> That said, I'm not sure about the novelty thing. I'd rate the greatest long term project in my life as being staying fit, athletic, and healthy as I near 50, in spite of some horrible injuries and setbacks, and remaining thus far in a reasonably happy marriage. In both of those pursuits, novelty is almost the anthesis to success.
You're right that long-term goals such as these don't thrive on novelty at all. I suppose they fall in a different category, more of a commitment than a one-off project to be procrastinated about.
For me personally, I have similar goals, and I'm not struggling with procrastinating my fitness-related tasks at all. It's an interesting insight, now that I think about it. Would that be because I have a long-term goal in mind? Because I know it's important to my health?
I see why this response came to be, but I just wanted to briefly annotate that this was not my intended point at all.
I'm not obsessed with being productive at all, it's just something that has been on my mind - and I'm interested in the psychology of it. Many of my days are filled with non-productive activities which I thoroughly enjoy. I just don't write about it on my profession-related blog. So I guess it's all about the context.
Glad you liked the graphs. They're my favourite part.
I looked into The Now Habit, and added it to my reading list. Great addition, thanks! Trying to rephrase 'I have to' to 'I choose to' is already something I try, but in the end, this only lands when you've genuinely internalised it - if you don't truly believe you're choosing it, it doesn't really work (at least for me). As you say, it's a delusion.
Essentially it's affect labelling in disguise, as mentioned in the article.
You're right, in my initial draft, I also took a side-step into figuring out the obligation aspect, but this ended up scattering the article too much. It's definitely a related part of it, the same tasks I love will become a chore as soon as I am obligated to do them. I love how you phrased it in your comment, transforming its emotional signature - very well put. That's what it is!
I didn't get to see it but that sounds actually like a really fun Easter Egg to discover when you're on the website together with someone else!
Can be distracting when reading the article of course, so it needs a toggle, but I'd not recommend removing it altogether. Maybe if you also let people share text selections, they can even talk and make a friend by selecting letters at each other xD or maybe I'm imagining too much now
We mostly use figma for brainstorming and RICE-scoring, which can be hard work. Hence my lukewarm reaction. My other reaction was "cool, how’d he do that".
You're right that long-term goals such as these don't thrive on novelty at all. I suppose they fall in a different category, more of a commitment than a one-off project to be procrastinated about.
For me personally, I have similar goals, and I'm not struggling with procrastinating my fitness-related tasks at all. It's an interesting insight, now that I think about it. Would that be because I have a long-term goal in mind? Because I know it's important to my health?
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