jack

Despite intermediate goals often being a tool to reach a final goal, I was recently noticing a lot of different cases in life when the reverse was true.

Exercise

This is the one that got me thinking. I realised that I used to really often have a problem that if I was running or something, and try to "run fast for a bit", I'd almost immediately run out of motivation to continue, not from immediate discomfort, but from feeling like "I won't be able to keep this up long enough to matter, it's not worth it". When I started exercising regularly, I started with something like Couch to 5k, and really really relied on having a set target for the session, which I did everything I could to meet. I didn't think of that as a "thing", just that exercise was hard to maintain. (And I DID experience positive feelings in my body, unlike some people!)

Since I've been treated for adhd and a bit less stressed out by doing something that feels important that I used to be bad at, I feel like I am more able to say things like "lets see if I can maintain this pace for another 2 minutes" or "lets adjust the target" according to what feels like it will be useful and follow through on them, without falling into reinforcing "I MUST hit my original target, I MUST" or falling into "oh it feels hard, I'll reduce the target"

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There was an article recently about how "eye-contact" was used to indicate turn taking in conversation, which led to a lot of reactions. But I didn't actually read it and I'm not sure how much it was talking about what I think of as "eye contact" (mutual face-looking however briefly) and how much it meant "looking at someone's face". And I realised I wasn't totally sure if I did that instinctively, or if I didn't do it at all.

I'm going to describe how I perceive things, and then ask people both neurodivergent and neurotypical what their experience is. And then maybe talk what else goes into who's turn it is. And some cultural differences.

Eye contact

I'm used to being aware of how much someone wants to speak, from cues like "shifting in their chair", "leaning forward", "having an expectant expression", up to and including "starting to talk and getting cut off" or (occasionally) asking for a chance to talk. And I think my brain has some magic neurotypical dust that does some sneaky cross-correlating with things like "did they do that when someone just said something they're likely to want to say something about" and "does it happen more than once" and just generally distinguishing miscellaneous shifting about or other expression changes from "wanting to speak".

My experience of... presumed normal people, is that these are all heuristics with a reasonable amount of flex in them. People misinterpret. People notice signs slowly. The "system" such as it is works when this communication *mostly* works it doesn't need to work reliably. Some people are particularly good at noticing. Some people can notice, but are bad at noticing, or bad at caring, or pessimistic that they'll actually be interested in what someone says.

So, my experience includes "being aware of someone's face cuing they might want to jump in and speak". But not a sort of mutual recognition, of "ok, message received". Now I describe this, I think this happens subconsciously: if someone looks to being paying attention to me and other people while they're talking, I'll subconsciously assume that they'll know if someone else wants to speak and be less concerned about it; and I will hopefully notice if someone is eager to speak, and subconsciously orient on them more to indicate "I'm interested in you shortly".

But I'm not sure that's what happens, because I think it's partly subconscious or automatic. And I think it works well enough without as long as people know each other well enough to expect they'll all get a chance to talk.

But now I'm saying all that, I'm really interested in what other people think. Does that sound right? Or does that sound like I've completely missed what everyone else does? Or somewhere between?

Other turn taking and cultural differences

What I described above is basically a lowest level handshake protocol for "who's turn to talk next". I think the biggest cultural difference is, some groups expect people to interrupt much sooner, like, as soon as you get the gist of a sentence, jump in to show support, and others much later, like, let someone develop several paragraphs and be sure they're done done before trying to interrupt

And there's also stuff like, who should speak next, which is going to be too long for this post. I think I'm average-ish at that. I do keep being confused, but I think that's because the actual protocol DOESN'T really work. And maybe a bit I don't notice status enough?

Opinions? Experiences? Observations?

Figuring out if your brain is "normal" or "functioning well" is notoriously finicky. I've been going through another large batch of introspection recently. "Too much introspection" may itself be a problem.

I'm adding the regular disclaimer -- I'm talking about how things *often* feel. The fact that I'm talking about it almost always means I feel *better* and am able to think about it. This isn't something that is new because I'm talking about, really it isn't, it's something I can see, only by contrast with having less of it. And, even by just mostly ignoring all these, I've still had a very good life -- if you know me well, please don't feel bad that this is sometimes there too.

ADD-like effects

There's SOMETHING. Lots of people have pointed this out. But what I'm not sure of is, is this a problem that I would benefit from fixing, or have lots of tea and coping strategies added up to a successfully functioning adult?

I'm counting "coping strategies" that take a lot of energy as "a problem" and coping strategies that don't take a lot of energy as "successfully functioning adult" FWIW.

Similarities:

* When I can't concentrate, I can't concentrate, it's like a wall, and after even a few seconds of trying, my attention skitters off to something else.
* Lots of caffeine seems to be good for me, and if anything help me sleep, not prevent me
* Very small distractions tend to very much derail my concentration

Differences:

* Problems concentrating don't seem to be when work is "boring" (that doesn't help, but it doesn't seem to be a big problem), but when if it seems like it isn't worthwhile or most commonly, if I don't know if it'll succeed, or I don't know what I'll do next. That seems really different to what most people describe as ADD-y problems.
* I've always had a big problems getting things done to deadlines. I would often absolutely freeze up and be unable to work, like I was terrified when there was no reason to be. But I never had the problems many people describe with schoolwork: "here's a long list of things, work your way through them steadily" was great, that's what I was best at!
* I talked about small distractions, and finding it hard to concentrate, but... those all apply to people sometimes. Most people find writing fiction hard to do! Most people get distractable and forget things when they're tired.

Depression

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I tried many, many different things to get more productive. None of them fixed everything, but many of them were useful.

Getting Things Done

Gettings Things Done by Dave Allen was about getting a handle on a mess of different todo lists you never actually do. The advice that worked I've mostly internalised so I can't easily remember what was actually in it, just stuff that seems normal now.

But what I really liked about it was that it gave you a compartmentalised network of different tools, and explained what purpose each was supposed to serve, so you could choose ones that worked for you and adapted ones that weren't quite right, and skip ones where you already did something else that worked.

I know some people respond better to "just trust me, do what this says and don't question why" but I always find it really hard to trust without knowing why.

Assorted tips from here. Keep a calendar! Having google calendar or similar means now that's easier for most people to do automatically, but if you need to remember to do things on specific days, calendar.

Have a filing cabinet. Or somewhere else where papers are *supposed* to go (scanned on a computer would also make sense). You can't tidy things when they don't have a place to go. It feels like you can, but you can't. It should be not overfull (I'm falling down on this nowadays), so that it's as easy to put bills etc straight into the filing cabinet as to "put them down somewhere to deal with later".

Do not succumb to the temptation to have a file for "important" things. File by subject. Don't worry too much about ambiguities, if it's under "HSBC" or "bank", you'll still find it really quickly as long as you're looking for one file out of twenty -- but don't have duplicate files where some of the content is in one and some in the other. It's much easier to find "six months ago, I got a letter from the bank" than "six months ago, would I have considered this 'important'"?

That's for everything which you need to keep. If you still need to pay it it's ok to have a pile of things you need to DO (although better to keep it in a filing cabinet and have a list of things to do instead). Indeed, he advocates having an "inbox" of stuff, which you deal with now and move into long term storage. I need to resurrect this, I fell off the bandwagon.

Do not succumb to the temptation to put in your calendar or todo list things which you HOPE to work on today. Be clear what you HAVE to do today, because the deadline's today, and have a separate list of things you INTEND to work on today.

Diary

Inspired by some of Allen's advice, but later on, I started keeping a diary, a text file, a mix of "what I did today" and "todos for today/the week". Keeping that all in a single file really really helped keep spiralling todo lists out of control, even as I repeatedly declared bankruptcy and started over.

And at some point Ghoti introduced me to bullet journals and bought me fancy erasable japanese biros, and I incorporated a lot of the bullet journal techniques into my diary, and I really loved using the pens for quite a few things, even though "making todo list pretty" didn't work for me the way it did for many people.

Beeminder

Beeminder is a website built around committing to specific goals. The actual idea is rather weird -- instead of a paid subscription, you commit money to pay if you fail your pledge, which you can have go up in a fibonnci-sequence like rise. I avoided that side of the site entirely -- I knew the pressure would make me worse not better, and it's specifically designed for goals where you commit to an average of X, no matter what, which wasn't always what I wanted. But the admins were ever so helpful (Thank you Daniel et al!)

This is finally what started my gym habit. I resolved for twice a week, and doing extras when I could, and to start with I was often doing it on the last day I could when I *had* to do it, although now it's just a part of my usual routine.

I've used beeminder for a few other goals too, when the "ALERT ALERT YOU'RE GOING TO FAIL IF YOU DON'T DO THIS IN THE NEXT TWO DAYS! NEXT ONE DAY! RIGHT NOW!" effect is what I need to keep myself honest.

And recently I've adopted another app, currently Habits by Loop Habit Tracker, for day to day habits where I don't want to be pressured when I don't have time but I do want a helpful guide to "I have five minutes, can I remember to tidy up/do duolingo/etc" which has been useful.

Pomodoros

The name is embarrassingly "hip", but the idea is simple and good, of setting a timer -- traditionally 25 minutes -- where you work on something specific. I've done this occasionally, but it's very useful for most people where a little bit of guidance getting into the flow on a task helps.

I would like to do this more but it veer between "don't need it" and "I have a more fundamental problem it doesn't help with" so I only sometimes use it, but it's a really good one to try. Many people have online chat rooms where they set a timer, and having other people with you virtually really helps.

I used them for slightly different reason. When I had tasks to do that I was so scared of I was actually shaking, and even when I'd got all of my procrastination excuses out of the way and was staring at a computer trying to do them, setting a timer for five minutes, or twenty five minutes, and trying to do, well, even thirty seconds of work in that time, broke me out of being completely stuck.

In retrospect, I wish I'd thought to see if someone else would help me with the tasks I was most blocked on, but that didn't seem appropriate (partly, several were financial, and partly, I didn't want to make anyone feel responsible for it as an ongoing thing) and I didn't have the awareness to realise it might have been better to do that anyway. Anyway, I got through it.

I don't recommend this as a technique, but when I used to be blocked like this, it often used to involve staying up late (or staying at work late) not so much until I finished, but until I started...

Procrastination root causes

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ty2tjPwv8uyPK9vrz/my-algorithm-for-beating-procrastination

Someone on less wrong message board wrote an essay which really resonated with me at the time, of diagnosing the root cause of individual cases of procrastination. Like, if you're hesitating over the task because you expect that you will fail it, or that the result will be one you don't want, recognising that and being realistic about your expectations can help more than forcing yourself to do it anyway.

If you're just finding the task itself unpleasant or boring, then little tricks like "do five rows, then take a break and do something nice for a minute, then repeat" can help a lot.

If the reward is very distant from the task itself, setting intermediate rewards can help. e.g. you need to hand this work in but it won't be marked for months, then try to work with someone and encourage each other, or give yourself a chocolate after.

This didn't turn out as useful for me as I'd hoped, because my problems tended to be much bigger (and the problem was obvious but not easy to fix) or much smaller (I didn't want to do this analysis for every little household chore), but I still think it was a useful way of thinking about it.

General principles

What lessons do I draw from that? Well, there's several examples above, but one big one, is don't overthink it looking for the perfect technique, MOST techniques help a lot just by providing some structure whether they're the best or not, and it's often easy to tweak them once you get a better idea what you need. So... just pick something promising and try it.

The ones that are most likely to be useful seem to be:

* Anything with other people providing mutual support and just being there so someone sees if you do it or not
* Anything providing a regular routine which can become a habit

Overall conclusions

If the coping technique works well enough, that can be a solution all by itself.

If you can keep on top of all the admin, but only if you use a clock for pomodoros, or if you work alongside someone else, or whatever, well, if there's no particular downside to that, then just keep doing that!

Most successful people have *ways* they work, they don't just magically work wonderfully by strength of will regardless of the situation.

Indeed, many successful people are super screwed up and do SOME things exceedingly well, while relying on other people picking up the slack for everything else (a spouse to do household admin, hiring employees to work the way that works for them and never working with people who need to work a different way, people who are good at work but crap at work politics, or people who are good at work politics but crap at useful work, etc)

Working in different circumstances when you need to is a skill it's worth developing, but it's not a threshold you need to count for what you get done to "count". (Just, if you completely fall to pieces without your coping strategy, be aware of that and know what to do if it happens, don't just pretend it isn't true.)

This didn't work for me that much, as I had lots of coping strategies which helped some amount, but still left me really struggling to get anything done. Indeed, now I've dealt with some of the serious issues, I find myself in a place a lot more like what other people described, picking up techniques to deal with what feel like normal levels of getting round to things.

Producing wordcount

Last month I did another NaNoWriMo month. I wasn't sure if I would, as I've been more wanting to work on techniques that work in shorter works, than in planning a whole novel, but idea that grabbed me was for a superhero novel I'd been doing bits on before that, so that's what I went with.

Details about the novel to follow, I won't try to force myself to cram all that into this post.

I set myself a more restrained goal, the same as last year, of about 30k, or whatever felt right. That was a good choice -- I can do a whole 50k nanowrimo when I push myself and did the first year, but it required using some time I was off work, and took my attention away from everything else a lot. And, it works when I have a good idea what I'm writing, but it was a real struggle to invent enough of the world and characters to keep up with what I could write.

In fact, this year, I came in slightly short of my original goal, but I'm fairly pleased with that. I feel like between the three years I got a good spread of what I could achieve pushing myself different amounts, and all of them have a place, and it's good to know that -- unlike how I used to be -- the alternative to "obsessive dedication" isn't "absolutely nothing got done" :)

That said, I think I would have benefited from being firmer about sticking to a daily word count target. I don't think I should have aimed for an average, as if I get behind I lose all my motivation, so trying to "catch up" to lost days when I wanted to pay attention to something else just wouldn't have worked, which is why I gave myself more latitude in the first place. But, despite (amazingly!) having cured myself of not starting *at all*, not having a specific target can translate to not getting very much done on a particular day. A specific goal would help with that, and I may try to do that more specifically in future: not every day necessarily, but decide something like a 1000 words "three weekday evenings and double at the weekends."

The other difficulty is that often I need to specifically come up with more plot to happen, and no amount of trying to write words helps, I need thinking time. But it's easy for that to turn into procrastination time. I think I need to find a level of outlining that works for me, and have a split target of "outline N lines, or write N words" or something like that.

Or maybe, deliberately feel out characterisation and worldbuilding choices by writing short vignettes which are NOT the novel, and then once it's more clear, try to do the actual writing at stronger pace. Lots of famous novels are mulled for years before they're written, and often "two novels a year" authors, while often really good, produce novels without the same depth as other novels of the same length.

Like, this blog post. I'm writing it about as fast as I can physically type it. But I don't usually write fiction like that, except for some scenes where I'm familiar with all the characters and what might happen and am just really excited to get to it actually happening.

Writing characters

Another big realisation was, if I have cool characters, ones I'm invested in, I'm excited to write. If I don't, then I'm not.

I never expected to do much creative stuff because as a child I found intellectual stuff easy and people hard, so I just always assumed I'd be an abstract-thought type person. I was pleasantly pleased to find that writing was a habit that DOES work for me.

But even so, I often had ideas for premises I found really interesting -- magic systems, virtual worlds, etc, and I just assumed I'd be like an old-school hard-sf writer who mostly wrote about physical sciences and didn't write about characters. But it doesn't turn out like that. I can write lots of worldbuilding, but actual prose tends to flow when I have characters, and even the worldbuilding is a lot better for looking from a point of view of "what's this like for people actually living in it?"

What parts of writing am I good at

Well, I don't want to over-egg the pudding here, I'm probably not as good at *any* parts of writing as people who are *good* at writing, but which tend to work out well for me?

As mentioned, premises -- people over-value premises as a good premise without a good execution doesn't bring much, whereas a good execution can shine without a good premise. But still, I think books with excellent premises benefit from it, and all my stories have a core idea which is really interesting when I describe what it's about, even without knowing about the content (at least to me, I often stumble describing it aloud).

And characters, I'm often giggling at the characters bouncing off each other, and I never expected that to be one of my strengths.

What about everything else. Poetic prose? Good plotting? I think those are things I can *do*, but aren't usually what drives readers to love them.

"Fun" ideas

I don't quite know how to describe this, but often I have an idea and think "that moment would be really cool" or "that cultural reference would be really funny there", but then can't tell if it looks sort of contrived.

Reading other people's writing, some moments stick out to me like that's what happened. It isn't always. I've heard people describing their process, and sometimes they built a scene around a payoff, adding all the necessary initial conditions to the scene that when I read it feels like it grew naturally out of what came before. And sometimes I hear an author talking about why they wrote "that line" and it was for some completely other reason than I guessed. But I think it is a common flaw, dropping in something that seems funny, trying to do slapstick in prose, or putting in a cultural reference that sticks out uncomfortably, or trying to do an emotional pay-off of character X telling character Y where to stick it that feels fake, because you liked it, and didn't realise or didn't let yourself realise it didn't stick.

Obviously this depends on taste. Sometimes it works for some people and doesn't work for others. Some things don't work but aren't cringe-worthy when they don't work, and some things really, really, are.

My philosophy has been, put it in (or at least put it in in square brackets), and then decide, LATER, whether it works or not, and if not, don't get hung up on taking it out. Rely on the scene to be good, don't stretch for that particular line.

At the time I'm writing it, I'm literally incapable of telling if it works or not.

Writing with people

I really like writing with people. But it's not actually an especially efficient way for me to write. Writing in a quiet room with mandated silence does help, but it mainly forces me to start and I've got a lot better at doing that anyway. And I find a lot of things, even just hearing people start and stop typing, quite distracting.

Meeting up with people with mandated quiet periods for working and short breaks for chatting would probably work well, but I'm quite content going along for a bit, filling up my encouragement and social meter, and heading home after a bit. And writing at home with people there is usually fine too.

And posting cryptic comments on twitter helps me a lot, for whatever reason! :) Although there hasn't been that much this month :)

Someone who often says worthwhile things on tumblr reposted a post that had a lot to say about people's tendency to respond to criticism with exaggerated self-hatred, and why that can be such a problem.

http://jenroses.tumblr.com/post/156829502321/auntbutch-redeyestakewxrning-auntbutch-if

Hopefully I'm not AS horrible as the people described, but this has often been a problem for me :(

But the post went on to describe how you SHOULD respond to criticism. Which I *sort of* knew, but I'd not actually seen written out like that, and realised I'd been missing... many parts.

(It's a sort of amazing freelance therapy judo to criticise people for refusing to hear criticism, and having them listen.)

In particular, that even if someone makes a serious criticism, it's ok, or often helpful, to ask for or take time to fully process it.

Which seems... like usually a very good idea?

But in the quest for exaggerated self-criticism, I think my brain had latched on to the idea of immediate self-flagellation, and appropriate several otherwise-wise exhortations to support it. Something like, "if you hurt someone, it's up to THEM to know how much harm is inflicted, not you, and up to them what reparation or apology would or would not be accepted, and don't try to deflect that with apology or self-justificaiton"

Which is all necessary, but I think, is possibly intended to be filtered through a common sense filter. Like, consider the likelihood that if you've hurt someone, there's a large reservoir of harm which you didn't notice or didn't want to acknowledge, based on what they say and your knowledge of the situation. But you don't ALWAYS have to come to the conclusion 'yes', if all the indications are that the other person is being a bully, or mistaken, or is cross about something else unrelated to you.

(Does that sound right?)

Whereas I always felt obliged to rapidly scramble to accept all blame, which when I don't actually understand what someone is hurt by, can be catastrophically counterproducive, as I get things even wronger, or resent that I need to take all the blame onto myself when I don't feel like that's right and end up letting my resentment show :(

My brain keeps saying, "but if it's a serious criticism, it's really unacceptable to just say 'i'll think about it', that sounds like you're dismissing it." But apparently, not usually?

And in fact, if I allow myself a more measured response, that's almost certain to be much much better for other people, both in my ACTUALLY GENUINELY accepting VALID criticism, and also in my accepting mistakes when maybe it wasn't really anyone's fault, or is mostly due to the other person's appropriate but not-really-due-to-me anger without going into a self-hatred-spiral.

And it seems like, that's what most people do in practice, and the right answer about how you SHOULD respond is just to do that, even as I have lingering fear of "not taking people's criticism seriously enough".

(Right?)

After all, when I'm actually in the wrong, I don't always hate myself that much, only when it's an unexpected accident :(

My intellectual brain tells me that's the only way to run social interaction, and I should do the less-harmful thing, even as my emotional brain is screaming at me that I'm not following the "rules" I described earlier and will eventually cause harm to people by reacting insufficiently seriously to criticism some time I don't expect it.

I've tried to talk about how other people react to criticism and if I should react the same way before, and generally got blank faces. But I'm now thinking that might have been more "I don't understand, this is too much about feelings you have and most people don't" or "I don't understand, that's so obvious I don't know how to describe it" and not "don't do that."

But now I'm thinking, it's sufficiently obvious, I need to do it, whether I can explain it to other people and have them agree or not. Even if I wish "asking everyone else what they do and doing that" worked as easily as I always feel it should.

Mistakes and apologies

I find a lot of confusion about what's a "mistake" and what's an "apology".

My brain tends to generalise too much.

I see a spectrum of mistakes and apology, something like:

1. I had nothing to do with this but I'm sorry it happened to you, e.g. "sorry your relative died"
2. I had no way of preventing it but inadvertently precipitated it, e.g. "oops, sorry" when someone wasn't looking where they were going and walks into you
3. I couldn't *reasonably* have prevented it, e.g. "oops, sorry" when both people were a normal appropriate amount of careful but bump into each other (assuming people accept that that occasionally happens and being more careful isn't a worthwhile trade off)
4. I didn't do anything unusual, but I really should be more careful, e.g. "oops, sorry", when you walked into someone not looking where *you* were going
5. I did that deliberately, but I didn't realise how bad the consequences were going to be.
6. I did that on purpose, if I'm going to apologise I need to damn well not do it in future.

I tend to describe all of those as a mistake or apology, but think of a "real" mistake as somewhere in the middle and a "real" apology as what's appropriate to the bottom half. But I know other people use the words in different ways.

In particular, if someone hurts you in a fairly small way, it's reasonable and sensible to display an amount of upset proportional to the harm done *to you*, and ignore whether for them it's a habit or an aberration. You don't really have any way of knowing different, and it's not your responsibility to figure it out by yourself. (Whereas for big things, like if it goes to court or something, the intention can matter.)

But that if you do inadvertently hurt someone, it's reasonable to apologise and intend to avoid THAT PARTICULAR COMBINATION OF CIRCUMSTANCES. Like, if you usually sit in a normal way, but you accidentally kick someone because they were hiding under your desk, you might make a mental note "IT like to come fix the cables without warning, don't be careless sitting down". But, DESPITE all the advice about what makes a sincere apology, you might apologise, but carry on the rest of your life without significantly increasing the amount of caution you display when you sit, even if EVENTUALLY you may find some other circumstance where it also hurts someone.

Even though, advice about a sincere apology says to change behaviour and, to me, a promise to change your behaviour mean to change the behaviour that led to the accident, which since you didn't know whether that would come from sitting at work, or home, or on a bus, or in the cinema, would have meant a massive increase in caution EVERYWHERE. But it's ok not to do that?? (Is that right??)

When something goes wrong, why does my brain immediately blame me, and then get resentful about being blamed? How do I stop it doing that?

I still keep introspecting about what, if anything, is up with my brain. I recently had a bit of a slump in my current work project, several weeks of knowing what I needed to do and it was fairly simple, but not actually knuckling down to it. And that sort of spilled over to a general malaise. But, as best as I can tell from the inside, that's basically how I used to be *most* of the time. And when I have tasks I actually do achieve, I'm mostly fine, even more-content-than-average, maybe. But I don't know how to describe that -- it doesn't sound like depression as such, if I'm able to snap myself out of it *at all* -- but I feel like perennially feeling dispirited, whether or not it's just who I am, feels like a problem of *some* sort.

I should read over some of my old angst-y posts, I think my overall self-perception has become much, much less gloomy over time, but occasional bouts of introspection appear to be part of that.

I got a new, more senior, job which has been going reasonably well. I still sometimes find it hard to get work done at work, but I think I've doing much better at new job than before and still getting better.

Rachel moved back to Cambridge! There has been much more cuddles, and time to talk, and cooking together, and regular time on Friday nights, and it's just been so much better.

We went to worldcon. Rachel and I went to Norwich and Great Yarmouth. I had a day out with ghoti at Felixstowe. I spent a day walking in Thetford forest. And probably other days I've forgotten.

I started going to the gym again, instead of jogging outside, since I was working near one and driving anyway. I'd lost almost all the progress I made -- I think I'd been jogging outside, but not being strict enough at measuring my speed and so it had slowly but steadily atrophied. That was really dispiriting. But I have slowly been working my way up again since I've been gym'ing.

After I did NaNoWriMo last year, I resolved to set myself a goal *each* month. Often not an aggressive one, but with the aim that I would set a *reasonable* goal and concentrate on that and not freeze up feeling like I had to do absolutely all the things. That was mixed, but generally a great success. I did more projects, programming and similar than I have for ages. And I was more relaxed too. This year, my aim is "the same, but more so".

What projects did I make progress on?

I wrote a simple android game, Emojilution Match. Needs GPS but not internet, more info here: https://jack.dreamwidth.org/1038552.html

I revised my python top-down tile-based adventure-game engine (still nice but not really usable atm)

I did a nanowrimo story (a cut-down one, not 50k). As soon as it's a little tidied up I will enthusiastically share it with people who were interested!

And a Vorkosigan yuletide story that got positive comments: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13046442/chapters/29842002

I did some roleplaying (I think that was this year?)

I revamped my board game Toy Factory. It plays an awful lot more interestingly. I think it's getting close to being finished

I worked on other board games, including demon summoning game :)

I have been keeping a text diary/todofile for about three years now and it's definitely been useful. I'm still constantly updating how I use it. I also think, it's hard to be sure, but I think I've got a lot better at being organised, at doing things, and also at relaxing and allowing myself space to breathe.

See the recent bad-brains post. And also, the last couple of months, I deliberately tried to build more "not specifically scheduled" time into my month aims, and see if I filled it up with an appropriate mix of enjoyable stuff and productive stuff, and it went pretty well: I did interesting things, if not what I might have expected to start with, then things that afterwards I'm pleased I did. Like, I do have an intuition for what to spend time on, but that used to be drowned out by other things, and now it's slowly coming to life again.

I'm not doing specific new year resolutions, but I have in mind projects I would like to do at some point this month. January's is to fix several of the problems with Emojilution Match to make it playable, and to remove last problems with nanowrimo to make it readable even if not finished.

Fingers crossed for 2018.

Just over a week ago, things... somehow fell into place in my head. I think a confluence of circumstance led to that, that of all the things that felt weighing on me, they'd mostly resolved themselves one way or another.

Work felt like it shifted, not from any particular change, but like a magic eye picture from "probably all this work will be worthwhile, but there's no way to tell, I just need to force myself to have faith" to "ok, it seems what we're doing is achieving progress". But along with that change all sorts of other things just fell away too. All sorts of things that were, "oh my god, this has been hanging over me for years, it shouldn't be that hard, but even if i do it, I'll have so many other things to do too" became "oh well, most people probably don't have time for all those things, if I do even some of them I'll be kicking arse".

Getting things done shifted from predominantly "I need to force myself to do X, Y and Z today, inevitably I'll leave them as long as I can before starting so I have some rest" to "I could do A, B and C today, if I do I'll feel really good, and if I start them now, they shouldn't even take so long". I did more flop.

One possible instigation was work coming into focus from having clear deadlines with clear goals. Another was my resolve to set myself no long term goals for december, but try to relax. Another was my resolve to focus less on specific goals, and more on seeking self-reinforcing loops, of small mood improvements that let me do small tasks, which in turn lead to larger mood improvements.

I thought about this in terms of my putative productivity app. I realise that historically, the productivity tool I need is primarily about forcing myself to do a minimum. Of choosing what I can consistently do, and doing it EVERY SINGLE DAY, because then I can build up a habit of doing it, and a sense of achievement at sticking to it. But when my mood lifts, it's more like, I want to do all the things and I need to channel myself into doing a reasonable mix and pacing myself.

One question is, can I keep it up? I hope so, but I don't know for sure. Another is, am I actually being more effective, or happier, or neither? I think both are true but I'm not completely sure.