sidrell

The strange thing about being well organized is that it makes you more willing to make changes. You used to avoid new ideas because you couldn't tell what they'd break. Now you try them the day you think of them. When you know what depends on what, you can see what broke right away, so a change stops feeling risky.

Being absorbed in something has a side effect you can't see while it's happening. You stop noticing how long you've been at it. Normally a small part of your attention works like a background process that keeps checking the time, so you notice it passing. But when the work is interesting enough, it takes all your attention and that process never gets to run. You look up and the coffee has gone cold and the light on the wall has moved. It feels like you sat down ten minutes ago. The same thing happens with programming, writing, drawing, long conversations, or anything else that absorbs you.

Preparing ahead is a bet that conditions will stay put (the price you budgeted, the rule you checked) and they rarely do for long so a plan with slack outlasts one without.

Small rewards raise the price of enjoyment. Each one moves your baseline up, so the next thing has to be bigger just to register. Scroll all day and a book feels slow. Nothing dulls ordinary pleasures faster than a reward you can always get more of.

A day with nothing hard in it has nothing to dread, nothing to push through, and no relief when it's over so it never feels good.

Most of what you get done happens on decent days. Great days are rare because they're hard to repeat, but decent ones aren't. Make a decent day something you could manage when you're tired. Days like that probably add up to more than a few great ones.

If you've had one regular day where you did what you said you would, you can do it again though that probably won't feel like changing everything. You need to be patient enough to take one thing at a time and humble enough to see that day as the change.

You'll probably work hard for longer if you also do something you enjoy. Pickleball or gardening or dinner with friends can feel like slacking. But almost nobody can work at full intensity for months, so you need the time off to keep from quitting.

When you think "I'm just not good at this," it usually means "I'm still average at this" or "I've only done it a few times." You can wait until you feel talented, or quit so you never have to be mediocre, but either way you skip the step that shows you what's wrong which is finishing something average. Everyone who's good at something was average at it first. So once being average stops bothering you, you can get on with fixing what's wrong.

Nobody does everything they could in a day. But the days that bother you are the ones where you knew what you could have done. I suspect that's when you start to dislike yourself. Start with one thing you know you could do tomorrow, since that's the only part you can still change.

Every option has downsides and difficulties and taking it means giving things up. You'll find them in yours. The right choice has as many downsides as the wrong one so finding them doesn't tell you whether you chose right. Downsides describe options, not decisions.

Your first attempt almost always comes out worse than you expected. That's because the standard in your head comes from finished work by people with years of practice, but you're just starting. Where your attempt falls short tells you what to fix next time.

Hesitation usually comes from outcomes you haven't accepted yet, so accept them before you start and you'll act more freely. It helps to work out what a loss would cost you and what a win would change, and to be fine with both (and mean it). Then you can start and think about the work instead of the outcome.

If you're researching something you could test in an afternoon, test it. When you can't tell how it will work, try it. Thinking can only answer the questions you already know to ask. Nobody reading about bread thinks to ask how sticky the dough should feel until they've made some. Sometimes you'll waste time on things that don't work but the ones that fail usually teach you the most.

When you decide you only get one chance at something, the pressure goes up but your odds don't. You probably decide that because you care how it turns out. But the pressure will make you do worse than you would if you'd treated the attempt as one of many. So plan on other tries. If this one goes badly, you'll try again.

Learning a skill used to mean practicing, then it became reading about it, and now it's mostly saving posts to read later. Each change made it cheaper and each still felt like you were learning though you got less out of it every time. But if you want the skill, even a good post can only describe the work. Of the three, practicing is the only one I'd call learning.

Rewards you didn't earn make you want to work less. Each one seems like pure gain since you were handed something for nothing, but being glad to have it doesn't give you much reason to work, and getting it can leave you with less reason than you had. If a reward comes without work, you tend to be less willing to work for the next one, and probably for anything at all because once you've seen things show up on their own, effort starts to look optional. A reward that makes you work less isn't much of a reward.

If you try enough things, some will go badly. And some of those will embarrass you when you remember them. The embarrassment mostly wears off because other people forget and you eventually do. Anyone who's tried much has a few of their own. But what you never tried tends to bother you longer and harder. A failure is over once you know what happened. Something you never tried is never over and you can usually imagine it going better than it would have gone. So if you're unsure, lean toward trying even if you might fail or look foolish. Failing usually costs less.

Every hard thing gets done with help and yours will be no different. The ones that look like solo work tend to have people behind them because most help happens out of view. Help usually comes as advice or someone's time or an introduction to whoever knows the answer. If you let people see the work while it's still rough, you'll get unstuck sooner and probably finish more of the hard things you start. Most people are glad to point out what you've missed.

The better you handle things, the less anyone checks on you. That's because checking takes time so people mostly spend it on whatever looks wrong, and when you handle things well, nothing looks wrong. So if you need something, don't wait for anyone to notice.