A self-observation

[jducoeur]

Interesting. I've noticed for a while that I've been doing rather badly at many things -- in particular, I'm procrastinating a lot. That's showing up in a lot of venues: SCA stuff, but also my LARP writing, and even somewhat at work.

And it occurs to me: somewhere along the line, I've developed an odd phobia to my own nature, and particularly one of the INTJish aspects. That is, it's a natural tendency of mine to get deeply sucked into projects -- perhaps not quite obsessive, but certainly quite deeply focused. That focus is precisely what I've been lacking lately, and it's not just a matter of accident: if I look inside, there's a strange aversion to it. Which makes little sense, because it is, frankly, generally pretty fun when I do let myself get sucked in -- like I said, it's a natural tendency.

Where did this come from? I need to dig into that a bit. Best initial guess is that it's a side-effect of my attempts to make myself better at multi-tasking. In a number of respects (not least work) I've needed to learn how to keep a lot more balls in the air at once. Getting "focused" often intereferes with that, since I will often neglect other projects while I'm involved in one. (Indeed, "focus" can be used as a procrastination technique itself.) Also possibly related: I've been teaching myself to skim things, as a partial solution to my media addiction and my *ludicrous* backlog of various media. That skimming is, again, rather opposed to "focus".

Either or both of these might be driving the effect. Regardless, though, I think I need to bring myself back around to focusing again, and get past the fear of it -- for better or worse, it's how I actually get things done...

Comments

[jimpage363.livejournal.com]

My friend, it could alos be the sheer NUMBER of balls you're trying to keep in the air. Consider the ones to which you have the most aversion just now. Are they sucking up time you'd like to put somewhere else? You've got some stressors in your life just now and it might be a sign to give yourself a little slack.

Just a thought from the Left Coast...

{{hug}}

[jducoeur]

No, no, that's just it: I'm not focusing on *anything* right now. If I was focused on a few things and neglecting others, that would be fairly normal, frankly. But I seem to be in avoidance mode for everything at the moment. I'm getting a lot of comics read, but that's about the most productive I can say I'm being. Indeed, I seem to have just as much aversion to the things that I can honestly say I enjoy as to the chores -- actually, moreso.

There's just a touch of depression involved (heaven knows it's been a messy year for me and mine), but that doesn't seem to be at the root of it -- it's there around the edges, but I know what serious depression feels like, and this ain't it. It might even be more symptom than cause: not managing to *accomplish* things is hard on the self-image.

What seems consistent is that I keep bouncing off my projects: I make some progress, and really enjoy them for a *little* while, and then the aversion response kicks in, distracting me onto -- well, usually nothing terribly useful. (See: lots of comics read.)

I suspect there's something deeper-seated going on here -- I'm fairly sure of *what* is going on, but not precisely *why*. There are several plausible theories that I'm finding here -- none terribly rational, but I don't think I'm dealing with a rational response in this case. When I poke at the back of my head, I'm finding a certain sense that I'm *supposed* to be running away from all of the stress in my life; that may well be a holdover from the *serious* depression I dealt with last year, which I'm mostly but not 100% past. And I think there's some fear of getting things done properly, and thereby opening myself up to fair criticism of the problems with those things -- if everything is *really* messed up due to procrastination, then that effect can be blamed for any problems. (Both of those hypotheses might be rubbish, but they feel annoyingly plausible when I try to shine a spotlight down on my subconscious.)

Much to ruminate on. Slacking off is *not* the solution; frankly, it's the problem here. I'm doing quite a good job of slacking, and it's hurting my self-esteem. Time to do something about that...

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Do you think this is at all related to your lovely wife's health crisis? Maybe that's the one thing you're focused on, leaving everything else to fall away as less important (and rightly so).

[jducoeur]

While plausible, I don't think that's it. Frankly, it hasn't added as much overall stress to my life as you might think -- some, yes, but it's had the effect of pulling us a little closer, which is a bit of a positive. And I'm pretty sure that the problem well predates that: it looks to me like this has been running for at least a couple of years now. It's just more conspicuous now, since I've managed to put a bunch of balls down (finally), but I'm *still* not focusing well on the ones that are left...

[jenwrites.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Still, I can see how it might be difficult to try to regain focus what with...well, you know. You might not want to start kicking yourself until that's all over and done with.