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Re: No amount of organizing will make me want to do something

Hush writes:

when it comes to learning new skills, I often lose steam after the first few accomplishments (the easy ones) and then feel stress when I don’t pick up something super easily. I’m also bad at doing things that I feel are tedious.

As an example, I’m working my way through an online certificate course. I did great the first week, doing a little each day and generally setting a good pace, but I’ve fallen off in the last couple of weeks. I’ll get a little done here and there, but I don’t have the steam to push through the tedious parts of the reading and doing exercises that I theoretically should be able to do easily.

I have the same problem, and I’ve been struggling lately. I made strides against online addiction only to get addicted to books instead. I don’t wanna work on the record (I’m making music) because it’s embarrassing and scary. It’s daunting to do a multi-day project. It’s not tedious exactly; at first I thought that was the problem but the tasks are varied enough or could be made varied enough. It’s just daunting, and looking at the long long road ahead is somehow exhausting.

I procrastinated seven weeks before getting started for real (I had some misguided idea about what the first steps were gonna be) and even now when the ball is rolling I sometimes go over a week before touching this project. I’m trying different things to get unstuck but then life keeps happening, too. Other appointments, other commitments, and just hangups and mental blocks. There’s always new struggles in the war of art.

She continues:

I’m fairly organized as a rule already, I just don’t follow through on the things I plan out.

Then you’re already in a way better place than I was before I found GTD. It’s hard to overstate how much of a wreck I was before GTD. Other people whom I’ve ranted and raved about GTD get disappointed because they weren’t as broken as I was so the difference isn’t as big.

GTD helps me work; it helps me plan out a bigger project than just a single song, to work on the songs in parallel.

When I was a kid most of my friends were into video games but one time we couldn’t play for an entire weekend because my friend’s dad was working through Rygar and he had left the game console on and the game on pause as he was working his way through, using the continue feature. This was before every game could save.

But with GTD, I can save my progress on this project, so GTD helps me to not-work, too. To rest, to meet friends, to cook, to read, to sleep. Yes, it does take quite a while to “get back into it” (and that time is longer than I'm consciously aware of) so I don’t want my sessions to be too short and too interruptable, but without this ability to “save” the work there would be no work; I made songs before I had GTD but only ones where I could go from idea to mix in one day (or when I had another more organized friend as a producer).

My issues are also compounded lately for how I’m trying to not do other things, to have a way narrower project list and life focus. When I first started working on GTD I initially was fairly focused and managed to do longer projects but as the years went by and as our lives became more digital I started spinning more and more and more and more and more plates. Sure, the occasional longer project did get finished but mostly it was shorter quicker stuff. I was living the SOFA life, involuntarily. Since last fall, I’ve been working on a new approach where I try hard to not do things that aren’t on the list and that’s hard to get used to.