Conversation

Sep 7, 2021

freelancers and solopreneurs: 1. how do you organise your time so you actually do work instead of sit around reading Twitter all day? 2. especially if comfy/got savings/won’t starve, what’s the motivation to do work at all? 3. how do you stay in the habit after a holiday?

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Sep 7, 2021

Not a solopreneur but similar situation. Trying to work non-coercively, I’ve found it useful to understand my monkey-brain proclivities. Monkey has inertia, finds it hard to get started, easy to continue. Monkey wants easy gratification in the moment, meaningfulness in hindsight.

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Sep 7, 2021

Very concretely: I find routine incredibly helpful. I’m not rigid about it—I’m happy to change it upon reflection—but everything is easier with well-considered defaults. It’s simply *true* that if I start my morning on Twitter, I will p>0.7 get no deep work done that morning.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Sep 7, 2021

I’ll regret it: in hindsight, Twitter was fun for the first 10m, then I got unwittingly sucked in, and it wasn’t really that fun. So I start my day with the internet off. Sounds like coercion, but doesn’t feel that way in the moment. It feels like “oh, right… thanks, past me.”

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Dewey: “It may be a loss… to escape from [control]… only to find one’s conduct dictated by immediate whim and caprice… A person whose conduct is controlled in this way has at most only the illusion of freedom. Actually he is directed by forces over which he has no command.”

6:32 PM · Sep 7, 2021Twitter Web App

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Scheduling “endorsed Twitter time” can relieve the pressure. I know I can’t think/focus well at midday, so happy to do “unfocused” activities then. I can get a bit of optimizer’s pleasure from delaying: I’m being responsive to my body/mind by matching activities to its capacity!

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Sep 7, 2021

If I have strong urges to Twitter in the morning, it’s often b/c I don’t believe I can do whatever I’m trying to do, work-wise. Maybe I have a meeting scheduled, so not enough time to go deep. Or I don’t believe in my own approach. Helpful to notice this and fix those problems.

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inspiration for your under-logo-titles?

Beeminder

@bmndr

Sep 22, 2021

Good call! We're having trouble figuring out how to pith those up enough. Ideas solicited! Examples of existing taglines for comparison: * Bring long-term consequences near * Be a slave to your second-order desires * Internalize the externalities of your myopic decisions