Redefining ideas from goals to projects is teaching me a lot about how arbitrary mental habits/frames can be.
Me: "I need to do this."
Also me: "Help, help I'm being repressed."
Vs.
Me: "I have over 100 things I could be working on."
Also me: "Let's go! Right away!"
Conversation
My young brain, trapped between the hammer of insanely dull public schooling and the anvil of addictive MMORPGs, didn't have the greatest time.
Still to this day allergic to homework and addicted to quest logs. Even when the actual work is the same.
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Homework: Read this book by Wednesday.
Result: Done a week overtime, maybe.
"Quest": Read these five books.
Result: Finished the third one by Wednesday.
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It's possible to view this as sort of vain and tragic, and it probably is, if you want to look at it that way.
Still, I choose to see it as an opportunity to end my chronic problem with finishing work I do for myself.
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MMOs like WoW have remarkably similar post-addiction patterns to opiates.
"It was a horrible idea and did a lot of damage to other parts of my life, but I loved it and would probably do it again."
Very impressive psychological engineering, if you think about it.
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The quest log itself incites to heroic effort.
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Yes, I will probably keep abusing variants of this quite until I die. Sorry, Homer.