Hi there! You described me, for the most part. Just a few months ago, my therapist informed me that I'm a perfectionist, and a whole lot of stuff clicked into place.
I can plan for things, and I can do stuff when I'm not in my head fussing about it--but when I overplan or overthink any situation I get paralyzed by wanting it to go EXACTLY RIGHT. And knowing that it probably won't, I have a really hard time taking that first simple step, even it if would be pretty easy.
Nothing wrong with planning! But when it comes time to act, don't hesitate. You have to train yourself to DO, not THINK. When you're actually making progress you won't be obsessing over it being perfect because you'll be focused on working.
If you catch yourself hesitating to start, don't "set a timer and start when it goes off" or "watch one more Youtube video" just fucking GO. You'll feel a million times better when you're working.
Just take the first step! Dig in and GO and build that beautiful momentum!
That's 100% spot on. Manynpeople seem to have this. It seems that the feelingsnof accomplishment are achieved only by thinking and thus actual reality suffers from it. It's not "overthinking" things, though, but more like "living in a dreamworld".
Apparently, despite what the man in the video said about "living in the now", many people don't actually live in the now, but in their heads.
I believe the "living in the now" you're referring to is existing in the present. "The present" holds a lot of meaning already for me that you might not have instilled upon it so I'll try to briefly outline my learnings of it.
Nothing exists outside of the present: the "past" existed --past tense-- it only existed as it had unfolded, your memory of it is just a memory of events taken place, the more you learn about how memory works the more you learn how fickle and biased it is.
The future is only a prediction, it does not exist yet.
So that leaves you with the only moment which is the present aka now.
That's not to say planning for the future and learning from the past do not have their place, but they should not inhibit your actions in the present by absorbing your attention entirely.
To conclude, the only moment you have the power to act is right now. It's always right now, aka the present.
Buddhism and its similar teachings are centred around this even when they choose to phrase it with different wording.
If this is of interest for your learning then the book The Power of Now is centred entirely around this, it's a fairly hard thing to teach something as intangible as the present but it does a fair work of dancing circles around the intangible slowly nudging you to the center. I think I might reread it.
Depending what you mean by "living in dreamland" I believe it does.
If you're daydreaming then you're not focusing on the present moment, you're either recalling past memories, predicting the future or generating imaginary scenarios, none of which is focused on the present moment at hand.
yes. are you sure you actually understood the comment you initially responded to? no one - at least i'm not - counters this. when you're in your head then you're not in the now.
My position was never intended to counter anything, I just get excited when I see people talking about peoples lack of present awareness and I always chime in with my 2 cents even if it isn't exactly in the same vein as the initial comment.
Oh, no, I just noticed you wrote "manynpeople" and I realized that happens to entire sentences when I try to write on mobile. N's for spaces, ugh, drives me up the wall when I have to go back with my ham-fingers and try to correct that stuff.
I hear that! My house is perennially dirty, but I do clean it once in a while. Starting anything is the hardest part. Even some days at work it's incredibly difficult to just go. But once I do, I can focus on it all day long and stay on task, and I feel so much better when I do. Once I start those dishes, I just go and go and go. It's really easy but just getting to that point is a huge problem.
I count down because the time thing doesn't work. If I say I'm going to do it at 5:30 oftentimes I'll lose track of time or maybe just subconsciously "forget" to look at the clock.
But, if I'm procrastinating and I say to myself you have 10 seconds, or 60 seconds, and start counting down, I don't lose track of that. When I get to 0 I have to move.
This is really smart! The whole problem with setting a timer or watching a video is that you lose that motivation by distracting yourself. Then you're back at zero and have to build motivation all over again.
Counting up (or down) has to be a really good way to stay focused, get your mind in the right place and get ready to go. I like it!
Eyyyy this guy gets it! People need to just work on developing better habits and learn to follow through on plans. Their brains ain't broken, just undisciplined
Lol, you literally just described the trap I constantly fall into. "I'll do it in 10 minutes" or "I'll still have 3 good hours to do this thing if I procrastinate until 9PM," only to find I never started and I'll either not get it done at all or get no sleep.
And now I shall upvote this great comment and completely forget about it within the hour, while continuing to do the exact things that are problematic over and over again.
I understand your perspective. It makes sense to act in order to be a functional human being. We should carry out our genetically coded proclivities in order to be happy during the brief time we are here on planet Earth. So logically and functionally it makes sense. Any psychologist would make the same argument because their responsibilities are to your mental health and functionality in society first and foremost.
But, I also understand Conrad's perspective. When he talks about thought, I don't think he is talking about thinking about future actions. I think he means thought in general. Thinking about the universe and your place in it, for example.
You might think and wonder whether any of our actions have any real consequence in the universe. I do not know anything about my great great great ... great grandfather, am I to suffer the same fate? Will I be lost into obscurity just like him? Will it become as if I never really existed at all? If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody hears it fall did the tree really fall?
You can generalize this logic to not only the individual, but all of humanity. Humanity will become extinct some day. The sun will turn into a Red Giant (as per the natural lifecycle of a star) and engulf the entirety of planet Earth along with all of humanity's artifacts. Did humanity ever really exist at all?
Considering such disturbing thoughts, maybe you are right, maybe we should not think, maybe we should simply carry out our genetic proclivities with utmost conscientiousness and be happy. Still, there is a part of me that wonders...
This is ultimately the best advice IMO. I personally believe that your attention span throughout the day is dependent on the very moment that you wake up and what/how an individual chooses to execute the start of their day.
Humans cannot sit on the thought of doing much of anything at all. You have to wake up and "go" -- as soon as you wake up.
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u/kherven May 30 '17 edited Jan 06 '18