Category: Psychology

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I Need to Adopt a Pragmatic Approach to Everything

This feels very obvious but I don’t think I’ve really been living it: I need to adopt a pragmatic approach to everything.

I’ve posted many times about my idealism in the past and how I tend to think I’m going to be able to just brute-force my way through problems and achieve a level of perfection that will solve all my problems.

And that obviously isn’t a good strategy.

The only viable strategy is pragmatism.

It’s fine to want to improve, work towards goals, and imagine a future where we are better in certain ways.

But in the present, we need to be completely honest and realistic about ourselves, our opportunities, and our weaknesses.

Because none of those things change over night. If I’m weak against something now, I’m likely to continue being weak against it in the future.

The path the leads to success will take into account all pieces of information and make decisions based on that. Because why wouldn’t it?

Idealism simply ignores some data and replaces it with what you wish things were like.

Pragmatism is iterative, too. You can try something based on what you know, and alter your approach based on how that went. As you learn more, you can improve what works.

So here’s a concrete example of this.

I’m currently not drinking at all. Productivity is way up and lots of other things are greatly improved.

This is highly pragmatic. It recognizes that there are downsides to drinking and that it has very real consequences, and also that it’s difficult to just drink a small amount.

The idealistic side of me has always said, “I can limit it to weekends and it won’t affect me in the week” or, “even if I’m low on energy I’ll just power through it and it won’t affect me”.

They are idealistic and unrealistic ideas.

Whether or not I’ll one day be able to find a happy middle ground remains to be seen, but the fact remains that I definitely AM more productive now, and it is highly pragmatic and effective to give up drinking in an effort to be more successful.

But I can think of some other things that this applies to as well. Here are some of the top of my head:

  • I’m not effective on low sleep, and it’s generally better to sleep late than to try to power through the tiredness
  • I’m not motivated to work or be productive at night
  • Looking to others for help in areas where I’m lacking is probably much more beneficial and rapid than trying to do everything myself

I need to simply give up my idealism and focus on being pragmatic in all areas.

Most importantly, this means acknowledging my own weaknesses and consistent failings and altering my approach accordingly.

My goal now is to just be more aware of times when I’m being too idealistic and take a step back to figure out what I should really be doing. And perhaps writing about it there!

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Any Anxiety Makes me feel Insecure and Tends to Snowball

I realized today as I was procrastinating and feeling a little insecure about women that even small increases in general anxiety tend to make me feel insecure about unrelated things, procrastinate, and then cause additional problems that lead to more anxiety.

It’s a vicious cycle.

What was I anxious about today?

I had a large to-do list that was way behind schedule due to a morning that didn’t go as I had planned. Time was passing and the prospect of completing my to-do list became less and less appealing to me.

And when that happens, I start getting anxious. And that starts to cause more problems. I procrastinate more and then just don’t get anything done.

I’ve generally been good about totally resetting each morning in that case, so it doesn’t get too out-of-hand. I restart my whole to-do and go from there, leaving the lost day in the past.

But there’s still that lost day.

In the past, I think after one of these days I would start to be super primed for a night of letting loose and drinking. This is, after all, a situation in which alcohol shines. It allows you to easily forget about your current problems and anxiety for a while and enjoy the moment.

Of course everything comes back worse once you’re sober again, but in the meantime it can be quite appealing.

But I’m not drinking now. So you know what I did instead?

I buckled down and powered through (almost) all of the to-do. And I feel much better now and can relax without that specter hanging over me.

I’d argue it’s because I’ve been sober for a while. I can much more easily control these situations and recover them without having big ups and downs.

It’s a Friday evening and I’ll now be able to relax and enjoy myself without drinking, which is nice.

I think the lessons from this are twofold: first, that not drinking leads to greatly improved productivity, resilience, and stability. And the second is that I need to always be aware of how I’m feeling and what’s going on, and if I start slipping off-track and doing things that will lead to greater anxiety, I need to make a conscious effort to get back on-track.

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Failure of Empathy

One of the most puzzling parts of learning a language is the intense feeling that if you can understand somebody, so can everybody else.

So if I’m with a friend that doesn’t speak English, and somebody speaks to me in Spanish and I understand them without any trouble, it feels like the person with me should also be able to understand it.

You start to rationalize this belief, too. You think things like, “well, the vocab this person used was pretty basic so anyone who took one Spanish class would understand” or “those are common words so I’ll bet the understand”.

When you think about it, you realize it’s obviously not true. There’s no way somebody without any Spanish training is understanding as well as me, someone who has spent thousands of hours with the language.

And yet it requires conscious effort to internalize the fact that they cannot understand as well as you can. Or probably at all.

And it sort of just feels like a total failure of empathy.

If I used empathy more in this situation, I should be able to understand, on all levels, that this person cannot understand even though I can.

The experiences, abilities, and understanding of every other person on the planet are completely different than my own, and I think it’s easy to lose track of that.

But it makes me think: in similar situations, but where you can more reasonably rationalize your sentiment, wouldn’t you genuinely believe that the other person should have an experience much more similar to your own?

I find that in my work, I’m often impatient with clients who struggle to understand something related to their website that to me, is clear as day.

It’s easy for me to rationalize. “This doesn’t require any special skills,” or “there aren’t very many steps and it isn’t complicated”.

But at the same time, it’s something that’s easy to me because I’ve spent a long time doing it.

I think there are situations like this almost everywhere, and I’m confident that I’m not the only one experiencing this.

I can certainly think of countless times where a family member or friend was really impatient with me in some task where they couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing it as well as them. Despite, often, it being a task that I was brand new to or had some other obvious disadvantage.

I think we develop ideas of the world around us and as we interact with it, we come to an understanding about how things are.

It’s easy to believe that this understanding is universal and that it applies to everyone. But it’s not. How we perceive the world and understand it may, indeed, be relevant to our own lives and selves, but it may be the complete opposite for someone else.

I think this comes up all the time when you look at groups that are often discriminated against.

If you aren’t in one of those groups, it’s so easy to dismiss their grievances and assume that they aren’t a big deal. Even if you acknowledge some of the specific forms of discrimination they face, you still cannot possibly understand what it feels like to face it day after day.

You can try, but you’ll never truly understand.

I think there are instances of this type of thing everywhere, and I know that I do it all the time.

I find myself unintentionally judging others for their choices and do not spend enough time reflecting on that and using empathy to understand that their values, experiences, and understand of the world vary wildly from my own.

They probably judge most of my choices.

The solution, I think, is to develop more empathy and really put it to work. Hopefully I can keep that in mind and do it much more going forward.

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Some Recent Wins

I’ve mentioned before that not every post here has to be ground-breaking and deeply profound. Sometimes it can just be an update of how things are going!

Today I had some solid wins that show I’m moving in the right direction and that things are generally going well.

First, I had a qualified seller reach out to me from my website that is interested in selling the hosting portion of his operations. It looks like a great potential seller and we’re speaking tomorrow.

But the best part is that he found me online. All of my marketing efforts lately have gone towards attracting exactly this type of person, and it sounds like they are paying off.

In fact, just today I posted a new article that I’ve been working on related to this topic.

Perhaps because I posted that and just an hour or two later I heard from this new seller, it really felt like I earned it. Like I’ve been doing the right things and am being rewarded for them.

Because this is really my long-term strategy and it’s still a bit unproven, it’s really great to see it start to pay off. I hope to continue working hard on expanding my web presence in this area and, hopefully, attracting tons of sellers like this.

The other thing that happened today was that I approved a great candidate for renting my vacant room. Everything looked great for him, and I think he’ll be an excellent renter.

This obviously is less ground-breaking, but it’s fairly important for my goals (for now anyway) that I have both rooms rented, and it’s great to finally have someone after months of searching.

From a day-to-day financial point of view, it just makes my life a ton easier. I don’t have to take nearly as many distributions, and it ends up being much easier to invest more.

I also recently hit a new personal record with weight training, which has been going extremely well.

Sleep has been going well. I’ve been able to wake up without using snooze every morning for quite some time now. I may even be able to finally move on to another habit!

I finally set up my system for tracking initiatives, which is going well. It has helped me concentrate on things I’m trying to get done, and actually make progress in them. It’s what has helped me proceed with attracting new website hosts.

As discussed at length, I gave up drinking a while back as part of a year-long experiment. That’s been going great overall. Life is, perhaps, less exciting, but boy is it more productive (and easier in general).

I’ve been able to almost entirely eliminate social media and other time-wasters from my life. I’ve also kept up quite well with avoiding the daily news.

I’ve finally started watching Spanish language television instead of just YouTube videos, and honestly I think the benefits are immediate and tremendous. I now feel frustrated that I hadn’t been doing it all this time.

I’ve been reading more than ever, and exclusively in Spanish. I’m blasting through the end of Harry Potter and it’s exciting to see how much easier it gets over time. I’m looking forward to moving on to other books.

I’ve also been keeping up with my other studies and vocabulary, and have basically not missed a day in quite some time.

Not everything has gone perfectly, and it’s also easy for me to feel like I’m doing a bad job at things.

Honestly, after writing this blog post, my biggest take away from writing this post is that I need to do these more often. I would have said that I’m struggling quite a bit before writing it. But I’m really not.

I probably haven’t put enough effort into meeting new people here in Buenos Aires, and so I’ve been a bit of a hermit, which feels like a waste of being here. But then again, I’ve been pretty productive and things have been going well.

I just need to keep up what I’m doing, because it’s actually working well.

 

 

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The Need for a Constant Joke in the Friend Group Hinders Real, Meaningful Conversation

I’ve got a close group of male friends and we keep in touch pretty closely, primarily via a WhatsApp group thread.

It can be a pretty entertaining place, but I’ve long since realized that the constant need for joking really does impede serious discourse.

It’s interesting how this type of long-term conversation can develop its own tone and even culture. There are things you can and should say, and things you can’t.

It’s not a good place to go to others for genuine help or even to plan things. The reaction to just about anything can only be described as “comedic hostile nihilism”.

That’s really the tone of the group in general, I would say.

One of my friends recently asked me about an event we might both be interested in, and he said he’d pitch the idea to the group. I warned him not to, that it’s where plans go to die.

He did it anyway, and was met with with exactly the type of response I expected.

Although, tellingly, at least one person reached out to him in private and actually said he wanted to go. This same person mocked the idea in the other thread.

That’s just what you do in the thread. You don’t demonstrate real interest in anything, you don’t show real feelings, and you turn everything into a joke.

One could argue it’s a microcosm of feigned toxic masculinity. Everyone presents a caricature of themselves. It’s parody and satire that’s gone on so long that it’s difficult to separate the actual people from their comments.

I’m not sure what the solution is or if there even needs to be a solution.

Is this just what the group dynamics of men in their mid-30s still clinging to the same friends looks like?

You could also argue that it hinders real growth, although it’s fascinating how different any of these guys is when speaking with them directly or in person. It’s almost as if this thread is a place for us to wallow in our old selves without any need for self-reflection, self-awareness, or growth.

Again, I’m not sure if it’s something that really needs to be “fixed” but it’s definitely an interesting case study.

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The Daily News is Designed to Make You Hyper-Partisan

One of the nice things I’ve noticed from not following the daily news (in addition to the countless other benefits) is that I feel less partisan.

My understanding is that it is a well-documented fact that the media has evolved with the internet over the last few decades into a format that caters towards those with pre-existing biases and serves to amplify them.

It slowly turns everyone into a hyper-partisan monster.

Everyone slowly grows to hate “the other side” and thinks that everything on their side is right and everything on the other side is wrong.

In my view, that’s not simply unproductive, it’s also completely wrong.

It also makes people stop thinking. If you become so partisan that you become an ideologue that blindly follows your side, you stop critically thinking. You stop acknowledging that they might be wrong, and that the other side could be right.

My understanding is also that in the past, before the internet (and particularly before Nixon, Reagan, and Roger Stone), people were far less partisan and tended to follow issues much more closely and actually questioned things from their own side.

If people had more of that, the world would be a lot better off.

So for the point of this post, I’ve noticed that when I’m not inundated with the same ideas over and over again, day after day, I am far more receptive to other ideas.

At the very least, I tend not to take things at face value and actually put thought into things. I don’t just believe them because someone on my side said it.

In addition to just feeling way better about literally everything, this has been a really nice side-effect of not following the daily news.

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I Don’t Really Daydream or Fantasize Vividly Anymore

I rather sad thought crossed my mind yesterday, and it was that I no longer seem to daydream or fantasize about things vividly anymore.

It’s as if my once vibrant and powerful imagination has since gone.

Obviously I continue imagining hypothetical situations and have some kind of picture in my head but it’s not the same as it was. There’s a sense that the scenes aren’t filled out. I don’t feel as immersed in the fantasy.

I’m not sure what could cause that. Is it just a normal part of growing older? Have a started taking the world too seriously as a result of my high-power corporate job and need to learn to connect with my inner child like in a 90s movie?

I’m not exactly sure!

I feel like it has other implications, though.

I feel like if I can’t put together a vivid fantasy, I probably also can’t allow myself to become truly immersed in a movie, in music, or even in an experience with others.

And that… Tracks. It seems like that’s accurate. The extent to which I can truly become fully immersed in things has definitely diminished, particularly with entertainment. Perhaps less so with in-person interactions but it does feel like maybe I’m a  bit less present.

Maybe I should put some effort towards fixing all of this.

Maybe I should work hard to imagine scenes and environments that are as vivid and detailed as possible. Or maybe I should pick up meditation and see if that helps.

I’m not totally sure if there’s a real problem here or not, it’s just something I noticed and figured I should think more about.

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The Things I Like, I’m Appreciating More while my Indifference Towards Everything Else Grows

This is sort of a difficult concept to articulate, but lately I’ve been feeling like, in general, I’m enjoying most forms of entertainment less and less. And up until very recently, I had thought that this was across the board.

I have a future blog post pending called “I’m asking too much of entertainment like movies” which will go over many similar topics, but I think this is still distinct.

What I’ve realized lately is that actually, I still really appreciate the things I love. It’s just the stuff that I don’t really care about that I’m enjoying less and less.

It’s a similar concept to how I feel consuming THC makes you feel. It’s easy to believe that it will simply make anything better. You’d think it would lower your threshold of quality so that you can enjoy anything.

But in my experience, it doesn’t at all. It only enhances things you would have enjoyed anyway.

I have a specific example of this recently. I went and saw Avatar 2 when it first came out, and I thought it would be a good experience after taking an edible.

But I found I didn’t enjoy it. I felt like there was barely a plot, that it went on too long, and that there just wasn’t any thread to pull you through and keep you interested.

It was beautiful, of course, but I thought the story was just terrible.

I thought maybe I was just too high to follow it, which of course is a reasonable thought. So I decided to go see it again totally sober.

And my conclusion was exactly the same. I was right the first time.

Much like when consuming THC, as time goes, on, things that I think are bad are becoming less and less enjoyable.

But today I watched an episode of Entourage and had an epiphany that actually I am really enjoying it. Obviously I could write a whole other post about the merits (or lack thereof) of this particular show, but the fact remains that I enjoy it deeply.

I also just saw the movie “Hustle” shortly after Avatar 2 for the second time, and I was surprised at just how much more I enjoyed it. It actually has a proper story arc and is generally… Good.

I just don’t have the patience for poorly-written things anymore.

So while I’ve determined I just can’t watch terrible things anymore, that doesn’t mean I can’t deeply enjoy quality content. I just need to be much more discerning in what I watch.

I think this might just be part of getting older. Possibly I just value my time a lot more now, I’m not sure.

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Thoughts About a Potential Improvement System

I just happened to read my post about how a weight training system helped me quite a bit and then mused that I should have something similar for improvements in my business and personally. Then I read the following post which had more ideas about what I could put together.

And those were both way back in 2020 and I haven’t done anything yet.

Well, while I was reading I had some ideas. What if I put together some sort of end-of-day (or maybe start-of-day?) ranking system that lists all of my current initiatives and then I rate myself on how I’m doing on them.

Perhaps weekly, I could remove things that are no longer important initiatives.

And that’s it, that would be the system.

Why would this work?

First, it would keep things very simple. I don’t like the idea of a clumsy, complicated system that’s a lot of work to manage.

But what would make it effective would be the following:

  1. It would keep all important initiatives top-of-mind
  2. It would help me track how they are going over time
  3. It would motivate me to actually make progress so that I can put good numbers down

The last one is probably the most important. This has worked with my daily survey I fill out personally, because every time I put down bad numbers I feel guilty or ashamed, and every time I put down good numbers I feel accomplished.

It motivates me to get those good numbers.

So what would I put on this list?

It would be things like new habits I’m trying to develop, long-term efforts like trying to find and purchase other website hosting companies or setting up my fine art photography website, and possibly short-term projects as well.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the perfect time to respond to this daily questionnaire would be when I’m putting together my to-do list for the day. This happens almost every single day, usually late in the morning.

I think I would phrase the question like, “How do you think you performed  yesterday with regard to the following projects:” and then it would list each of them on a 1-10 scale.

If I didn’t do any work at all on a project, that’s a 1. If I did minimal, maybe higher.

Or for a habit, if I failed at it completely, that’s a 1. I suppose if I did it but it wasn’t great, that’s a… 5 or 6. If it was fully engrained and went perfectly, that’s a 10.

I think this could actually work quite nicely. I just need to decide how I want to do it. I use Google forms for my other questionnaire but I don’t love it. It could get a little weird over time as I’m adding and removing initiatives, too.

But, I think it’s worth a shot at least to start. I’ll make a note to start it up in a couple weeks when I’m back from Mendoza and we’ll see how it goes.

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On the Yearly Cycle Children Experience

I’ve been reading the Harry Potter books (in Spanish, for practice) and today I started thinking about how different one important aspect of children’s lives is.

From year to year, basically everything is different.

They go through this yearly cycle where they go back to school, have new teachers, have different kids in their class, focus on learning a specific set of things, and generally have a stable life.

And then the next year, it might all be completely different.

To a child, that’s all they know so they wouldn’t really question it. But to an adult, it’s quite intriguing.

There are, of course, pros and cons.

One pro that I first considered (and which, I suppose, figures prominently in Harry Potter), is that if things are really bad, you just tell yourself that it’s only for this one year, and then it will be over.

It gives you hope to know that a really difficult situation definitely has a shelf life and that no matter how hard it is now, it will be over within a predetermined timeframe.

And that, of course, is rarely how anything works as an adult. Most difficult situations are difficult to forecast. Maybe they get better soon, maybe they don’t.

Perhaps they last forever.

This applies to good things as well. For a child, perhaps part of why they are more inclined to live in the moment and truly enjoy their experiences is because they know they won’t last. But they are still confident that they’ll have plenty of new, great experiences even if the old ones end.

Life as an adult is characterized much more stability. For most people, most years, life doesn’t change much from one year to the next. You hope it will get better, but you still generally have the same job, same friends, same living situation, same hobbies and activities.

Obviously things do change but it’s absolutely nothing like it is for a child.

I think maybe I’m naturally resistant to the stability adulthood brings. I’ve always hated recurring events and obligations and have always been drawn to the unknown and new situations.

It would make sense, then, that much of my adult life (since I’ve reached a level of flexibility that allows me to do what I like, anyway) is characterized by wandering off to other countries and continents alone, to cities I don’t know.

The idea that I’ll keep doing exactly what I’m doing no – no matter what that is – has always been unappealing and even a bit depressing to me.

While I’m very confident that I’m enjoying my adulthood more than I enjoyed childhood (I hated structure and being told what to do, so childhood was not ideal), I felt myself drawn today to the idea that every year would be completely different. It’s exciting to me.

So now I’m wondering if there’s something I can and should do with this idea.

I think I need to be totally open to new experiences and ideas, and explore opportunities as they come along.

An outside observer might say that I am absolutely already doing that, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

But I think I should also be pursuing other professional options and ideas. At one point I scoffed at the idea of “side hustles” and splitting my time between many professional pursuits (in favor of working harder at one thing), I’m thinking now that I really need to be open to pursuing other ideas and things that come up.

I think any sacrosanct ideas or beliefs that I’m holding on to should be open to questioning.

And I think I need to make a strong effort to ensure that each year is quite different than the previous.

Maybe that even means getting really into a new hobby each year, or working really hard at something new.

I’m planning to not really drink at all this year and that will likely help give me the time and energy to put towards new pursuits, and I should definitely take advantage of it.

Here’s to hoping that this year is the most different yet.