[HN Gopher] Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough
___________________________________________________________________
Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough
Author : swapxstar
Score : 240 points
Date : 2024-11-10 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (swapnilchauhan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (swapnilchauhan.com)
| DeepYogurt wrote:
| Getting started is the hardest step. Thank you for sharing!
| codemogul wrote:
| How do you eat an elephant? Small bites.
|
| When everything seems like a elephant... start with small bites.
|
| And get a good way into the elephant before you start measuring
| how well you are doing the eating.
| bluecoconut wrote:
| Worrying what others think resonates with me a lot. Every few
| weeks I try to motivate myself to write more online (HN, X,
| blogs) and consistently get "self sabotage" stuck. (Been going on
| for >2 years)
|
| The article just says they pushed through and "put it aside", but
| that has never seemed to quite work for me. I can push through
| once or twice, not enough to build a daily habit/obsession like I
| want.
|
| Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this hurdle?
| deathtrader666 wrote:
| I always remind myself that even the celebrated works
| supposedly have glaring holes in them. If they can get popular
| and be cherished, then my work too doesn't have to be "water-
| tight" at all times.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I have no idea if it will help, but the amount of nitpicking I
| see when people post things online is much more than the amount
| of nitpicking I've seen in the actual PhD defenses I've
| attended, or the research paper peer reviews I've gotten back.
| Of course, it is always possible that you'll bump into, like,
| the one person who has much more experience than most
| professors in a topic, on the Internet. Alternatively, maybe
| the professors, being experts, can find the positive
| contribution in imperfect projects.
| akomtu wrote:
| Write under a pseudonym?
| phito wrote:
| It might be your unconscious deciding that it's not worth
| doing? Posting things online is rather useless and often brings
| more negatives than positives.
| matwood wrote:
| It took me way too long to realize this but most people don't
| think or care about you. I'm not saying this in a bad way, but
| only worry about those that matter like your family and
| friends. No one else thinks about you anyway, so don't
| preoccupy yourself worrying about what they think.
| adriand wrote:
| Also: accept that what you make is ephemeral. No one pauses
| in the middle of building a sand castle on the beach and
| wonders if their sand-sculpting skills are adequate. Anything
| you make, even if it becomes one of humanity's most cherished
| works (extremely unlikely!) is not going to be here for very
| long. So enjoy the process, put it out in the world, and
| maybe a person or two will appreciate it before the waves
| wash it away.
| swapxstar wrote:
| Yes, I think I am starting to realise that. And that is
| really helpful in this journey.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > Every few weeks I try to motivate myself to write more
| online
|
| Bro run! Spending time online is a sign of depression. And even
| if you are among the few in which this isn't true (which I
| doubt) talking and writing about stuff way above your head (not
| in the IQ sense but about stuff you have no control over) will
| get your there.
| e1gen-v wrote:
| Do you actually enjoy the process of writing online?
|
| Because for me I've realized there's a difference between
| enjoying actually doing a hobby versus just fantasizing about
| what it would be like to be good at it.
|
| Maybe that's not what you're experiencing, but I've tried to
| get into hobbies and have run into the feeling you describe.
| Eventually I would drop the hobby because I just didn't enjoy
| doing it.
|
| Ps congrats on writing online :)
| bluecoconut wrote:
| I like writing to myself / talking to myself... but I'm
| trying to convert that internal captured thought / language
| into brand value and useful information in a wider contexts.
|
| Good points about recognizing the fantasy of doing something
| vs. the actual work might be part of this.
|
| also, lol meta, thanks!
| swapxstar wrote:
| I don't think I have figured out whether I enjoy the process
| of writing itself.
|
| But what I know for sure is that I have a lot of thoughts and
| ideas as well as opinions and the idea of putting them down
| and expanding upon them really really intrigues me.
|
| I also believe that it will really help grow.
| mfscholar wrote:
| If you're looking to set up a habit cycle, I'd recommend three
| steps:
|
| 1. Find a cue that will remind you to start writing, e.g.
| having your morning coffee
|
| 2. Write any amount of time; say 30min or so
|
| 3. Reward yourself. I just have a little snack, but it could be
| anything
|
| Works great for me, and I found once I changed some small
| habits, it was also easier to do better overall. This advice is
| from the book "The power of habit" by Charles Dhuigg
| detourdog wrote:
| My writing prompt is HN. I wait until I see a prompt to
| respond to.
| sshine wrote:
| > _Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this
| hurdle?_
|
| Since nobody suggested this:
|
| Write for yourself, locally. This removed my writer's block.
|
| After writing for myself for about a year, I blogged
| consistently for two years.
|
| I've since lost the kadence and want to get back to it, but now
| priorities have come in the way.
|
| Now I usually write for my local tech community.
|
| I know there's a dozen people who like to learn things if
| there's an easy way. That motivates me a lot
|
| There's another hurdle of having a clear idea of the target
| audience; when you're the target audience, it gets a little
| fuzzy. So it has helped me to think of either "what I'd like to
| read 6 months from now if I had to learn this after partially
| forgetting it". Or someone else concrete I'm not actually
| obligated to share my writing with. Just so I can aim my
| writing better.
| bluecoconut wrote:
| I write for myself a lot, roughly ~5000 words a day in notes,
| messages to self, etc. I have no problem writing and talking
| to myself.
|
| It's the editing process and formalizing it for public
| consumption.
|
| Either, the actual work of doing the cleanup feels too labor
| intensive, or I've already moved onto the next obsession, and
| am chasing that new idea.
|
| Do you have a process for turning the local writing into more
| public writing?
| james_marks wrote:
| At the risk of sounding LLM-obsessed, this sounds like a
| great use-case for Claude.
|
| Even when your input is incoherent, it's often enough to
| get the AI in the right direction, and then it's easier to
| edit.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I think what blurs the line between local writing and
| public writing is that you just publish it after minimal
| editing with no fanfare. No RSS feeds for people to
| subscribe to. No posting on HN or Reddit where plenty of
| people are judgmental. Just make it public. If people
| chance upon it let them read it; just don't purposefully
| attract people to read it.
| swapxstar wrote:
| That's really cool that you can write like that, I would
| really like to know more about how and what you mean by
| write for myself writing.
|
| Can you share more about what you write?
| mch82 wrote:
| Focus on your docs, code, and blog because they're under your
| control. Write for yourself. Write for the people who use your
| work. Publish smaller chunks of work. Add value to your real
| network.
|
| X, HN, and other socials are far less important. You have no
| control over whether the algorithm decides to amplify your
| content. Most work that's foundational to society isn't popular
| on socials today and won't ever be. There's a lottery chance
| you'll get picked for amplification. Winning that lottery is
| great, but playing the lottery is not investing in your future.
| luckydata wrote:
| Keep doing it until you get better at it. Not caring about what
| others think is a skill.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Ask for AI to help be your writing buddy?
|
| Not for content, but for process?
| hop_n_bop wrote:
| The Pomodoro technique works well. Set a timer for 15 minutes,
| and focus only on your writing for until the timer goes off; or
| longer if you like.
| bayofpigs wrote:
| Love Pomodoro timers so much had AI make an web app to link
| them together. You can customize and use it here:
| https://1recipe.com.
| dageshi wrote:
| bayofpigs, I feel it necessary to tell you that your
| account seems to be shadowbanned? Like 80% of your comments
| have been [dead]/not shown since your account creation in
| 2013 and as far as I can see there appears to be no good
| reason for it? The majority of comments in your history
| seem entirely reasonable.
| godelski wrote:
| You might be burnt out.
| dartos wrote:
| I recently started a blog after having the same feeling for
| years.
|
| What changed for me was accepting that my posts aren't going to
| be polished and it's okay if they don't front page HN.
|
| I just jot down notes, organize them in an outline and publish
| it.
|
| I figure eventually, as I feel more comfortable with it, I'll
| polish up my posts more and more.
| tolerance wrote:
| I feel this. Here are some thoughts I've had that have allowed
| me to toss one leg over the hurdle we share.
|
| * Limit your self-promotion: If you feel unnerved by the
| criticism of the opaque masses of the internet (e.g. Hacker
| News) then do not present your work to them. If you absolutely
| must share your writing with anyone, why not share it with
| people who you actually know? Rather, don't self-promote at
| all, _share_ your work with people who embody the readers who
| you had in mind upon writing it.
|
| Which leads to my next thought...
|
| * Unless you are representing some sort of institution that the
| public trusts and you are obliged to sustain this trust, why
| write with the public (read: the opaque masses of the internet)
| in mind at all. The "reader who you have in mind" while writing
| is the equivalent of the "dream spouse" who you may have
| imagined: They just so happen to possess all of the virtues
| that coincidentally complement your own and all of their faults
| are can be conveniently managed within your scope of reasoning.
| The good thing about the reader/writer relationship is that it
| is inherently polygamous so feel free to write for yourself and
| for yourself alone and whichever readers fit the description
| that you have envisaged in your mind to whatever degrees will
| be drawn to what you have to say accordingly and if it doesn't
| work out then there's always someone else, somewhere, who fits
| the description of someone who one way or another is just a
| kind of living complement to your own personality. Such is I
| suppose a component of romance in man's sojourn on earth.
|
| The blog posts that inspire me to write the most are the one's
| that are impersonally personable. Writing that is obviously
| written by a human being who is sharing their experiences but
| in a way that is totally indifferent to my own interests. That
| isn't to say that it comes across as self-absorbed but that it
| is like the behaviors among children on the school yard. He's
| playing jacks. He's spinning tops. They're playing four square.
| They're beating each other into a pulp along the tree lines.
| But no one's doing so as if they intend for me want to join in.
|
| The blog posts that I find the most boring read as though they
| presume an audience and are even written in a way that presumes
| scathing criticism from said audience. A lot writers have
| become dispossessed of their ability to express themselves in
| earnest ways because of this. I don't necessarily fault the
| opaque mass of humans who express a wide range of reactions to
| the thoughts of others because society is not a monoculture in
| spite of efforts toward the contrary.
|
| If you are writing just to "build a brand" but the process
| isn't clicking internally maybe it's your spirit resisting the
| sociopathic impulses of your carnal desires. A lot of lifeless
| blogs I come across are such because I feel like I can sense
| that they are writing only to gain an audience who can raise
| their capital. So while the content may be informative it is
| lifeless and I feel little sympathy when a reader criticizes
| the author's work in a way that is indifferent to the spirit of
| the author and the author feels dismayed. It's not that your
| intended audience is revolting against you. You haven't even
| told them who you are. They are rejecting your business or your
| pining for employment that you have woven into your
| interpersonal communications.
|
| And good for them!
| nox101 wrote:
| for me it's not fear of being good enough. it's that for me a
| blog post takes 4 to 20 hours. 4 if it's just text. Write,
| rewrite, proofread, etc. 20 if I need to draw diagrams or make
| examples.
|
| if it's just a paragraph of thought then it might as well be on
| social media
| mips_avatar wrote:
| I think maybe polish is getting in the way. There's so many
| really beautiful blog posts out there, well researched, and the
| author can represent themselves as an expert. But more often
| than not the really deeply true information I tend to find is a
| quick little hacker news comment written quickly.
|
| Now a hacker news comment can only contain so much, so sharing
| your truth a little broader might require some additional
| medium (graphics, code example, video) but you can clearly
| articulate yourself well in a HN comment, so maybe think of the
| blogs as just a little more than a HN comment?
| caseyy wrote:
| > Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this
| hurdle?
|
| This might give you something to work with:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102050. Maybe you're
| confusing natural and reasonable behaviour with self-sabotage?
| They look the same from some perspectives (such as
| perfectionism and people-pleasing).
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like someone already wrote what I am writing
| and it doesn't feel good to just work on something I know could
| be critiqued hard because an alternative exists.
| hinkley wrote:
| Hemingway said once that the trick to getting writing done was
| to stop writing when you know what happens next.
|
| Other writers have talked about being compelled to write to get
| an idea out of their head that's stuck there. I think they're
| much the same thing. You're essentially leaving yourself in
| that obsessed state until you can sit down again.
|
| If you try to sit down with just a long term goal in mind
| you're torturing yourself. And likely creating negative
| reinforcement of future stuckness. Write the bit in front of
| you, pause when you have an idea what's next, not when you run
| out of steam.
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| Does the fear of judgment occur even when you are behind an
| anonymous username?
| achempion wrote:
| If you need to force yourself to write, why write at all? Did
| you use any technique to write this comment?
| tame3902 wrote:
| > Worrying what others think resonates with me a lot.
|
| - There are lots of blog posts and youtube videos about this
| topic. Try whether any will help you.
|
| - If you post, go down the rabbit hole of your thoughts. What
| will happen? Keep going with "and then" as far as possible.
| Then replace negative thoughts with more positive ones. Those
| have to be believable and not just blindly positive. E.g.
| replacing "everybody will hate this" with "a lot of people will
| hate this, but some will really enjoy it" is already progress.
|
| - As a child, did you have a caregiver or teacher that gave you
| the feeling that if you make mistakes, they will stop loving
| you? Make it clear to your adult self that you are deserving of
| love no matter what.
|
| - Do you have types of writing which are easy for you? No
| matter the answer, why is that?
|
| - Create something intentionally bad without publishing it, and
| sit with your bad feelings for a while. Usually that reduces
| the anxiety.
|
| - If you post something, explore your feelings. Is that like
| nervousness before an exam, general anxiety or something
| completely different. This might give you a clue, why you
| struggle.
|
| - Imagine a friend would come to you with this problem. What
| advice would you give them? How would you react to something
| you posted if somebody else wrote it?
|
| - Be kind to yourself. Changing this is a long journey.
| almatabata wrote:
| One thing that helped me was accepting that it is not that I
| might fail but that I will fail initially.
|
| I will produce bad articles because to become good you have to
| start with your current skill level which probably sucks if you
| are average. To become good you have to write. Nothing beats
| actually doing it. But knowing that everyone published
| something stupid at some point helps me accept that I will also
| go through that process as well. Everyone failed, everyone will
| fail and it is fine to fail.
|
| And no matter how good you become you will still fail from time
| to time. You never graduate from it. Look at the famous movie
| directors, writers and journalists. Are all their works great?
| Is each of their work always better than the previous ones? Of
| course not. Some works will be amazing and insightful, some
| might be mediocre. Even the very best will have their ups and
| downs, so why not you?
|
| Each time I publish a post I already accept it might be subpar.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| From own experience I can say:
|
| Forget about trying to change this from the perspective of
| thoughts. Cognitively understanding that you should "just" stop
| worrying about what other people think about your work might not
| bring you far.
|
| Instead, realize that anxiety is a bodily phenomenon and as such
| needs to be addressed with the body. That means: Breathing
| techniques, exercise etc.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > That means: Breathing techniques, exercise etc.
|
| It also means alcohol, drugs, shrooms, ketamine, MDMA, Research
| Chemicals, uppers, downers, amplifier substances , smoothering
| substances, focus enhancers, dissociatives...
|
| I mean the modern society seems like coming up with some trends
| such as the war on drugs, the vice taxes and all the
| patronizing BS, only to discover that there is a reason why
| those things exist and we indulged in them for as long as we
| have been around in the first place
| fourier54 wrote:
| while they do have therapeutic effects (some, I wouldn't say
| alcohol does), I don't think they should be proposed as
| methods to relax stress. Too many downsides and are not
| sustainable as regularly used substances. Yes you do feel
| great in a night of MDMA but the feelings you have the
| following days almost negate the positive aspects.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| I think some of those substances can have positive in a very
| narrow set of circumstances. Being vigilant and only using
| them in those scenarios can be just as hard as the hard
| solutions you were avoiding in the first place, like sleep,
| diet, exercise, cleaning up your routine, etc. I'll add some
| color on how some of those can go wrong, hopefully this saves
| someone else from having to learn it first hand:
|
| Alcohol - messes up your sleep, without which your mind will
| never be operating as clearly as it could. If you frequently
| mix it with other substances, it'll also turn into a trigger,
| making you crave said substances every time you have a drink.
| Use with moderation.
|
| Shrooms - these are really nice, but like most psychoactive
| substances, they'll definitely get in the way of focusing on
| _hard_ tasks. Doing something fun gets more fun with shrooms,
| doing something hard gets harder. Use with moderation.
| Indulge, don 't escape. I'd give the same advice about LSD.
|
| Ketamine - has an extremely broad profile of effects
| depending on dosage. You can mitigate this a bit by correctly
| measuring and dissolving it in nasal spray, but even then
| tolerance builds up very quickly and you end up compensating
| by doing more. It has a small dosage window where it'll be an
| indulging drug, just adding a pleasurable shift to your
| perceptions, but then as soon as you go over that window, it
| will turn you into a little dissociated zombie, unable to
| hold an interesting conversation with someone who isn't on
| the same ballpark of high as you are. It can cause serious
| damage to your urinary tract. Indulge, don't escape. Try to
| use once per month at most.
|
| MDMA - can be amazing at low dosages, but evidence indicates
| it is neurotoxic in most doses you'll run into in parties.
| When it starts to come down you _will_ want to do more, so if
| you 're trying to be careful make sure you have measures to
| prevent you from doing so. Hangovers can be brutal, specially
| on higher doses. At higher doses it'll make you confused and
| mess up with your short term memory, but your social
| confidence will still stay high, so you can turn into an
| obnoxious person rambling about something for the third time
| in half an hour to whoever is unlucky to be nearby. Indulge
| with a lot of caution, don't escape. Use lower doses. Give it
| a 3 month break between uses.
|
| Research chemicals - unless you are the researcher, stay away
| from these. Some drugs have very different effects to others
| that are chemically very similar and often impossible to
| differentiate with standard test kits you'll be able to buy
| and use without being a chemist. Reliable information on
| their effects, dosage, interactions is difficult or
| impossible to find -- not only for you, but also for your EMT
| or doctor, in case you need medical assistance.
|
| Uppers - addictive, can cause re-dosing, will fuck up your
| sleep and your appetite. Suppress orgasms (and often
| erections). Stress your heart muscles and your arteries and
| veins. When taken for productivity, will give you short-term
| gains that turn into holes you'll need several weeks to dig
| yourself out of. Use with extreme caution.
|
| Amplifier substances - in my experience, there's no such
| thing. You can do substance X today and have an amazing
| "amplified" time, and then do the same dose again a week
| later in a different setting and have a real bad time,
| constantly in your head, seeing the negative interpretation
| of everything. The things which make it more likely for a
| substance to be an amplifier can't be fixed with more
| substances: how well are you sleeping, eating, exercising?
| Are you mulling over some difficult conversation instead of
| just having it? Are you surrounded by people you like who are
| good to you?
| srid wrote:
| Going from the cognitive to physical is a big jump, because you
| get to entirely ignore the _affective_ which is the spanner in
| works.
|
| In regards to anxiety, this is what works best for me:
| https://actualism.app/
| umutisik wrote:
| Great observation. I have observed the same thing in my own life.
|
| The solution: do things that you really believe people need. Then
| you owe it to them to find out if you actually are "good enough",
| and you don't care what others think because all you care about
| is whether the people who need it are happy with it.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Or you just don't want to do it.
| bbor wrote:
| If I had to sum up the reason in one word, it would be laziness.
|
| Wild to read this from a modern perspective. It's like reading
| about women being shamed for being 'hysterical', or religious
| peasants blaming their natural sexual feelings on demons. It just
| doesn't hold up to scrutiny...
|
| What is 'laziness' when applied to something that you clearly
| _want_ to do? How can someone want something, yet simultaneously
| choose to not want it? Turns out the answer is simple, and the
| nerds have known it since 1801[1]: you don 't exist. Your
| continuous, unified self is an illusion brought about for
| instrumental reasons.
|
| Treat yourself like a system to be optimized, not an ineffable
| soul to be brought away from vice through logic. If you were
| tasked with improving a malfunctioning software system, you'd be
| laughed out of the room for starting with "well, clearly, the
| system is just sinful, and choosing to make mistakes."
|
| [1]: Immanuel Kant, _The Critique of Pure Reason_ , Chapter
| I.2.II.1: "Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason" Now
| to these conceptions relate four paralogisms of a transcendental
| psychology, which is falsely held to be a science of pure reason,
| touching the nature of our thinking being. We can, however, lay
| at the foundation of this science nothing but the simple and in
| itself perfectly contentless representation "i" which cannot even
| be called a conception, but merely a consciousness which
| accompanies all conceptions. By this "I," or "He," or "It," who
| or which thinks, nothing more is represented than a
| transcendental subject of thought = x, which is cognized only by
| means of the thoughts that are its predicates, and of which,
| apart from these, we cannot form the least conception. Hence in a
| perpetual circle, inasmuch as we must always employ it, in order
| to frame any judgement respecting it. And this inconvenience we
| find it impossible to rid ourselves of, because consciousness in
| itself is not so much a representation distinguishing a
| particular object, as a form of representation in general, in so
| far as it may be termed cognition; for in and by cognition alone
| do I think anything.
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap7...
|
| For the more empirically minded that are understandably resistant
| to such an unnatural conception, try to find discussions of
| "laziness" in these articles. I'd be surprised:
|
| https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/executive-function
|
| https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23224-executi...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_dysfunction
| MrMetric wrote:
| It's unfortunate that I had to scroll to the bottom of the page
| to see any mention of ADHD or executive dysfunction, when the
| linked post describes what is clearly a form of executive
| dysfunction! Instant temporary treatment is a stimulant such as
| caffeine (which has annoying side-effects) or amphetamine salts
| (commonly known as adderall). Long-term treatment is exercize,
| which can be as simple as balancing on one leg for ten minutes
| every day or using an elliptical machine. Running outside is a
| decent option, but take care to avoid damaging the knees, which
| _will_ happen by running on hard surfaces.
|
| Dr. Russell Barkley has good explanations of what different
| prescription ADHD drugs do, which I find gives insight into
| what's going wrong when you have an executive dysfunction:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnS0PfNyj4U
|
| In particular, the emotional blunting effect of stimulants
| erases the thought that what you do might not be good enough.
| You no longer care about what others think, so you can just do
| what you want to do. I personally find this also makes me a
| callous asshole if I'm not careful, which I believe is related
| to the modern epidemic of coffee zombies.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Nothing like righteousness to justify poor social behavior.
| Humans have this tendency, which is why sick people are 'lazy'
| and society is punitively oriented for behavior correction and
| norm reinforcement.
| luckydata wrote:
| I just want to appreciate how the author used the sane "fear of
| not being good enough" instead of the idiotic "impostor syndrome"
| that everyone uses to mean the same.
| grugagag wrote:
| What's wrong with impostor syndrome? Perhaps overused term but
| that for a good reason, many people are battling the same
| insecurities while others are confident on hot air. Very few
| have a backing for being confident.
| cortesoft wrote:
| "Imposter syndrome" is just the term we have given to "fear of
| not being good enough". What is wrong with coming up with a
| term for that fear?
| atmavatar wrote:
| While hard work may pay off in the future, laziness _always_ pays
| off _now_ :)
| loopdoend wrote:
| Even if the "future" is say, 5 minutes away. I procrastinate
| about the dumbest, smallest shit.
| caseyy wrote:
| And laziness in a way is very natural and healthy. Resting,
| digesting, being present is boon to longevity, vitality, and
| creativity. Mindless production has been put on a pedestal too
| much in recent years.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Lazuness is a tool, thats why I'm on the 10th year implementing
| a _simple_ script
| pessimizer wrote:
| Perfectionism is a problem that a lot of us have, and it stops us
| from failing enough times to perfect ourselves. Finishing a
| failure is a success. Somebody reading your blog entry and hating
| it is successfully attracting a reader. Somebody telling you how
| terrible something you wrote was is successfully attracting a
| reader and inspiring a reaction.
|
| If the substance of the bad review _hurts_ , it means you've
| communicated something clearly enough that it was easy to pick
| apart. If you understand and accept the criticism about how you
| were wrong, now you have a better chance of being _right._
|
| This is Hillary Rettig's specialty; she largely focuses on being
| kind to yourself, and getting out of your own ass. The world
| isn't ending when you fail.
|
| https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/the-seven-secrets-of-t...
| bsenftner wrote:
| Our industry really needs to learn about about self conversation
| audits:
|
| An ever present sense of pressure, feeling imposter syndrome and
| that bleeding into self criticism and anxiety is 100% fixable,
| and this information needs to be much wider distributed within
| society.
|
| Dr. Aaron Beck and Dr. David Burns introduced the concept of
| "cognitive distortions" - they identified various methods humans
| use to lie and deceive themselves in their self conversations.
|
| Dr. Burns publishing of a book titled "Feeling Good" that kick
| started the entire Cognitive Therapy movement, which is the idea
| that one can talk themselves out of unhappiness with the right
| guidance.
|
| It is all about learning how to identify self deception; once one
| learns how to be truthful in your own self conversation, the
| emotions and unrealistic expectations fall away leaving a more
| stable and logical individual.
|
| Here's a summery, but be careful searching this topic online as
| the "fraudster community" loves to prey on people seeking self
| help information.
|
| Filtering. We take the negative details and magnify them while
| filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance,
| a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it
| exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or
| distorted.
|
| Polarized Thinking (or "Black and White" Thinking). In polarized
| thinking, things are either "black-or-white." We have to be
| perfect or we're a failure -- there is no middle ground. You
| place people or situations in "either/or" categories, with no
| shades of gray or allowing for the complexity of most people and
| situations. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see
| yourself as a total failure.
|
| Overgeneralization. In this cognitive distortion, we come to a
| general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece
| of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to
| happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant
| event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.
|
| Jumping to Conclusions. Without individuals saying so, we know
| what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In
| particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling
| toward us. For example, a person may conclude that someone is
| reacting negatively toward them but doesn't actually bother to
| find out if they are correct. Another example is a person may
| anticipate that things will turn out badly, and will feel
| convinced that their prediction is already an established fact.
|
| Catastrophizing. We expect disaster to strike, no matter what.
| This is also referred to as "magnifying or minimizing." We hear
| about a problem and use what if questions (e.g., "What if tragedy
| strikes?" "What if it happens to me?"). For example, a person
| might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events (such as
| their mistake, or someone else's achievement). Or they may
| inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until
| they appear tiny (for example, a person's own desirable qualities
| or someone else's imperfections).
|
| Personalization. Personalization is a distortion where a person
| believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct,
| personal reaction to the person. We also compare ourselves to
| others trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc. A
| person engaging in personalization may also see themselves as the
| cause of some unhealthy external event that they were not
| responsible for. For example, "We were late to the dinner party
| and caused the hostess to overcook the meal. If I had only pushed
| my husband to leave on time, this wouldn't have happened."
|
| Control Fallacies. If we feel externally controlled, we see
| ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, "I can't
| help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I
| work overtime on it." The fallacy of internal control has us
| assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone
| around us. For example, "Why aren't you happy? Is it because of
| something I did?"
|
| Fallacy of Fairness. We feel resentful because we think we know
| what is fair, but other people won't agree with us. As our
| parents tell us when we're growing up and something doesn't go
| our way, "Life isn't always fair." People who go through life
| applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its
| "fairness" will often feel badly and negative because of it.
| Because life isn't "fair" -- things will not always work out in
| your favor, even when you think they should.
|
| Blaming. We hold other people responsible for our pain, or take
| the other track and blame ourselves for every problem. For
| example, "Stop making me feel bad about myself!" Nobody can
| "make" us feel any particular way -- only we have control over
| our own emotions and emotional reactions.
|
| Shoulds. We have a list of ironclad rules about how others and we
| should behave. People who break the rules make us angry, and we
| feel guilty when we violate these rules. A person may often
| believe they are trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and
| shouldn'ts, as if they have to be punished before they can do
| anything. For example, "I really should exercise. I shouldn't be
| so lazy." Musts and oughts are also offenders. The emotional
| consequence is guilt. When a person directs should statements
| toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.
|
| Emotional Reasoning. We believe that what we feel must be true
| automatically. If we feel stupid and boring, then we must be
| stupid and boring. You assume that your unhealthy emotions
| reflect he way things really are -- "I feel it, therefore it must
| be true."
|
| Fallacy of Change. We expect that other people will change to
| suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to
| change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend
| entirely on them.
|
| Global Labeling. We generalize one or two qualities into a
| negative global judgment. These are extreme forms of
| generalizing, and are also referred to as "labeling" and
| "mislabeling." Instead of describing an error in context of a
| specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to
| themselves. For example, they may say, "I'm a loser" in a
| situation where they failed at a specific task. When someone
| else's behavior rubs a person the wrong way, they may attach an
| unhealthy label to him, such as "He's a real jerk." Mislabeling
| involves describing an event with language that is highly colored
| and emotionally loaded. For example, instead of saying someone
| drops her children off at daycare every day, a person who is
| mislabeling might say that "she abandons her children to
| strangers."
|
| Always Being Right. We are continually on trial to prove that our
| opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and
| we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For
| example, "I don't care how badly arguing with me makes you feel,
| I'm going to win this argument no matter what because I'm right."
| Being right often is more important than the feelings of others
| around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even
| loved ones.
|
| Heaven's Reward Fallacy. We expect our sacrifice and self-denial
| to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when
| the reward doesn't come.
|
| References:
|
| Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders.
| New York: New American Library. Burns, D. D. (2012).
|
| Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York: New American
| Library. Leahy, R.L. (2017).
|
| Cognitive Therapy Techniques, Second Edition: A Practitioner's
| Guide. New York: Guilford Press. McKay, M. & Fanning, P. (2016).
|
| Self-Esteem: A Proven Program of Cognitive Techniques for
| Assessing, Improving, and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem. New York:
| New Harbinger Publications.
| caseyy wrote:
| The author might be struggling with people-pleasing and
| perfectionist tendencies.
|
| People-pleasers often do things because other people would like
| them more if they did these things. As such, the reward for work
| like writing a blog article is positive external
| reinforcement/approval or minimising the risk of confrontation,
| disapproval, or even aggression. If their work pleases few people
| (not enough readers), they may feel like it wasn't worth doing,
| or if their work attracts criticism, they may feel guilt or shame
| for doing it. Fear of these consequences fuels procrastination.
|
| Writing should be about the innate purpose of writing. It is to
| learn, to express yourself, to communicate. If one wishes to do
| these things, then there is almost never procrastination, as
| these actions always bring only positive rewards. There is no
| negative outcome to learning, to expressing yourself in written
| form, and communicating. Sure, the type of things you learn,
| express, or communicate could bring some negative consequences,
| but those actions on their own do not. They bring good results
| and feel good to do.
|
| Perfectionism exaggerates the expectations one would put on
| themselves and their work. So people-pleasing may become people-
| impressing, people-delighting, and people-sweeping-off-their-
| feet. Anything less may bring the shame, guilt, and
| disappointment, and then "procrastination" becomes pretty much
| guaranteed. Because it's not really procrastination, it is a
| natural and very rational decision to not engage in activities
| that would bring only a bad outcome. Humans, generally, really
| don't want to hurt themselves. We learn not to touch the hot
| stove, just as we learn to not do things that don't meet our
| (sometimes delusional high) expectations.
|
| Everything in procrastination is a lot more logical and
| explainable than it may seem. People-pleasing/conflict avoidance
| + perfectionism combo is common in tech workers. This has taken
| me decades to learn, now it helps the programmers I train, and I
| hope it helps you. Of course, everyone's life is a bit different,
| so don't have an unreasonable expectation that what I said
| applies to you 100%. It may only apply 20% and still be helpful.
| daoboy wrote:
| This post made me feel defensive. Which is a good time to stop
| and reflect. Thanks for sharing the thoughtful advice
| caseyy wrote:
| That's wise and quite emotionally mature. I'm only sharing
| some thoughts and not attacking anyone. So if it feels a bit
| like an attack, perhaps one of your core beliefs is being
| challenged. :)
| vitaflo wrote:
| > If their work pleases few people (not enough readers), they
| may feel like it wasn't worth doing, or if their work attracts
| criticism, they may feel guilt or shame for doing it.
|
| Likewise, even if the work is a resounding success and showered
| in positivity, there is now an internal pressure to do even
| better in the future otherwise you will disappoint your new
| followers in your next work.
|
| All of this in my mind is fear of the outcome as opposed to the
| joy of the journey. The satisfaction must come from _doing_ the
| work, not from the outcome of it. It 's the only way to really
| break the cycle.
| Rendello wrote:
| It goes from chasing value to desperately trying to find value in
| the world, searching your memory for something worth anything.
| dexwiz wrote:
| I really think we do a number on kids expecting a 100%,
| perfection, as a goal. And then only give them one chance to
| achieve it, but ask them to do it day after day for years. It
| creates some really unhealthy coping mechanism.
| DilutedMetrics wrote:
| It really warped my perspective when I moved out of the USA to
| Europe as an adult and found out that's not how school works
| elsewhere in the world. Still coping with it lol.
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| Could you elaborate? I always found the "grading on a curve"
| a distinctly American approach that leads to grade inflation
| and an overall lower academic level. Now, granted, the US
| provides very unique opportunities for students that want to
| go above and beyond, but that's another story.
| spuds wrote:
| I struggle with this myself, especially around writing. My
| solution, from a coding perspective:
|
| If I had a massive new app to build, it would indeed feel
| overwhelming if I felt like I just had to sit down and build it.
| I think we get extra stuck on that with writing, as it often
| feels like we just need to go from an empty page to a well-
| reasoned and edited blog post, with a lot of ambiguous struggle
| in between.
|
| With programming, I start breaking it down into pieces of
| functionality, and smaller ones, until I have a list of concrete
| things I can actually get my head around and write the code for.
| I keep on doing those small things, build the structure around
| them, and eventually I have my app.
|
| I do the same with writing now. Not an outline really, but a list
| of concepts I want to get across, then smaller ideas. I write out
| a few of those, often a paragraph at a time. The structure starts
| to reveal itself, and soon enough I have a new blog post.
|
| I think the key here is arriving at something small enough that
| it doesn't feel overwhelming. New app or blog post feels like way
| too much in the moment, and my body and mind to everything
| possible to avoid it (procrastination). Writing out a paragraph,
| coding a function - very doable.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| I agree with this, but when working with a team I always feel
| motivated to see the progression made. Rarely do solo
| developers work well with others and rarely do collaborative
| developers work well by themselves. It really depends on the
| dynamic of the environment and the goal of the team.
| hinkley wrote:
| Which is a pretty pickle when you're trying to hire devs. A
| candidate with a large GitHub repo may actually not be the
| team player you're looking for.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> a large GitHub repo_
|
| I feel like in SW, impact and quality should be a lot more
| valuable than quantity of repos/apps you write. A few lines
| of code that fix a Gnome/KDE/$BIG_FOSS_PROJECT bug would be
| a lot more valuable in my book, than say another one in the
| millionth pile of JS note taking apps, or a repo full of
| "Baby's first Rust app"
| hinkley wrote:
| I spent 1-3 hours every other Friday for six months
| writing a three line monkey patch to fix a (lack of)
| clipping bug in a drag and drop library that wasn't
| taking PRs because they were going to rewrite everything
| (and were 18 months into a 1 year rewrite and only half
| done).
|
| I'm not going to name names but it rhymes with jQuery UI.
|
| The best I could do was attach a code snipped to a bug
| report. I've gone back and forth about whether that
| should count as participation but for that case it's the
| most calendar time I've ever put into a line of code and
| you're goddamned right I want to count it.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I procrastinate about everything. But one stark exception to the
| theme of "not being good enough" was looking for a new job after
| layoffs in 2023. It wasn't that I thought I wasn't good enough.
| My experience and resume is pretty solid. I procrastinated
| because of how shitty the experience is dealing with companies on
| LinkedIn who get flooded with applications that either a real
| person might not read (due to software filters) or someone
| lacking a real understanding of tech won't accurately asses my
| skills.
|
| I ended up getting a great job that I was really happy to land.
| But I only applied sporadically because just the thought of
| having to endure the slog was mentally painful.
|
| Fear of what others might think didn't stop me from building
| effective automation at the command line. It prevented me from
| publishing my work on GitHub. It took being in the job market to
| push me past that as I wanted to let my work speak for itself for
| technical reviewers during the screening process.
|
| On a different note, present-tense me is always harassing future
| me with ambitious plans set as reminders. The sense of failure
| from constantly pushing them off is demoralizing. Some of that
| came from depression (I'm in treatment now) and some was a
| byproduct of being a high-achieving alcoholic. The latter sapped
| my mental fortitude and turned me into a passive streaming
| consumer. Each time I quit drinking, projects abound as my mind
| clears up.
|
| Apologies for trembling a bit. Procrastination is one of my
| greatest challenges, now that I've corrected so many other self-
| sabotaging behaviors. It's one that I still haven't really begun
| to figure out how to address. But hey, I'm doing pretty well
| otherwise, so there's that.
| bitwize wrote:
| Get up early on the first of the month and post on that month's
| "Who wants to be hired?" Hackernews thread. I got a job this
| way, and the experience sure beat StalkedIn.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I grew up with parents who had anxiety. I had to be perfect, I
| couldn't make any sort of mistake because they'd get angry at me.
|
| Naturally, I ended up not even attempting doing anything, because
| the punishment for not doing something and making a mistake was
| the same.
| encomiast wrote:
| I understand how this feels. If this was me, that 'October 19,
| 2024' line would already be gnawing away at my psyche. 'I said I
| was going to write more, it's almost been a month...'.
|
| This is one of the reasons I took the dates off of my posts (even
| though I think they might be useful to readers).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| From someone who published nine books and over a thousand
| articles in the last ten years: writing begets writing.
|
| If you fall off the bandwagon, returning to the activity is
| tedious. First lines feel like hard work, as if you were a
| totally unfit person trying to climb a steep hill.
|
| Then it gets slowly better and if you can persist and write for
| several days, you are "in the flow" again.
| sbergjohansen wrote:
| To anyone interested in further exploring this theme I warmly
| recommend "The Courage to be Disliked" by Kishimi and Koga.
| swapxstar wrote:
| That sounds interesting. Will check it out. Thanks!
| siva7 wrote:
| Hey HN, what do you recommend against coder's block? I often
| freeze when wanting to write code.
| vdvsvwvwvwvwv wrote:
| Debugging is great. If I get block because the code is too
| complex, debugging is a good way to interact and understand the
| code. It starts to make more sense.
|
| Console logging is still coding too! Debugging can be console
| logging or stepping through with a debugger. Or even run the
| program with different inputs.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Write out what you want to do in a single line. Then make a
| list of items needed to achieve that. Then split each of those
| items into 3s. Then split each of those items into 3s, again.
| Do this enough, and you will have the code you want to write.
| Then it just becomes a pseudo > real code transition, and LLMs
| are pretty decent at that.
| amonith wrote:
| Maybe because you care about what others think you actually tell
| yourself that you need to write and read more to become "better"
| (not necessarily than others, just "better" as a person because
| you feel inadequate) and your body tells you that it's not
| actually what you want?
|
| The solution might be to use the internet less and enjoy the
| offline life some more, not to "overcome the hurdle".
| pooingcode wrote:
| Im struggling with this once I reach the point I can release a
| project. It's a sort of writers block I guess.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| I suffered from this.
|
| The issue is the ego. Ego has a lot of ideas about itself and
| others. Ego has such high opinion about itself it only can do
| great work. Which prevents it from doing anything. It's kind of a
| way of avoiding failures. Because failures will break the grant
| ideas about himself OP has created.
|
| I accidentally went through a spiritual awakening which diluted
| ego. I have no problem in doing any kind of work now. Whether
| it's great or petty.
|
| OP needs to work on the ego. Or figure out a situation where OP
| has to ship things no matter what. Which is hard unless you are
| jobless and can't figure a way out apart from building useful
| things that people pay for.
| calstad wrote:
| I know it's a bit of a personal question, but can you elaborate
| on your ego diluting experience?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| I think it would be really hard to understand without
| experiencing it. But I will write down anyway.
|
| So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had
| this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain
| things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very
| high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find
| things to validate that.
|
| Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and every
| moment is intense. Sunsets are absolutely beautiful that you
| cannot describe through words. Spending time in nature is
| surreal. You do the right thing instead of doing things to
| validate your narrative. The dopamine hit I used to get when
| I used to do certain things is gone( i use to confuse these
| dopamine hits as me doing something right). This unlocks
| doing things more from Intuition and less from memory. There
| is less fear. There is more flow. More creativity. No regard
| for authority or beliefs. Everyone is equal. You want to know
| and not believe.
|
| That said it's not all great stuff. You also have to work
| through some existential questions which you were previously
| isolated by the ego. Like mortality. Impermanence of
| everything. Aging body. What happens after death. Nature of
| awareness. Why I am aware. Is awareness eternal and it's
| implications etc etc.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Happy to hear that worked out for you, that sounds like a
| great place to be. What facilitated the change though, or
| how did that happen? Was there a catalyst?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Sorry. I can't write it down because I think what I did
| was reckless and stupid and I don't want to give any
| ideas in a high visible thread like this.
|
| For a lot of people this is triggered by something
| unexpected happening in life which breaks the narrative
| one has been building their entire life.
|
| You can search for Spiritual Awakening and find a lot of
| examples. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a great podcast to
| listen to for such experiences.
|
| As I sad it's not all great all the times. There were a
| lot of times in which I wished I could go back to the old
| mode. Though I think the overall change was for the
| better.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I've been heavily dealing with the existential questions
| you are referencing but it only gets worse. What helped you
| in resolving those issues or come to terms with them?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Adyashanti helped a lot. Life after awakening book in
| specifically. I think one of the main takeaways was to
| instead of running away from these questions or thoughts
| welcome them and experience them. Don't try to distract
| yourself when a thought comes. Just embrace it. It will
| weaken the power of the thoughts or feelings. At the end
| of the day they are all mere appearances in awareness and
| not permanent. They go away.
|
| There is also a lecture series on Advaita Vedanta on
| YouTube. That helped as well.
|
| https://youtu.be/gEd22QZF_mM?si=iDIXY1oUhOC9PaHm
|
| Meditation helped a lot.
|
| Spending time in nature a lot helped. Camping under trees
| helped..
|
| Also Jordan Peterson's biblical lectures also
| surprisingly helped even though I was not brought up
| Christian. I know he is divisive but the lectures are not
| political.
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4zj0nQN08ewq9dl1e8MC
| z3Y...
|
| Also just praying and believing in a higher power helped.
| mangomountain wrote:
| This is spot on for the audiobook I'm listening to "Mindset:
| The Psychology of Success" , it's resistance to effort that
| preserves belief in effortless ability and prevents any real
| progress
| Jerrrrrrry wrote:
| I am suffering from this.
|
| Every word you wrote stabbed me in my past, which means
| dissonance, somewhere.
|
| Subconscious self-sabotage to rip the proverbial band-aid off,
| induced manic/delirium from a small infection,
| rumination/paranoia, catatonia.
|
| Took less consciousness away from my delaying of problems. My
| ego didn't handle it, the manic iD, did.
|
| I had successfully ran away from all my problems, failing
| upwards just enough to irk out a cowardly existence.
|
| If Moses had an antibiotic, or had flossed more, the 4(0?) days
| of desert-delirium may not had been so fearlessly familiar.
|
| after day 4-5 of catatonic rumination and paralyzing anxiety: I
| cried aloud, "just give me an ounce of strength"; that let me
| ruminate as to why:
|
| I was asking for help: I am not allowed to. why not? skip that
| token, backprop later.
|
| Why an ounce? and why of strength? and why am I asking aloud?
| and who am I asking?
|
| ...
|
| Why an ounce? Why not a ratio of my body mass? Why not an
| arbitrary....because I have 0.
|
| Zero what? Strength?
|
| Why am I asking for strength? Because I am a coward.
|
| and Occam's Razor clicked, all my problems stemmed from
| cowardice.
|
| I awoke to find myself identifying with "depersonalization" for
| once, which was embarrassing. But embarrassing/cringe is
| dissonance, so my ego deconstruction began.
|
| Morality is cowardice in disguise. <-- Stuck here, unable to
| proceed. Too axiomatic. Or figure out a
| situation where OP has to ship things no matter what. Which is
| hard unless you are jobless and can't figure a way out apart
| from building useful things that people pay for.
|
| Not out of the woods yet, but at least I know I am in a
| familiar forest.
| Liquix wrote:
| "The most thunderous sound arises out of quietude." - Zhaungzi
|
| "The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the
| creative mind." - Albert Einstein
|
| "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the
| tools) to write. Simple as that." - Stephen King
|
| In other words unplugging, making time to read books, and
| allowing yourself to be bored are all good ways to stimulate the
| creative mind.
| saltcod wrote:
| This piece was short, but it reads well. You're definitely not a
| non-writer. You should keep at it. Look forward to reading more.
| ksassnowski wrote:
| This resonates so much with me. I've even written a blog post a
| few years ago with almost the same title[0].
|
| It hasn't really gotten better since then even though I've built
| even more cool stuff since then (hell, I even was #1 on HN for a
| whole day earlier this year).
|
| [0]: https://www.kai-sassnowski.com/post/never-good-enough/
| SoftTalker wrote:
| One thing to keep in mind is that the vast, overwhelming majority
| of people in the world, or even your town, don't know who you are
| and will never be aware of anything you do. This goes even for
| people who are relatively well known in their field. It's nearly
| daily I see some story here about someone who is apparently "well
| known" and my reaction is "Who? I've never heard of this person."
|
| Don't worry about being good enough or what other people will
| think. The truth is almost nobody even cares.
| redbell wrote:
| > This ties into my fear of not being _good enough_. I'm
| constantly worried about what others might think of my writing.
| If I don't think it's great, how can I expect anyone else to?
|
| I believe this belongs under the term _Perfectionist Dilemma_ ,
| as defined by Adam Miller [1]: The perfectionist
| dilemma is when a creator values the quality of a finished
| product, such to the extent that it inhibits their ability to
| iterate, change, and even produce. For many, it's the ultimate
| writer's block, invoking a fear that the finished product isn't
| or won't be as originally intended.
|
| > When I read articles on Hacker News about people doing
| incredible things and writing brilliantly about them, it's hard
| not to feel overwhelmed.
|
| I totally agree with this. I believe it's an instinct feeling, so
| I'm accepting it _as it is_.
|
| _________________________
|
| 1. https://medium.com/@thatadammiller/the-perfectionist-
| dilemma...
| tonymet wrote:
| Stop overcomplicating it. You're lazy.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| TIL: there are randoms in the world who feel the exact what I
| feel, on daily basis for past three or four years.
|
| It is frustrating. One recent mindset change I have adopted that
| reduces the feeling of overwhelming is:
|
| 1. Say it out loud, "I have plenty of time" and breathe deeply
|
| 2. "I have to work within constraint for which I do not have
| control of"
|
| 3. Can things be a lot more worse then they are? Fortunately, the
| answer to this has been 100% yes. Things can be worse in terms of
| developing complicated medical condition to family complication.
|
| 4. There always be be 'noise', work on reducing it and accept the
| 'distractions' are noise. Since distraction is noise, ignore it
| instead of giving into it.
| jctdrs wrote:
| "Recently, with a bit of encouragement from a friend"
|
| Thank you friend..
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