Category: Psychology

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I’m Anxious and Low-Energy Right Now

So lately I’ve seemed to have no mental energy or motivation at all and have been considerably more anxious than usual.

So far, my working theory is that I’m actually too lean. In addition to weight training and eating very well, I’ve added quite a bit of cardio to my routine in the form of running. Since then, I’ve gotten quite lean and may now be below 10% body fat.

I was aware that at a certain point (that’s different for everyone), you start to feel some negative side-effects of being lean. And the symptoms seem to line up with what I’m experiencing, unfortunately.

It’s also possible that I’ve just burnt myself out doing so much every day and being so productive. Maybe I just need to relax for a bit.

I’ve also had a bit of tumult in my dating life that has certainly affected me in the last week, though it’s hard for me to imagine that it is the cause.

Finally, it’s always possible I’m fighting an illness, even though I don’t seem to have any other symptoms. It could be something behind the scenes.

I might just keep going exactly as I am for a bit and see if anything changes. If not, it may be time to start eating a lot more and getting my bodyfat percentage back up.

Because I really don’t want to continue like this. In times when I need to call on some extra motivation or self-control, it’s not there. And I’m not used to that.

Half the time I feel like just collapsing and not moving at all.

The funny thing is that it’s entirely mental. My body is just fine. I can go out in the morning and run 4 and a half miles at a good pace without issue. But getting myself to start anything or cook or do one last task feels like so much work.

There’s also just a general feeling that everything is pointless. I had believed that this was a side-effect of not dating at all, because I haven’t dated since I returned from my last trip a couple months ago. But it may be unrelated.

It’s also affecting my ability to stick with new habits. I’ve gotten up past 7:30 for the first time in a long time more than once lately, and also have been slow to get out of bed. Literally everything is harder.

I also haven’t been able to make any progress on my photos site or other initiatives and it has been frustrating.

So I figure I’ll just keep an eye on it and share more if things change. Hopefully they do soon.

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“Do What You Love” Is Good Advice for Most People Because they Couldn’t Excel Elsewhere

I’ve come to the understand that the vast majority of people sort of just do what they feel like all the time. They lack self-control and discipline and lots of other things that would be required to succeed in most areas.

In most cases, I think that when things get tough, people either lose interest, tune out, or just give up.

To get great or even good at most things requires a lot of effort and experience, and lots of of hardships.

I think most people end up finding something they are good at, and more often than not, it’s something that they are passionate about and enjoy doing.

But contrary to the popular wisdom, I think that they are only good at it because they are passionate about it.

I think that passion is what keeps them going even when things get hard. It’s the only way they can keep going, because they simply don’t have the level of self-discipline or self-awareness to continue progressing if they weren’t passionate.

I think of these guys who seem like total screw-ups in most of their life, but they have one thing they love and are actually really good at. Some of the more apparent examples are many mechanics, electricians, and other people in skilled trades.

Those things are not easy to do or to get good at, yet it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that someone that was at the bottom of my high school class had succeeded in that field.

I certainly don’t want to come off as elitist, conceited, or judgmental here. This is just one piece of my broader understanding lately that advice that is designed to be broadly applied to the population does not really feel relevant to me or many others.

I’ve worked hard over decades to improve my self-discipline, habits, and overall performance. And now it seems that I’m at a level where most advice doesn’t seem to apply to me.

And “do what you love” sort of just feels like one of those things. I now think that’s its actually a pragmatic suggestion for finding economic success and providing value to society for those who would otherwise struggle to do so, rather than a deep nugget of wisdom designed to bring about happiness and fulfilment.

Those things may, indeed, be related, but the happiness may actually just be a secondary side-effect.

That’s also not to say that this advice wouldn’t help others, as well. It would be easier for anyone to continue through adversity if they were doing something they loved.

But it is limiting to only do things you love. Almost nobody has a love for management, scaling operations, HR, accounting, and many other crucial pieces of a functional business. Perhaps one or 2 of those things, but not all of them.

Yet the reward is great for those that successfully navigate all of them into a successful business. And that generally requires a great deal of self-discipline that allows one to push through even when things are really hard or they don’t feel at all passionate about the matter at hand.

I’ll keep thinking about the idea of most advice not being applicable and will probably keep writing about it in the future.

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I Stopped Doing Grunt Work by Making it More Taxing, but it Comes With a Cost

There was a time when I did absolutely everything in my business. Most of the work I did consisted of coding, design, and configuration of websites. I learned fairly early that this would have to change if I wanted to grow and scale my business.

And it took a while to change. Obviously nothing happened overnight. But it did work eventually.

So how did I do it?

Basically, I started associating that type of work with a lack of success. Stagnation. Over time I started to really feel that every time I engaged in those activities, I was letting my dreams (and business) slowly die.

And it worked!

Such a visceral reaction to something really does work to make you go out of your way to avoid it. While I still occasionally dabble in very small (or sometimes just complicated) tasks of this nature, I try to keep it very brief and I start to get stressed out if it goes on too long.

That’s usually my cue to just give it to a dev.

Overall, that’s a good thing and it has, in fact, allowed me to grow and scale my business. Without it, I would be stuck doing all of those things and would be limited primarily by the hours in the day.

I also tend to just be bad at being proactive with work like that, too, but that’s a different conversation.

But my thought today is: what are the downsides of this method?

Because there are some. It’s not like I just handed those tasks off and there is nothing bad to come from it.

I think that essentially I built a huge barrier for myself to doing these tasks. Every minute I do engage with them, I am having to overcome a large mental and emotional barrier that is quite draining.

Therefor, in the times when I do end up having to do some of it, it leaves me more worn-out and with less energy to do other things once I’m done.

The exact same task is now considerably more difficult for me to do, essentially by design.

Of course it works out in the end since overall I’m still way more free to focus on more important tasks, but it’s still just interesting to consider these downsides.

I think it’s particularly important to acknowledge this concept because it probably applies to many other areas in my life and business, too.

Off the top of my head, scheduled meetings and phone calls seem to have the same barrier for me. I try to avoid them as much as possible, and as a result, they are actually much more difficult for me to actually do. I’ve create barriers to doing them – which has worked in terms of decreasing their frequency – but now when I’m required to do them, it’s much more draining on me.

I think this process is something that can be performed consciously, and knowing what I know now, I need to be careful about what tasks I apply it to. Some things are inevitable, and it is probably unwise to build large barriers to accomplishing them.

On the flip side, I now know that this process does work, and it might be smart to seek out other opportunities to using it.

The low-hanging fruit would be things that are unquestionably bad for me. I think I’ve already done it with mindless social media usage, but using it for drinking, junk food, and laziness could also work quite well.

I guess I’ll consider this an important tool in my toolkit and just make sure to be very careful about when I choose to use it.

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The Justification for a Course of Action Doesn’t Need to be True

This is sort of a difficult concept to articulate, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Someone’s explanation for why a course of action is the best one doesn’t necessarily need to be true for it to be the best course of action.

I’ll give some examples to explain.

I feel like cooking is rife with these types of situations. Chefs say a lot of things that sound true but probably aren’t at all. I think this owes to the fact that cooking is one of those rare categories where we don’t really need to understand (and therefor test) the science behind it, because the end result (the food/flavor) speaks for itself.

You can try two different ways of doing something, and you know which one is better because of the taste.

Why one worked better is another question.

I remember watching a video of Gordon Ramsay explaining how to make the best scrambled eggs. In it, he suggests that you need to take the eggs off long before they are done cooking, because they will “continue to cook on the plate”.

I’ve heard this same explanation many places, and I’ve always been incredulous.

The moment the food leaves the pan, it is no longer being heated and therefor will instantly begin cooling. In my experience, with eggs, that change is very rapid. In fact, in most cases, you can hear boiling/frying aggressively on the pan, and the moment the eggs leave, it is silent.

Now, of course it’s conceivable that there are chemical changes occurring within the food while it remains at a high – albeit dropping – temperature.

However, while the claim that it will “keep cooking on the plate” may be true in absolute terms, I have a sneaking suspicion that a single second in the pan and on the stove will account for more “cooking” than the entirety of the time after it’s on a plate.

Now, I feel as though lesser minds, at this point, will resort to one of, in my opinion, the dumbest arguments ever conceived: “well he’s an experienced chef so he’s obviously right and you’re obviously wrong”.

First of all: no. Chefs don’t always agree with each other, first of all.

And second: to my point, even if they are wrong, that doesn’t mean they aren’t following the best course of action to make the best food.

A chef doesn’t need to understand why something works. He just knows that it does. He has training and experience that tells him the right timing for things.

In this particular example, it may just be that eggs need to be less cooked than one would believe. If telling someone to take them off the stove before they are fully cooked since they’ll “cook the rest of the way on the plate” gets them to take them off at the right time: good job!

Chefs aren’t scientists and in the rare event that experiments are performed, the goal is generally to determine which method yields the best subjective results. The goal is never to determine the chemical changes in the food or what kind of scientific processes are happening behind the scenes.

And as such, you’re bound to run into tons of situations like this.

Another situation (and the one that made me think of this) that might be more relevant to people is picking stocks in the market.

The vast majority of people are terrible at it, and will consistently underperform the overall market.

Funny enough, my understanding is that trained stock brokers actually do even worse on average than the average layperson.

But consider this: they presumably understand market forces much better. They can value a company and justify the decision to buy or sell a given stock, and the justification is likely accurate.

And yet they do worse than someone who knows nothing.

Based on this, I would posit that someone’s reasoning for picking stocks really shouldn’t matter at all. Only their results matter.

If you were using a monkey to choose which stocks to buy, I would also follow the monkey’s advice if he was consistently right.

I’m being a little facetious there but the point stands. If I had a crazy cousin who had some nonsensical formula for picking stocks and he was consistently returning 30% returns with this formula: I’d follow his formula. Even if it didn’t seem to make any sense, it might tap into something that actually has predictive value, if only by accident.

I think the important lesson to learn here is that things might work – and work well – but still be completely wrong in their premise. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them.

It doesn’t even necessarily mean you need to understand the real explanation. Sometimes you just gotta go with it.

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Update on Yearly Goals and New Habit Relating to Sleeping

I just reviewed my post about my goals for the year and wanted to give an update on my progress for that.

I’ve made lots of meaningful progress towards many of the goals and I would say that a lot of them are very much doable still. I don’t think any are impossible and few are unlikely. It’s nice to see that they are coming along.

Here is some specific progress relating to specific goals:

  • I haven’t initiated any deals to buy other companies yet, but I’ve had some nibbles, and I’ve made incredible progress towards attracting more of them
  • I haven’t reviewed business profit so far but I suspect we are more profitable than ever
  • I am well within my goal of limiting myself to 30 hours per week of work
  • My photos site is coming along nicely, and it’s entirely possible I’ll have 10 sales by the end of the year
  • Haven’t had any alcohol since I made the goals and shouldn’t have any trouble making it to next year
  • I need to make plans to camp overnight on a river island
  • I’ve been disc golfing a lot, though I haven’t come too close to an Ace yet
  • I may or may not join a rock climbing gym, we’ll see
  • I’ve biked a bit

So overall, good progress. Especially since I wrote that at the end of April and haven’t had that much time to actually get these things done. I finished tons of major projects at home here already. They weren’t “goals” for the year but they still had to get done, and now I should have more time to put towards other things.

Finally, I’d like to formally change the habit I’m working on. I’ve done an excellent job (100% success, I believe) of waking up at 7:30am and not snoozing my alarm.

However, I’m still struggling to develop my own circadian rhythm. And I think one of the biggest parts of that is that I’m doing lots of other things in bed, including not getting up right away and instead using my phone for quite a while.

For the most part, it’s to study, but I think it’s still probably a big problem.

To start with, I’m going to try to establish a new habit of physically getting up within 5 minutes of being awake, starting the day, and not returning to bed at all.

This will require studying elsewhere, which is fine.

I’m hoping that will help quite a bit. I want to generally not use my bed for anything else until I go to bed, but I don’t want to make that a hard rule until I’ve established the morning one first. I generally read in my bed and I think it would be better if I did that somewhere else.

Either way, we’ll start here and then move on once it’s established.

Down the road I could also consider mandating that I go outside and get some light first thing, never use my bed except for sleeping, and perhaps even establish a hard bed time.

But I’ve been getting closer and closer to fixing my sleep and I just need to continue one step at a time.

 

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Historically, Things like Hunger and Fear Moved us to Action, but not Anymore

During the vast majority of the time that humans were evolving, we were motivated to action by strong biological desires like hunger, fear, or sex.

But in modern society, we are generally comfortable. While sex may still be very motivating for people, hunger and fear rarely are feelings that cause us to act.

And I don’t mean: you feel hungry so you go to the refrigerator and grab something to eat.

I mean: you had concerns about your ability to secure food for yourself for the whole year, and that motivates you to work tirelessly, 365 days a year until you die, to do everything you can to secure food.

Nearly all of your actions were based around just a few basic needs.

And we simply don’t have that anymore. You barely have to do anything to survive and meet those needs.

So now we’re operating on a completely alien system of motivation. We’re forced to think about what we really want in life and make complicated decisions about how to meet long-term goals.

And, more to my original thought and point of this article: in the short term, there is almost nothing motivating you to action.

I have no intense biological needs that are in danger of not being met anytime soon.

So how exactly do I motivate myself to do… Anything?

Animals behave almost entirely on instinct and in response to their needs. Everything is very low-level and they basically do what feels right at every given moment.

But for us humans, we’ve created a world in which almost every action we take has to be guided by higher-level thinking that’s generally not tied to basic needs like food and safety.

To some degree, it’s wholly unnatural.

Sure, we do use stand-ins for our basic needs and let those motivate us. For example, sex appeal is used to sell everything from cars to vacations to kitchen appliances.

You can motivate people at a fundamental, animalistic level by tapping into their biological desire for sex. But of course you’re not giving them sex, you’re selling them a product.

Obviously money tends to be pretty motivating to people, too. And I think it tends to be a stand-in for basically all biological needs: hunger, safety, sex, shelter, everything.

It’s almost an avatar of our base needs that have guided our actions for millions of years. We’ve replaced those needs with a need for money.

While that’s motivating, I’m not sure it’s as motivating as a true need for food, for example.

And so it makes sense that for most people, once they’ve reached a level of stability and comfort in their lives, they essentially stop trying at anything.

Why would they? Our evolution hasn’t prepared us for that type of situation. Once you’re there, there is no script. You are not biologically motivated to do anything else.

And so they do nothing.

Obviously I could get deep into philosophy and psychology here, and there’s not going to be any concrete takeaways.

But I almost think that you have to somehow rewire your brain and treat your goals like needs, in the same way that food would be to a nomadic hunter-gatherer 2 million years ago.

I have noticed that compared to most people around my age, my level of motivation to improve and my general ambition and effort in accordance with that ambition is very high. And it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why that is.

If I could figure out the reason, maybe I could double-down on it and really supercharge it. Obviously I don’t want to become anxious, restless, or unsatisfied with my life, but I do want to maximize my motivation and energy which I can put towards advancing my goals.

I think I’m just going to have to keep pondering that until I come up with a satisfactory answer. Right now I’m not sure.

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The Right People Keep You On Track

I was going to give this post a much more descriptive and specific title, but I think this one actually captures the essence of what I’m about to say more clearly and, perhaps, accurately.

First, I’ll explain my initial thought.

I’ve come to believe that using any substance or activity that floods you with dopamine, whether that be alcohol, cannabis, TikTok, Instagram, or anything else, leaves you depleted of the dopamine you would otherwise need to pursue activities and objectives.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about my times going up to lake cabins in the summer. I always go with hopes that I’ll have tons of energy and do every activity available to me like kayaking, swimming, tubing, whatever.

As I’ve outlined in other posts, I’ve noticed in recent years that the energy and enthusiasm I’ve had for those things has been dwindling. One thing that’s been consistent over time is that these types of activities tend to come with more overall drinking that normal. Perhaps not all at once, but having White Claws throughout the day is quite common.

However, to the point of this post: I feel like the right people will sort of force you to do things. Even if you don’t have the energy to suggest it and make it happen, as long as somebody does, they’ll often convince you to do it.

And so even at times when perhaps I had been drinking more than usual, I still did more activities because somebody else convinced me to do it.

But in the last several years, more often the people who would have done that for me were in the same boat (literally and figuratively). As a result, we kind of just… Don’t do anything.

And that’s a shame.

The solution is probably for at least one person, me for now, to be the one who’s not drinking or doing anything else and sort of lead everyone.

But that’s not the main point here.

Having the right people around who are going to motivate you and keep you on track with a schedule and moving towards some kind of goal is extremely beneficial.

In my examples, I’ve highlighted how this is the case for leisure activities when on vacation. But I suspect it applies to so much more.

They say that having a strong group of close friends is one of the greatest predictors of success in life.

One of the main reasons could be that when you are struggling (in any way), they’ll help you through it and keep you on track.

Maybe you’re having a tough time with something. Your friends may encourage you to take the steps needed to keep your life going and even get back on track.

If you’re totally alone, it would be much easier to simply give up and not do anything to improve.

So I guess the main conclusion here is to keep the right people around who are going to support you, motivate you, and keep you on track.

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My Interests are Changing Drastically & I’m Not Sure how to Handle It

It sort of dawned on me recently that my enjoyment of some of my old hobbies or interests has decreased substantially.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy anything; on the contrary. Some of my old activities I still find very enjoyable and I think I’m finding new ones to be enjoyable, too.

But it’s still sort of a weird feeling.

As an example: I purchased a new graphics card because I’ve always wanted to have a good one and play some video games that actually use it and have stunning graphics.

But I’m playing some of these games and I don’t know that I care that much. It’s hard for me to get into them. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that they are new and there’s lots to learn, or if I just am not interested in that sort of thing anymore.

I am much more interested in active, physical activities though. Playing disc golf, hiking, biking, etc. are all things that I’m very interested in.

Also, most things I’m interested in now are social. Even with gaming, I’ve tried to keep that as a social activity and I do enjoy that aspect of it.

I’ve also come to enjoy reading more. Perhaps because I’ve started actually reading fiction, and mostly in Spanish which feels very rewarding.

But the idea of binge-watching a show is not that appealing to me, but staying in and reading is.

And actually that’s one of the big categories that has appealed to me less-and-less: entertainment like movies and TV. I don’t know, they just don’t have that appeal to me anymore. I try to get into them but I’m almost always disappointed, even when watching movies I know I like.

I think it’s all… Fine though. The things I am liking more of are things that are all healthy for me and benefit both my happiness and long-term health, both mental and physical.

The things I’m losing interest in… Don’t.

So it all seems kind of strange and new, but I guess I should really just embrace it because it’s all good.

I’m not sure how much of it is just me getting older, or possibly it’s coming along with all the other healthy things I’ve been doing like sleeping better, eating right, not drinking, etc.

It’s hard to say, but it will be interesting to see how it changes going forward.

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Watching Spanish Content Makes me Feel Better than Other Stuff

I’ve noticed that I feel a lot better watching content in Spanish vs. watching random, time-wasting content on YouTube.

Now, this may not really be all that deep. Watching Spanish content feels productive and challenging.

Watching YouTube… Is typically not.

But I think it’s worth noting that watching things in Spanish can also be extremely entertaining. There’s nothing stopping me from watching my favorite shows and content in Spanish.

So I think it’s really important to stick to watching things in Spanish and not get sucked into wasting time watching pointless videos on YouTube.

Not much more to my post today. I think the main lesson is just that I really need to focus, always, on productive activities. I can’t be wasting time on mindless entertainment.

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The Bizarre Context and Mindset Shift After Returning from Abroad

I’m not sure how much detail I’ve gone into about this in the past, but I just want to talk about one of the weirdest phenomena I’ve ever experienced.

When I live for awhile in another country, my goal is to sort of develop my own life there. And it works.

After 2-3 months, I have a whole routine. I have a gym, I have a grocery store, I have friends and people that I see regularly.

I have my own problems.

And then the moment I step through door of my house, everything completely changes.

It’s not like my experience when I first arrive somewhere outside the US, which as noted before is characterized by a period of tumultuous acclimation.

Instead, the bizarre part is that you basically open your eyes and find yourself in a state of relaxed comfort. Your problems and concerns are entirely different than they were yesterday, but there’s a broken-in familiarity to it.

It’s that lack of transition and tumult that is actually what is jarring. It’s like you’re in an episode of Black Mirror and you don’t have control over yourself. There’s a part of you in the background screaming, “why are we so okay with all this?!”

It is not inherently a problem, but it is unsettling.

Part of it may be that if we slip right back into our old life, what was the point of everything else? If we can completely disregard the people, places, and problems of our other life, are they even meaningful?

And of course they are, but therein lies the issue. They are important, so why are we simply moving on without them?

Maybe I find it a bit unsettling because it sort of feels like I’m towing all of those people and experiences in a boat behind me and simply cutting the line. And in that sense, it feels sort of like a loss. A loss of a life I once had, of relationships I once had.

So then… Why aren’t I mourning that loss?

Maybe that question is what really bothers me. It isn’t that any of it happened, it’s that I don’t seem upset.

And I’m not quite sure how to deal with that.