Mind is a very powerful friend and enemy to you. It can make you do complex thing and at the same time block you from doing simple necessary things. I was mentally blocked from doing a server upgrade for 4 years. Whenever I wanted to do the task, my mind will say it’s complicated, and requires unininterrupted time of atleast 4 hours. But I was pushed to do the server ugprade because of a deprecation issue and i was surprised it’s not that complicated. I realised that i had a mental block and it’s resolved if you actually start spending time on it. I have this mental chatter in my head that makes decisions when i’m thinking of doing some thing. While mind is trying to protect you in it’s own sense, that necessarily doens’t mean it’s correct.
This is where the mental model of Flywheel effect comes, spinning flywheel gradually gains speed as you continuously apply force, eventually reaching a point where it propels itself forward with minimal additional effort. I need to stay with the initial discomfort that comes with starting a task, then it becomes easy. The samething happened with server upgrade, i tried to stay with the initial discomfort and it paid off. I was able to figure out after the intial pain.
I have been listening to the Time Management course by Oliver Burkeman. It talks about whe we get distracted. The discomfort and pain that we face when doing a task makes our mind seek comfort (by getting dopamine hits - like social media and doing other stuff that gives pleasure). He suggests to stay with the discomfort and do it anyway. This will train our mind to stay with the task and complete it. This is an eye opener for me and it explains lot of my comfort seeking behavior. The same applies to mild physical pain that accompanies exercise and other physical stuff. I should stay with it and observe what my mind is trying to do to avoid the pain. This act itself will cure the distraction problem. And I should beat myself up if I ocassionally give in the the comfort seeking. I should treat myself with compassion, the way I treat my friends or family members. Another thing I learned is to treat your never ending to-do list as a food menu in a restruant. You pick what you wnat to do and that’s there to it and keep a done list to remind yourself that you are infact making progress.
He also advises to make irreversible decision often, even for small things like calling a friend, sending that email. A lot of our pain stems from indecision and I have lot of experience with indecision. It makes me feel timid and weak. Taking a decision and sticking to it gives satisfaction and confidence. And the other thing is to realise that you don’t have control over anything really. Because you are in a society and it has people. My current existence in this time and space is the result of numerous events (small and minor) that was totally not in my control going back to how I met my wife, or to how my parents met or to the beginning of the universe. Embrace the choas, accept it and relax behind everything. This brings calm to my mind and focus on the current moment. This realisation makes my appreciate the fact that I am alive and able to experience this consiousness, even the pain and discomfort. I will not get that continuous 4 hours to to do my project, i will get interrupted, distracted by myself and others. Embrace everything. Our time is small and finite here, 4000 weeks on earth. I will definitely not be able to do everything I wished to do and that’s fine.