A self-observation
Sep. 30th, 2006 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurInteresting. 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...
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...