Conversation

🙃 ɐʇǝɯ-Lulie 💜
@metaLulie
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?
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
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
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.
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
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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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
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.”
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
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!
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
Replying to
@andy_matuschak
and
@metaLulie
What’s the motivation to do work at all? Wonder at discovery; feeling of power at having shaped something out of nothing; a sense of having traced the seams of the universe; memory of satisfaction for past achievements; excitement for what’s possible.
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coscorrodrift
@Coscorrodrift
Replying to
@andy_matuschak
and
@metaLulie
do you recall any recent instances of you fixing these problems? trying to solve the "i don't believe in my own approach" and "i don't believe i can do whatever I'm trying to do, work-wise" narratives are things that resonate but i'm not 100% sure that's what i struggle with rn
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Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
Sure. Experienced the latter last week, actually, doing some design work. Reminded myself that what I *can* do is to sketch possible approaches for an hour and then to reconsider my plans if that yields no threads to follow. Related:
mindingourway.com
Stop trying to try and try
Imagine a graduate student of mathematics as they interact with a professor, attempting to understand something in the professor's area of expertise. They're working hard to wrap their head around...
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