this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
92 points (98.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43336 readers
966 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I relate to these patterns, which is why I have tried to learn about the fundamentals of motivation.
What is the relationship for you between my prior suggestion and your clarification above?
I know what to do, what should happen (in theory), and I want to do it. But I waste my time away. Is there a way out of this?
Is there also something you don't want to happen that seems likely to happen if you try?
For example, I work with many folks who struggle to leave projects unfinished, so they resist starting for reasons they don't quite understand.
I definitely fear projects being unfinished, and the apparent "mountain" of work that might be the new personal project I want to work on definitely intimidates me
Aha, so that's something in the way: it might be more work than it's worth to you. Either the uncertainty interferes with you or the certainty that it demands much more effort than it's worth interferes with you. Does one of these hit you more than the other?
I'm certainly familiar with both feelings with regards to different projects.
So... Let me address each of those, just in case.
I don't merely mean "Are you able to?" but also "How would you feel about those outcomes?"
Peace.
It used to be that I didn't really grasp the scope of most projects, and so after research I used to dive right in. These days I'm more jaded and try to make better long-term choices in terms of software (which is ridiculously hard because you never know, example: Terraform is no longer FOSS).
The extra work is usually in optimisations or security configuration, both of which I'd like to have done but apparently I don't feel horrible enough to actually do it.
Yes, I have done both of what you said. It's not a hard-and-fast rule for me, but it does make me a bit miserable, that I didn't finish what I started. Sometimes, that acts as a catalyst for me to get back into it and actually try to finish it, or leave it completely after understanding that it's beyond me.
Thanks for the advice.
In your shoes, I'd want to understand more about what makes me miserable about not finishing things. In fact, I was in those shoes a decade or so ago. I take a much more measured view of that now. If I genuinely want to finish it or need to finish it, I'll finish it. The rest is noise.
Everyone gets there in their own time. Meantime, you're welcome, good luck, and peace.
Isn't feeling like that a good thing though? If you're sufficiently miserable there's a good chance you'll actually get the work done. This also works if you feel embarrassed or feel that others depend on you, but in my case I'm going to have to depend on the former.
Not always. Sometimes one feels miserable, fears the reactions of others, and still doesn't do the task. Sometimes we call this "depression". Not recommended.