growth
context: https://andyiterations.bearblog.dev/feeling-unproductive/
I was feeling unproductive. After a few days, I had given it much more thought about what was happening. At its core, I was unappreciative of my growth over time and quantifying my todo list too much. Relating every task to how productive I was.
Outcomes: A growth mindset is key. Stop quantifying success on your todo list. Remind yourself every morning of achievements, and the previous days, or flip through the journal. Remember where you started to appreciate the present.
A video game analogy that this situation reminds me of is playing a video game and not being able to save my progress. Each time playing restarting at the start of the game. Frustrating.
So, the first part is memories. Our primary memories turn into secondary memories. Collecting fragments of our past. Kind of like a computer with RAM and hard drive storage. In the present, we remember everything very clearly. Struggles, pain, and joy all feel very strong. If I asked you in your past can you remember the pain of an injury. You could likely have an idea but not a hundred percent replica of how you feel. But when does the memory disappear? after a week? a day? a month?
Sleep is when. Sleep is when our important memories are stored away in the "hard drive". When we wake up our memories become secondary. Subsequently, setting our fulfillment, joy, and anger to zero. Somewhat like a neutral state when we wake up. Not many people wake up feeling strong emotions.
In our neutral state, we seek to be positive. It's only natural that people wish to be happy rather than unhappy. For me, fulfillment is what brings me happiness. For some, it might be joy or social engagement. Since I value fulfillment, much of what makes me filled is getting meaningful or necessary work done. This caused me to over-fixate on my todo list with the most tasks possible. All to feel a sense of accomplishment. Sparking my journey in productivity.
The problem with productivity is it lends itself to doing more and more work. You can always strive to be more strong, more intelligent, or more productive. This is the core of the frustration which makes me feel unproductive. My to-do list is an ever-expanding list with responsibilities from clubs, school, or personal projects. My bar of satisfaction is set so high that on most days I do not feel like I achieve a fraction of my most productive day.
In addition, the bar is always set to bring the highest personal standard possible. How can I strive and be happy with achievements that are below previous records? Of course, this is a personal problem and more the power to you if you can strive for less. It's just that if I could run for 10 minutes and then I couldn't run the same amount the next time I would have felt that I lost progress. Similarly, completing anything under 4-5 tasks a day makes me feel lazy or unproductive.
Others have come to the solution of coming to acceptance of the never-ending list of tasks. By focusing on the highest leverage tasks and enjoying the journey they have their fulfillment through these acts.
My issue with this is that it does not fix the unsatification feeling. This places a lot of emphasis on enjoying the journey. The reality for me is that not every day will be fun. There are times when bugs in software will make me mad, days when co-workers are annoying, or something unfortunate comes up. Enjoying the journey does not always have to be fun but I don't believe in being unhappy for days or weeks. Life is short and joy must be met daily. If I want to do fulfilling work to bring happiness then my journey has to reflect.
What changed my perspective was looking into the past. In the present, it's easy to care about the smaller details. The reality is you have grown a lot throughout the year. Compare the writing when I was a child to now, it's day and night. When I compare my day-to-day achievements to the achievements of my life it fades the day-to-day away. When I'm older in my 50s which achievements do you think you will remember. The time when I could not meet my expectations or the bigger achievements. Probably, the latter.
So what can you do now to fix this feeling of dissatisfaction? I think for me it's appreciation of the past. Looking at journal entries, past achievements, and remembering where I started. Loading my progress in video game terms. If after we sleep we forget then it is our responsibility to load our progress ourselves. I have tested this out for a few days and it really has helped me feel a sense of peace. Maybe it's all in my mind but if you found it helpful I would love to hear about it.
P.S. Always after I write these I end up with a basic and common idea. It's funny. When writing this I realized at the end what I had described was a growth mindset. Funny how you understand what a statement is but until you really tackle, write it out, and play with the idea itself it does not really become a part of you.