benny
28d ago
Would it maybe be an idea to take a vacation from this hobby? I'm a pretty regular reader here and I don't think it's psychologically healthy to always be so critical of oneself about the progress one is having in an optional aspect of their life. I struggle with this myself, which is why I play the old wise man now. As Oliver Burkeman says: You don't have to think about it in terms of productivity debt that you have to pay off to be considered a human being. You are one.
I'm absolutely in favor of doing things and not just being. It's more about a shift in mentality. I think beating yourself up about not getting things done is long-term harmful. A real break would maybe get you out of the cycle.
Maybe I should've added that one has to try to adopt a new mentality: "Getting Things Done by Being Friendly to Yourself" instead of having the self-criticism angle and then when the regular self-criticism doesn't work, one just dials it up to 11, because that's the whip that always worked. Self-love and all those terms are not terms certain kind of people will accept, but maybe "being friendly to oneself" works for you.
I get shit done after this ongoing transformation and I worked on my most ambitious software architecture so far the last quarter and I only use the whip less than 20% of the time.
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