For two days, I didn’t do any programming for SETT. The morning of the first day I was busy with other high priority stuff. I finished that up, ate lunch, and decided to work on SETT. But then… I didn’t. I answered emails, played my violin, researched some stuff, and bought some plane tickets. I wasn’t unproductive, but I was not working on my top priority, and I knew it.
That whole day I was tired, so I went to sleep early and woke up fresh the next day, ready for a full day of programming to make up for my prior shortfall. But again, I didn’t program a line of code. I didn’t even open up my code editor.
The next day I woke up mildly panicked. Two days of lost productivity is a bad thing, but worse was that was that I felt as though I lost my edge. Part of me wanted to work, but another part of me was avoiding it at all costs. It felt as though all this discipline I’d been building for the past couple years was crumbling to nothing. How disciplined could I be if I was unable to spur myself to action for two whole days?
Okay, let’s diagnose this, I thought. I opened up a text editor and asked myself what my problem was. Why wasn’t I working?
I knew the answer immediately, even though I hadn’t articulated it yet. The work ahead of me was daunting. I was facing one of the harder problems I’d faced so far– it required dealing with an area of programming I’m not totally comfortable with, I hadn’t figured out exactly how I even wanted to solve the problem, and each block of work that I could conceive of was a massive one.
Worst of all, I recognized that my fear that I had lost my discipline was what was really holding me back. After half a day or so of being delayed due to the overwhelming scope of the work, I had mentally blown the task of programming out of proportion. It was no longer about the code that I’d type; it was about whether or not I was disciplined. I remember what it was like to be undisciplined, and the fear that I had regressed there was preventing me from finding out if it was actually true. Of course, this paralysis made it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What’s the solution, I asked myself? I reasoned that if the real problem was that I was psyching myself out, the answer was probably that I needed to just write some bad code. Open the text editor, get the fingers moving, and inch towards the solution. More importantly, show myself that the two days were nothing more than a fluke.
I opened the text editor, broke through my self-sabotage, and actually wrote some pretty good code. Once I started typing, the obvious best way to solve the problem popped into my head, so I switched gears and started working on it. Within an hour or two I’d made some real progress and no longer felt stuck at all. When the clock struck midnight I was disappointed that I had to stop coding to get ready for bed.
It’s funny how often these things happen to us humans. We know logically that something won’t be so bad, and might even be good, but we work ourselves up and attach all sorts of undeserved meaning to it. The feeling of frustration that I had reminded me back to my pickup days, where I would know that nothing bad could happen by approaching an attractive girl, but still sometimes being unable to force myself to do it.
Despite the tremendous amount I’ve put in to self discipline and good work habits, I still fail sometimes. If I’ve learned anything in this process, though, it’s how to make these ruts as short and temporary as possible, and to get back to high productivity mode. I imagine that I get less quality code written per hour than most professional programmers, so I have to compensate for that by making sure that I have as many hours near my best as possible.
This simple process of asking yourself why you aren’t doing what you want to be doing, and then asking yourself what the solution is, is remarkably effective. So often we search externally for solutions to our problems when the greatest authority on the subject is ourselves. All it takes is the ability to take a step away from your problem and look at it rationally. Sounds easy, but it can be hard sometimes: after all, it took me two whole days to get to it.
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Wrote the outline for this a couple days ago. Since then I’ve just about finished the daunting chunk of work I had to do and it feels great.
Photo is a cool set of ducts from downtown Boston.
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