are your suggestions?
Fewer levels of meta. You've set your goal up as "Don't be lazy", but as you know from experience, this doesn't recommend a course of action. Instead of letting yourself worry about the abstract, focus on specifics. Try to avoid your natural tendency to connect the dots. Instead of "I am lazy", "I can't make myself do this particular thing". It becomes easier to answer questions like this, especially if you don't let your answers be generic catch-alls like "Because I'm too lazy".
It is not easy to do this, and I've certainly not been able to practice it universally, but recognizing it and making an effort to pursue it has helped me a lot. Of course, it may not help you, but there it is.
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There was this really good Ted talk that had some stuff relevant to your question. For the life of me I can't find it right now but I'll try and get the gist that I remember.
Basically, every action has this energy treshold or whatever you want to call it that you need to push yourself over in order to get yourself to do it. Certain things are cheap and easy to do, especially if something has become a habit for you, because then it almost costs you nothing because you're so used to doing it. And as it turns out, for the average person, the biggest amount of effort is getting out of bed in the morning. Compared to that effort everything else is easy for the most part, so I think what you need to do is get yourself a list of things you want/need to do (doesn't have to be a list, just find something that you can do). Then, do them, whenever you so much as feel like not doing it, remind yourself that it requires a certain cost and you had no problem paying it earlier to get out of bed, so why wouldn't you be able to pay it again?
And no, don't feel like it doesn't count as a proper excuse, because if you ask yourself why you'll hardly ever find a reason that's actually valid. You don't feel like cleaning your room because you feel sad? Why would feeling sad have any impact on your ability to clean your room? Is feeling sad actually physically restraining you from doing it? Is it breaking your kneecaps with a baseball bat? No? Then why is it a problem? You still have the energy required, you're just spending it on feeling sad instead of being productive. Why would you do that?
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There was this really good Ted talk that had some stuff relevant to your question. For the life of me I can't find it right now but I'll try and get the gist that I remember.
You mean this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os6U77Hhm_s
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No, don't think it was that one, I think a lady was giving the presentation. Still, pretty close in the general gist of it :D
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Yeah, the biggest thing is simply to pick small things that you can do and start doing them. Once they become habit pick slightly larger things and starting doing them to. Nobody starts out by climbing Everest, you start with smaller hills first and then work your way up to the mountains. In the same way to "cure" laziness you need to start with small things that you can convince yourself to start doing regularly, then work your way up from that to the more involved ones.