Background

Last week I didn’t really make any hard plan to write X words. Also, last week I didn’t really do any work regarding what career I should be choosing and my steps towards it. I majorly procrastinated away using Youtube, Facebook, work from office, and working out. I was either tired, or didn’t sleep well the previous day for useless reasons, or I had to do some homework for a course I was taking. Even if there is an excuse that sounds even remotely acceptable, the reader better note that not an ounce of work was done. Not one. My “work week” - including writing and my actual job- is from monday to friday. In the weekends I just do other things that I can’t do on the weekdays, like washing clothes, cooking batches, learning more about body building, researching products on Aliexpress, logging data of the week and of course procrastinating by wits out. As a log of my phone, I give how much time I spend on my phone yesterday (saturday). It was about 6.5 hrs, despite having the presssure to churn out 2.5k word article by today at 17 hrs. God help me!

The good thing is I had quite some guilt all over the week, for giving a shit performance (even though I didn’t really have a deadline). I even ate maggi and my classic milkshake on saturday morning, one that I do, if I killed it in the week. I did so with the promise that I will write 2.5k something by Sunday. Only then does the maggi and milkshake celebration make sense. As nature would have it, the 2.5k-deadline-engine finally kicked in today morning (sunday), the day of the deadline. I have about 7 more hours to go, before I submit an article of 2.5k words and I have many other things to do as well. Well that’s where we are now. Let’s go!

This is really fucked up, I need to change something about the way I do work. I know there is quite some work needed to be done and as soon as possible, so that I can take the actions based on my research. I don’t want to waste my precious time on procrastinating, I am basically throwing money away. I don’t want the work to pile up like this always. Somebody help me!

One would think people learn from their past mistakes. Well, over the last few weeks, most of the times I had deadlines to write 2.5k words a week before friday. I can’t remember sleeping anything lesser than 4 am on saturday, in an attempt to meet the deadline. Last week was the first exception, when I couldn’t help but sleep at 3 am and wake up at 9 and continued for another 2.5 hrs. I recollect I had not even written 1k rough-draft level words by then. I usually write very little during the weekdays and basically suffer on fridays. This sucks.

In summary, I did no work last week (0). And god forbid my guilt that made me write an essay by sunday or give away 20 bucks, all work piled up on me on the this last day of the week (sunday). I want to change the way I work, and I want to properly clock more hours of work with ease and minimum resistance.

What do you want?

  1. spend quality time on things that are important (10hrs/week atleast), with flow
  2. procrastinate lesser, finish work earlier and do what you want after that (reward). Stress less. (Don’t start your work at 9 pm on friday, when you could have started at 7 pm, don’t spend hours after hours watching youtube, in the name of taking breaks).
  3. clear defined goals , example (2.5k re-read-well-edited article at end of friday on topic X).

Motivation

A few weeks ago we saw the equation of motivation.

$ Motivation = Capacity * (value of feedback or reward or punishment) / delay in reward

The equation of motivation shows what are the key factors that contribute to feeling motivated. From the motivation equation it is clear that we need three things. What we do should be challenging enough to the point that you are not either anxious or bored. We should get immediate feedback with every move we make, that we are doing the right thing. And the value of feedback should be sufficient enough to cause us to feel motivated.

A great motivation results in flow. One fosters flow when:

There are clear goals every step of the way There is immediate feedback Balance between challenges and skills

With this knowledge let us look into the problems.

Problems

  1. Lack of deadlines

It is hard to feel motivated to work on these things after a tired day of work followed by gym. I have tried working without deadlines, they don’t work. Over the past year I have observed enough evidence that tells me to try something else. I am speaking about the dearth of everyday deadlines.

Having deadlines, forces me to work. Having deadlines everyday, forces me to work everyday. I know how miserable I feel on a Friday. I have Heuristics and Biases and that doesn’t allow me to realize how miserable I feel on friday and act accordingly. H&B’s are shit. But then now I can add a correction.

To talk in the variables of motivation, lack of deadlines, reduces the value of feedback(or completion of the task). Conversely, we are increasing the value of the task with deadlines everyday.

We need everyday deadlines.

  1. Rewards

I think it would be nice to have something to look forward to, such as a full hr available to do what I want, or maybe playing 2 games of chess only if I finish work.

Rewards, again I think increase the value of the feedback, thereby increasing our motivation for a task.

  1. hard to quantify work

It is easy to say to write 1k words a day. This is very clear and can be done. But then the goal is not to write. It is for me to research and then write my findings. I am not able to fit this into some quantifiable goals. And I don’t see myself doing any better without any goals whatsoever. Just saying work for 2 hrs a day- which I have done in the past - is the most painful thing to do. It is so easy to procrastinate, there is nothing challenging in this, no goals, and no personal stake in the situation to get you to work hard or make good use of your time. Having a deadline is fine, but these 2 hrs can easily be wasted. We need something else.

Can I do something like read Xk words a day? We can try this and see how it goes. This should keep me on my toes, with telling me how far I need to go in the one hr.

To speak in the variables of motivation, trying to do Xk words a day amounts to increasing the challenge as well as providing feedback on a task. We would also like to see how we fared in understanding the content, that is for another day, or for external feedback. Anyways, later.

  1. Distractions

The greatest desire to youtube(verb form) and facebook or use the phone on mindless activities even do office work, comes in those times when I actually have to do this work I think.

May we consider killing distractions not only during this time. But also until we finish the work? I say this because I see myself timelessly procrastinating till 9 and then starting work. I eat forllowed by watching one youtube video after the other pointlessly, until a point comes when its do or die.

Despite the fact that I don’t cook in the weekdays, despite the fact of having eaten by 7:30, I rarely started working by 8:30 even. Somehow, it was like I’ll watch this video and then another and then another and when it’s too late I start working, which chokes me of my reward time (spoken above).

Distractions suck you and your time. They kill your rewards time and you get to keep the guilt feeling because you procrastinated.

There used to be a time when I was preparing for GATE, when I followed this idea. I started my work early in the morning, killed all distractions, including TV, finished my work early in the day and spent the rest of the day doing my own thing guilt free. I want to try this again.

The goal is to keep your rewards to the end, and hold them hostage until you finish.

  1. Lack of closure

Closure is something we all would like with anything that we work. The sooner the closure (delay in feedback), the more motivated we are to work on something. I get great closure only on the last day, when I complete the article. Then I dream about eating my favorite maggi and other things

Closure is also associated with the value of the feedback itself. It seems to be valued high according to your body. I don’t know how to get closure everyday, but I guess the Friday closure is good enough. On other days, I will (as above) artificially increase the value and delay in the feedback.

  1. Saturday and Sunday

I usually take saturday and sunday off from any official thinking. Why? Don’t ask. Maybe later I can focus on this. Baby steps for now. Let’s get some work done motherfucker!

Summary

So in essence there are three variables. Capacity, value of feedback, and the dealy in feedback.

Right now we want to incorporate the following in our work week.

  • add rewards
  • have proper goals/ clearly defined deadlines
  • ~reduce~ Kill all distractions while working
  • Work times should almost be fixed

Concretely specifying action for next week

The two activities I juggle between right now are reading from 80k hrs and the other activity is writing what I have learnt or my plan. We want to maximize our productivity. So for now we shall roughly measure it in terms of hours. The goal shall be to clock atleast 10hrs per week from monday to friday (2 hrs a day). Every hour implies to me either writing 1k words or reading 10k words/hr (170WPM). For the next week, I will give myself the freedom per hour to choose what activity I want to do. I can either write or read for the hour. On the thursday I review my content and start re-editing. Friday by 1 o clock, which is a hard deadline I wrap up, with 5 euro being paid for evey extra hour. We will test this over the next week and the coming weeks and see how things go. Everyday at the max I am allowed to start my work by 7:45 pm. I shall finish my work in 2:15 hrs at any cost. Penalty for any failure other than for exceptional reasons, 20 euros per day. Cheers.

During the 2:15 hrs, cell phones, facebook and youtube are BANNED, unless for exceptional reasons. Please state your exceptional reason to your friend. This would be an attempt to keep it real.

Measuring the means and not the end

Well, yes we are measuring the means and not the end. Quantity first quality later has been constant retoric from an STM and maybe also PG. If I want to measure things like number of arguments made or other things right now, its going to be hard. Unfortunately, this is what we have, it appears, and we are going to see what we can do about it. For now we’ll stick to this. As I said earlier, the goal is to get work done. I have to make crucial decisions, and for now, I want to read in and out of 80k uur and get their help regarding the career I deserve and not the one I need right now.

Exploring Motivation while working on other things

What happens during my 9 to 5 job,

It’s not that hard for me to sit at work or even clock a few hours continuously. There is always work to do, and I am always kept on the edge, atleast by the amount of work I need to do. Of course I get paid, I am afraid that is barely in the equation as I don’t receive it then and there. Of course, my boss, his pressure his feedback are important to me. Usually also I strain for closure. I think the above are the things that make working at office not really a pain. The work I do has specific goals, unlike what I working with. At work it is usually not a research assignment, it is more about getting something working, I suspect it’s like programming, wherein you compile and see if things work or not.

But how do I just keep at doing 8 hrs, almost continuously. I don’t need to take breaks at work, maybe just whilst eating. I work 2 to 3 hrs continuously.

The work is usually challenging enough either by itself or atleast by the quantity. The work has feedback from my DL (the pressre he puts or the respect I gain from him, when I complete something), I suspect is one of the more crucial reasons. The value of his feedback seems very important to me. I can’t comment on how immediate the feedback is right now.

Cardio

While doing cardio, recently I got access to a heart-rate meter. I like the idea (still to be tested against time), that there is a one number that can tell you the exhaustion rate or that you are doing actual cardio (>120bpm). Combine this with an avg hear-rate count and boom there we have some proper metrics to compare activity cross-platform. Be it cycling outside or in the gym or running or jumping, numbers will not lie and there we have our feedback. Now the feedback I have is a proper number that I can check.

Working out I go to the gym 5 times a week. When I am in the gym its all fun usually. I think its about loosing my gains which puts the fear of god into me to go to the gym everyday. I cannot afford to loose my gains. If I didn’t go to the gym a full week, then probably I feel less motivated than usualy. But now when I am at my career high number of days at the gym, I feel the need to keep going.

Things I want to explore in the coming posts

  • Long term goals and its effects.
  • going to the gym everyday motivation (how?)
  • Check if I can draw parallels from cardio motivation (how?)
  • explore programming and connections to work and how to bring that type of feedback into my current work.