Building Better Habits

   

 In the end, you did the things you've done.
     So simple a statement as to be asinine, but it's true, and it's important to realize it, not just dismiss it as a simple-minded given.
     As far back as I can recall I've been a procrastinator.
     It's so much a reflex that I don't know that I can reliably tease out the proportions of active components. How much is simple laziness? Oh, not now! I'm tired! How much is the desire for instant perfection, and the simultaneous knowledge that it won't be there? It's going to look like shit! I'll end up having to tear those pages out! How much is fear of some element of the task? What looks like a simple problem now could turn out to be so much worse! If I start digging there or tugging on that, I could have a huge mess! It may not even be something I can fix, or it could be something that's just a problem now, but if I let it be it'll sort itself out.
     I've managed to break some of that self-conditioning, selectively. in the past decade. That was with respect to getting my finances in line, and was part of a concerted effort over the course of few years to pay down a mountain of debt, or make my way back to the surface while filling in the pit I was in. I prefer the latter analogy, because in the years since I've then managed to create a modest mountain of savings that's as high above fiscal ground as I'd been below it circa 2010. As that involved dealing with things that were both guaranteed not to be instantly perfect, and sources of considerable despair and fear, I try to keep those in mind as I look to expand my self-improvement efforts.
     The debt seemed almost insurmountable, and as nearly all of it was interest-bearing debt, it was constantly growing. None of it involved a one-and-done solution, even if it might seem to be when painted in very broad strokes. There were always choices to make and steps to take down each path, and each one of those could either fail outright or suddenly fragment into multiple other steps, and at no point was I being reliably assured that this solution was the best one for me. All I could really be assured of in some of them was that it was a good solution for someone else.
     Different methods work for different people. (Another instant gem that, eh? From the files of Capt. Obvious, I know.) Again, though, it's important to appreciate that trying to apply the same method to everyone is going to run into problems.
     I have never been a fan of the shaming method - of using social status, particularly negative, to drive someone. Even when it works, I'm concerned about the inevitable, eventual damage, because if it works for someone they're going to apply it to motivational problems in others, and there are people who will not respond well to that. I'm particularly worried about the ones who will care just enough to possibly decide this is the final straw, and that life is not worth the pain.
     When I ran into it in school - the teacher who would shift the heckler's spotlight onto the underachiever - it never motivated me to do anything but disregard said teacher and, by extension, the process of school itself. While there are always exceptions (I have to say that, or else when that rarest of things appears - an actual reader comment on a blog post - it will be someone telling me about their cat who they trained like a dog) I tend to think of myself as more cat-like in this regard. The usual praise and punishment methods one would apply to dog training generally get very different reactions from cats. Whatever action triggered being sprayed by the water bottle are immediately irrelevant. The cat comes to just see the person -- or maybe just the spray bottle if the person is otherwise the source of pleasant things -- as something unpleasant. It has nothing to do with the associated behavior. Raising it a notch, even if the association between the behavior and the punishment is made, it's more likely to be a case of encouraging the bad behavior, as a sort of reversed punishment. Oh, you don't like when I do that, do you? Comin' right up!
     I've gone off on another tangent.
     For me, what I've found most effective is to try to focus on specific, desired actions. If I instead focus on something I'm not supposed to do, it's almost certainly doomed to failure. Bad actions have to be displaced by good.
     In general, I've been recently trying to broadly apply a loop of paying forward actions for myself, then taking the moment to realize later -- very often early in the day, though sometimes it's late at night -- that moment of "Oh! That's right. I already took care of that." It's what I've been using to pressure myself to do that One More Thing that doesn't really have to be done now, but I have the time and could take care of it before I sit or lie down again. So much depends on emphasizing that sense of gratitude, and the general sense of well-being that comes from knowing some little something is already sorted. The luxury of relative ease, because it's one fewer thing I have to do this morning. To make myself hungry for more of that, hungry enough to take those few extra minutes today to make things better for that Nice Tomorrow Mike.
     Related to all this, and a danger to all progress, is worry and depression. Letting the icy shadow of doom being cast by some impending event freeze all other useful action. Yet, I have done just that more often than not.
     I also tend to default to two modes of Inactivity.
     There's Happy Indolence: I have all the time in the world, and I'll be able to start concentrating on that tomorrow, after I've relaxed with this nice thing and then gotten some refreshing rest! It will be so easy then! A wonderful outcome is assured!
     Then there's the Dire Paralysis: Zero Hour is seconds away! The problem is too huge! There's no time to even begin getting this done! Is there some way to just get out of this, or to postpone it?! (And, if I do manage a postponement, that generally puts me back to the state of Happy Indolence, with a layer of "I need to rest" because I've burnt myself down with the stress and worry.) Bonus awfulness in Dire Paralysis is that that state of emergency gives me license to let almost everything else slide because now's not the time for it.
     Realizing one has a problem is the first step.
     It's a work in progress.