On starting (but with coffee)
750 words to write. And it is about persistency. Really it is nothing with motivation really. I will never feel ready to study. I don't want to in the beginning, in the moment. In the moment I tell myself that I can do it in another moment. Moment to moment is not helping me. I do, in fact, want to study. I want to learn. The underlying desire is to be competent and be able to make the world around me be a good place (in terms of a civil engineer aspect). I want that. It makes me happy. It requires knowledge and experience. Things I won't get if I push it from moment to moment away.
Why is it that we all have that aversion? It is a highly known feeling, the feeling of procrastination. Not everyone does it. Some seem to be better with managing the momentary emotion of not wanting to do whatever it is that you want (or need to do, long-term). And usually the feeling goes away when the study session starts, after a few moments; we do the thing without the first-felt aversion of starting the task. It makes the thing look so easy, the thing of starting. Yet I struggle a lot with it.
For example, I gained some weight over the years. Nothing terrible, but 15kg more. I did lose some weight before that. I had to lose 10kg before that and I did so easy. I went all in. No excuse. I just did it. I sometimes really did not want to go to the gym after work. But I knew I had to. There was an external goal, with a set time. I had to meet it or face consequences that I did not want to bear (not getting a certain job). So I did it. I just managed my emotion of not wanting to start very harshly and every day, I managed to work towards my goal. I was reaching it so well, people were complimenting me on it. It was nice to see the rewards for that work.
It is a completely different thing, yet it is also about starting. It all is about that one moment. I think everyone feels it. Perhaps some people got used to overcoming it so easily that they don't recognize it anymore. It then seems so flawless. It was not; it was work. Lots of work.
How can we get better at that? It has different approaches. There are different reasons why we feel the start is uncomfortable. Some need a clear structure what to work on, some need a deadline, or some need a strong reason why. It is an individual thing to find how you work and what to do when you don't want to work. The types of buttons are roughly the same; you gotta find the exact order and buttons for you. I might have a strategy that does not work for you. We got to try different approaches for us and find our personal way.
Also it seems we live in an environment that is not built for thoughts about that. Whenever we feel aversion to starting a thing, it is so easy to not do it and pull out your phone instead. That makes us not even think about finding our own ideal approach. The phone is designed to give the brain a low dose of dopamine every scroll (infinity scroll), pull to refresh, kind of attention-sucking content for monetization; it all makes the brain kinda addicted, glued to the phone. The attention goes into there; there is less friction associated with pulling out the phone than starting our work, our project, whatever it is you are procrastinating on.
But how can we heal this? How can we better manage our attention and emotions? Ultimately, how can we manage ourselves better, so we do what really fulfills us?
This all sounds very neoliberal, ourselves as an asset that has to be optimized. But in a certain way, we must learn to regulate ourselves. It is not meant to be understood in an asset way. It is more (at least for me) to be taken as knowing yourself very well, knowing how to deal with your flaws and still be able to make the right decision. It is not just for work or studying. It is just as true for not screaming at your partner after being stressed out, or managing your anger in that case. Or forgiving yourself and not beating yourself up; be just as compassionate to yourself as you would for your friends. There are many examples of how to be a good person, and it does not mean to look at yourself as an asset. But yet, people never scream neoliberalism when you get a language class, aka invest in yourself. It shares some words but it operates in different frames.
Anyway, I reached my goal of writing 750 words. This is not a banger blog post. I will push it through AI and let it fix all the spelling, lmao. It is just another practice of me just doing things. No pushing things back. Just do it. Allow yourself to be bad, not just at first but always. It will get better over time. No overthinking, just starting. The bad emotion will go away before you finish the coffee (assuming you get yourself a nice cup of coffee for whatever you have to do).
Now get that coffee and start the next thing, yeah?