How To Combat Feelings of "Wasting My Time"

This is a short note from my Roam Research second brain. Here's a free guide where I introduce you to Roam & Building A Second Brain. 

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Metadata of Note

Type: 🌱 Seedling [Nomenclature present here.] Source: [[Thoughts]] based on interviews for my second book Tags: #productivity Date: May 15th, 2022

I wrote the following in my "Making of A Book" [[Newsletter #2: 2022]] edition 3. I wanted to also capture it as a note for the future. The next time you feel like, "Damn, I just wasted my time", see if the following helps:

• Acknowledge the forces acting against you are stronger: It's true. Social media is so addictive because it's designed to be. Your poor, ancient brain is fighting a battle against thousands of smart engineers and billions of dollars invested into keeping you on it. So just acknowledge that what you're trying to do is not easy.

• Ask yourself, Why is this a waste of time firstly? Is it a waste of time because you truly feel it is, or because someone else made it out to be? Generally, blanket statements such as Spending time on social media is a waste or Watching TV is a waste of time are not useful. You should think through and set thresholds for yourself, instead of letting someone else do it.

• Have a __detached curiosity __to the problem: We generally tend to reason sensibly about someone else's problem than our own (aka Solomon's Paradox). This is because we have a certain detachment when it's someone else's problem that helps temper our emotions and be more grounded. I've been doing this for myself lately. Whenever I face an issue/dilemma, I let myself detach from it and approach it from a place of curiosity. Then, the problem becomes more fun to address.

• Being more compassionate to yourself: I've spoken about this extensively in my article on the journey from self-abuse to self-love. Take it from someone who used to mentally abuse herself a lot: it's not worth it. You spend most of your life talking to yourself, more than anyone else. You want that conversation to be one of compassion and love, not cynicism and hate.