Resistance

Being at home, combined with the fact that school is now Pass/Fail, has resulted in procrastination becoming much stronger in my life again. There are memes about this, but school really does feel optional to me at this point. Yet, it’s not really in me to not finish psets, so what has happened thus far is I’ll procrastinate on a pset until the last minute, realize it’s not optional, and then stay up all night trying to finish it. Hopefully, now that I’m mindful of it, I can work on it and fix it.

Matt Davella talks about how procrastination often stems from a concept called “resistance”––every time we procrastinate on something, there’s often a hidden resistance preventing us from wanting to do whatever task is at hand. He specifically talks about this in his cold shower video––cold showers won’t kill you or even hurt you, but willing yourself into one is almost impossible.

My goal with this blog is to keep me conscious of the resistance that I’ll inevitably face from working, and, ultimately, allow me to push through it.

Workaholism

I don’t think workaholism, although it sounds good in theory, is necessarily good. Devoting your entire life to your work makes you good at your work (obviously), but then you lose out on all the other aspects of your life. However, I’m far from that point and working towards a stage where I enjoy working and the resistance is much less should do me good. This is especially true because procrastination makes me lose out on sleep, which then negatively affects the other parts of my life in any case.

So, my goal for just today is to try my best to be a workaholic. This means continuously working––if I feel resistance, I just ignore it and push through it. This is definitely not feasible long term, not for me at least at the moment, but this will prove to me that it is indeed possible and hopefully provide a huge confidence boost.

Wish me luck. I will probably fail.