Tag: the examined life

I’m a simulator. It is in my nature to model the world in my head and make hypotheses and predictions based on them. A lot of the time, this serves me well, but it also means I spend more time than is healthy fretting about what might happen, or, as I have termed it just now, pregretting things.

For example, a couple of folks tried to console me when I didn’t get into Stanford this summer (Go Bears, I should note in passing), and it perplexed me, because I didn’t feel at all bad about it. Not because I didn’t want to go, but because I’d lived through that particular rejection several times already in internal simulation. I was disappointed, but I’d worked through most of any sadness or bitterness I had.

This, I have concluded, is ridiculous. Yes, it’s sort of nice to be able to be sanguine when life dishes up misfortune. But it really sucks to suffer through misfortunes that never actually happen. I pregretted not getting any callbacks from law firms this year during on-campus interviews; that didn’t happen. Then I pregretted not getting any offers; that didn’t happen either. Which reminds me I have something else to post about, but I’ll do that separately.

Originally published on LiveJournal

On an ordinary day, I get done all my daily chores and make a reasonable amount of progress on the current task (or tasks) I have in front of me. On an exceptional day, however, brimming with gumption, I tear through all my pressing work and have some extra time and energy to apply to the backlog. This can be a problem.

I have an ongoing issue with accumulating unfinished projects. Some people have a surfeit of good ideas. I have a surfeit of good ideas with accompanying 1-to-3-page treatments. I also have a little problem with scale; I tend to inflate a clever idea into a clever idea for a grand project. I’m trying to work on actualizing ideas at a scale where they might be doable; it still leaves me with the problem of generating ideas, working on them until I’ve written out the initial impulse, and then setting them aside to get back to more pressing tasks.

Most days, these projects in cold storage don’t bother me, as I don’t have to think about them. I note a piece of paper, or an object attached to a project, and maybe think in passing, “I should get back to that; that was cool.” But I have other fish to fry, and so the epic backlog just sits like a vague malaise over me.

When I actually have the time to pay attention, however, it starts to unpack, and I begin to understand the implications of seeing a project through to completion, with all the subordinate tasks (some extremely trying), all the unknowns, all the iterations. And usually, several unpack at once in my head. (Prioritization is also a problem.)

This is intimidating. Often, I wind up cutting the workday short with psychic anaesthetic in an attempt to avoid the reality of all the crap I told myself I’d do.

Originally published on LiveJournal

There is a particular pernicious form of procrastination to which I am occasionally vulnerable, especially when I’m feeling anxious; I call it psychic anaesthetic. I channel surf. I play video games I’ve already mastered. I reread books. I read blogs.

These activities all have in common that they occupy my brain without stimulating it, which distinguishes them from regular procrastination, or constructive procrastination. Playing a new game would be too mentally taxing for this application; so would taking a book off the to-read stack. I learn nothing by playing Civilization II through 1000 BC for the umpteenth time, but it keeps me too busy to obsess about whatever may be troubling me (usually, these days, a task on my list that I don’t feel up to tackling).

This can create a vicious circle for me; psychic anaesthetic is toxic to gumption, and I often use psychic anaesthetic to escape the anxiety of not having the gumption to do something. I’ve lost entire days that way, doing something useful for a little while until I hit a bump, then falling into some anaesthetic activity for a bit until the fretting subsides.

Originally published on LiveJournal

I’m taking a moment to mull over some of the concepts I use to think about life and the universe. And because I’m the kind of guy I am, I figure I might as well do it in public, though I realize this is the intellectual equivalent of showing off a half-chewed mouthful of food.

Gumption is a term I picked up from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though I don’t use it exactly the way Pirsig does.

Gumption is a mysterious psychoemotional quantity which is the prerequisite to accomplishment. It’s the fuel of facing challenges. Doing anything difficult demands gumption; succeeding at something difficult restores it. (I find that this is one reason that projects in limbo drive me up the wall; the gumption spent to do the work is gone, but the payoff of completion is not forthcoming.)

It regenerates over time. A good night’s sleep helps; getting away from the daily grind is better. Pirsig suggests that gumption returns “when one is quiet long enough to see and hear and feel the real universe, not just one’s stale opinions about it”, which sounds about right to me.

Conversely, there are many ways for gumption to bleed away; Pirsig calls them “gumption traps”. Setbacks and frustration are gumption killers. Unexamined assumptions and value rigidity can also be stealthy gumption sinks, making you feel mired without knowing why.

In everyday life, the feeling of being unable to face the task at hand is a symptom of inadequate gumption. Tedium and boredom are warning signs of low gumption. Depression (at least the cognitive variety) is a collapse of the mechanisms by which gumption regenerates.

Gumption is, I think, the conviction that good things can, should, and will happen. Discouragement, disillusionment, and disenchantment are its enemies.

Originally published on LiveJournal