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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure my respect for people who sit down at a blank page, or pick up the phone and make a difficult call (or even a call to the guy who was supposed to trim the trees last week) stems from my deep reluctance to do the same. Whether you could blame my reluctance on anxiety, apathy, superiority or sheer laziness really depends on the day... but I really do respect those people who slog through their list of to-do items as if it were a job. And they are better at life than I am.

Put me in front or a concrete problem, and I'm a fucking monster at solving it. Give me someone's phone number to call and I'd rather spend the rest of the week in a bathtub.

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I think what you do on a daily basis has a huge impact to how you deal with this. When I was mostly focused on a single issue at a time for long strench of time, I used to be reluctant to call people and didn't really plan things for my personnal life. As my job shifted towards more organisational responsibilities and I had to start both carefully planning how I use my own time and spending a lot more time contacting people to get things done, these things started slowly expanding to the rest of my time by cheer force of habit. What is one more call to the guy who should have trimmed the tree when you have spent the day asking people why they are behind schedule?

I think it goes well with the anxiety explanation. You are obviously less anxious about things which are just business as usual. I guess my take away would be that if you want to start doing something you find hard, it will get easier and easier as you stick with it, which is pretty nice when you think about it.

yeah, I've sort of observed this... my gf is in a people-centric / customer service job, and thinks nothing of picking up the phone and making life-related calls in an instant that I would probably procrastinate for days before making.

I've thought maybe it was her job that led her to it. But I've also wondered if it was something in my blood. See, my father was a lawyer. As a kid I'd sit in his office and listen to him make tough phone calls one after another all day. But when it came time to talk to anyone at all at home, he always made my mother do it. I've found myself doing this with my girlfriend if we want to order food or something. Because I'll simply drink all night and delay the phone call.

So when it comes to any work flag that arises, I'll call my clients obsessively until they pay attention to the problem. But if I need someone to do something for me, I basically almost can't make the call.

I used to be in your position. What broke the cycle for me was that my SO realized how anxious I would get every time I had to make a phone call, so he assigned all phone-related household tasks to me until I lost the phobia via exposure/practice. It sucked until it didn’t anymore. I’m now one of those people who prefers to make a call rather than use a web form!

I don't like making calls, going to appointments, job interviews and things like that. But in terms of the effort it takes me to do it, I noticed the first is usually the hardest one. So now I just procrastinate on purpose any calls or appointments I need to make that I can defer with little negative consequences. Eventually something shows up that I know I shouldn't delay, like an appointment with the doctor, or the dentist, or something like that. I force myself to do it and take it as an opportunity to do everything I had piled up, since I know once I make the first call it'll be easier to do the others. It can cause me to have a very frantic week when it happens but after I can relax again.

> And they are better at life than I am

In my worldview, when you state that, you don't really believe that. If you did, you would do these things that you think make them better with no effort. If you drop wishful thinking, look at the situation, then it's clear that if you think they are better at life, then the actions they do are better. But if you really believed that you would choose to do them, effortlessly.

Now I know there's plenty of frameworks you can look at things through and plenty of rationalizations, I'm just presenting another one.

So whenever you think it would be better if you would be doing something right now which you are not doing, you have some cognitive dissonance. It's possible to debug it. Sometimes it can go pretty deep, but if you are honest with yourself then after you do the debugging, you should either arrive at the conclusion that it is not better after all, or be doing it.

We are able to hold tons of contradictory beliefs, but only if we don't bring them together to our attention. Then it's just impossible. Cheapest way to resolve these, which often appears automatically, is quick rationalization - creating a special case, "yes, but", "this is different" etc. But when you are honest with yourself and observe yourself, do some debugging, it's impossible to not be doing something you want to be doing (and vice versa).

For me, it often means not that now I want to do these tasks and I'm going at them, rather, I understand that e.g. I think there are more important things in life to me given the wider context and I'm perfectly fine not doing them.

I have not been doing anything I wouldn't want to be doing right now for years. I sometimes needed to question my very basic values and choices to debug it.

Remember that it requires dropping wishful thinking. Wanting sky to be green is just madness, only after you accept that reality is how it is you can find out what you want.

Anxiety can be debugged away.

(Yes, I know - brains, neurotransmitters, amygdala, this is just a random dude's framework, a tool)

I don't do things I don't want to do - I've also set my life and career up to prioritize that. Being overly accustomed to that mode may be part of the problem, because inevitably there are things you have to do that you don't want to do - and those things seem harder, even if they're trivial, when you really want to master your own time. Yet I'm pretty good at getting those out of the way.

That's not my specific problem with phone calls. Phone calls always open up a Pandora's box of more problems. Perhaps if you feel like armchair diagnosing this: I clean my house almost obsessively every day; my desktop has only two text files on it called "Immediate" and "Todo"; my inbox is always cleaned out by 5 or 6pm before I let myself relax. Then I go get fucking wasted and make new friends and end up drinking in parking lots.

But I can't call the fucking tree guy or the mechanic or the accountant. It's not the conversation I'm worried about. It's that I know there will be one new thing on the list.

When the list is cleared, I will be free. I will take my clothes off and walk naked to the airport.

[edit] I just want to clarify: I do think that I'm good at life in my own peculiar way. Just not "good at life" as most people would define it ;)

Seems like you want to avoid calls if possible. If not then to me it helps to think in packages. So there is no "I need to make a phonecall". There's option A - "I make a phonecall and the then I have this" or "I don't make a phonecall and there are those consequences". What's the key to me here is that both options are perfectly fine. I.e. "suffering + some reward" or "no suffering and no reward". Or sometimes both options require some suffering. That is not a problem though, that is life.

But suffering is really something different without anxiety. If it's unavoidable anyway there's a peace about it.

And I'm sorry if I come off as an armchair diagnostician, I have no clue about your life obviously, it's just that this kind of thinking made such a big difference to me that it feels bad not sharing it.

no, I think it's quite interesting to diagnose this from a code point of view... this is why it really sucks that I have literally no one in my life who writes code or understands my job (or can chop things up into logical if/else statements like this ;) I probably should look at my own messy internal call stack from this pov a bit more often.

My best friend as a kid was raised in Zen Buddhism and we learned to code together. This is the kind of way he would look at it. So I appreciate it.

> If you did, you would do these things that you think make them better with no effort.

There is a whole lot of assumptions in that sentence. To start, why would doing the right thing be effortless?

Add to that, if you are in a bad state you are likely to be pessimistic of the outcome of the task which makes it even harder. And fighting that is anything but effortless.

You could argue that when you are in a perfect state stars will align but even if you truly believe that the effort to get to that place will often be nothing but heroic and most people will never achieve it.

So it just feels like moving the goalpost? Which is fine if framing it like that gets you closer to where you want to be. But I'd need more convincing to believe that would be easier (for me).

the underlying assumption is that there is no tension between satisfying the world and satisfying your own need for tranquility.

[edit] I haven't done a lot of therapy, but I sought out an existential therapist in Buenos Aires and saw her weekly for a year while I was there and severely depressed. It helped me get over seeing myself as the center of the narrative, and made me realize everyone else was too trapped in theirs to notice most of the flaws I saw in myself. It also helped me come to terms with how the world being fucked up is neither my fault or something I can fix. But the real, true house on the cliff is unattainable. In the darkest and most honest moments, I'd admit it's not even what I want. As my ex's mother once said, I thrive on crisis. She didn't mean it well.

> To start, why would doing the right thing be effortless?

Because doing things you want to do does not require effort.

Real life example from the past - sewage system problem - I have shit all over the floor in my basement. It's late night next days are some celebrations. I can have this shit all over my floor it can wait for somebody to clean it, or it can just stay there, or I can clean it. You would think cleaning up shit is just that, it sucks regardless. But my experience is different. If you keep repeating to yourself false narration "I don't want to be doing this" that's hell. But after accepting the situation, deciding which option do you want, doing what you want to do is really effortless. Out of all the things this is what I want to be doing right now. If not, I'm not doing it.

Narration matters a lot and it seems pretty straightforward that when you think you don't want to be doing the thing that YOU decided and are doing right now, you have some cognitive dissonance.

(remember - no wishful thinking - thinking I want to have it clean but without doing any actions is no different than taunting yourself that you have no wings)

> no tension between satisfying the world and satisfying your own need

There isn't any. It's enough to try to satisfy your needs and doing what you want. But be observant and introspect.

People who are perceived as egoists are not optimizing for their own well being. You can't be happy when you are surrounded by people who are not happy.

When you want to support some charity and do something for the world, where does it come from? It's you, it's your need. It feels good. Not just a fleeting high, but like a feeling about your life in general. We seem to have that built in.

I mean regardless of the source, just look how it's unnecessarily nested narration. Your needs vs needs of others, where needs of others is what you feel is needed to do for others. It's still your needs, if you think you should be helping others it's you who feels that.

I am a bit envious of your apparent lack of akrasia. I read a similar argument to yours by Abraham Maslow ("Motivation and Personality" I believe?) and have the same reaction then as I do now. The inner worlds of different human beings can be radically different. Sometimes we forget that and assume our experiences or ways of experiencing are universal. Some people have aphantasia, others (more lucky perhaps) don't have akrasia or at the very least can sufficiently overcome it by bringing to mind whether or not one wants to do the task at-hand. Not all of us are so blessed, although all of us could probably benefit from weighing the costs and benefits of doing tasks that we believe need to be done but still have resistance to doing.

Akrasia is like anxiety. It's not that I don't have it. It's just that I would debug quickly (and after some time it happens somewhat automatically). So 80% of time I indeed won't do the task that's been waiting for long. But I'm not anxious about it. I just realize that this isn't what I want to do right now.

When you look at akrasia, the problem is not that you are not doing something. It's this painful cognitive dissonance. Unresolved conflict in your narration. Both doing the thing is fine and not doing it is fine. But suffering by doing it while telling your self you don't want to do it or not doing it while telling yourself that you do is completely avoidable.

And yeah, I agree about different experiences. Which makes communication funny - same words but two very different contexts and interpreters. Which is why I'm so verbose about the thing I was describing.

I don't think we have the same definition of effort.

All options regarding sewage in your basement takes a lot of effort. Identifying and doing the least sucky option doesn't make it not suck.

I agree that it is helpful to frame it in a way that you choose to do it because its the best way forward. But that has absolutely nothing to do with effort and trying to recalibrate is as effortless does nothing but dilute and dismiss the effort you are putting into it.

Lots of things take effort, some things like workouts can (as with most things, in moderation) be more meaningful the more effort is provided.

> Narration matters a lot and it seems pretty straightforward that when you think you don't want to be doing the thing that YOU decided and are doing right now, you have some cognitive dissonance.

It is just a matter of perspective. You choose to do it because you want it done. It is an axiom. Not liking the situation does not equal cognitive dissonance.

If it helps you to not obsess about something, great. But that is a whole other topic.

Yes, I agree. What I meant by effort is this context is using your willpower.

To me there's a huge mental shift once you decided 100% on something and there's no questioning it. It may be tiring, but it just flows. This is what I call effortless in this context. Because it does not require any willpower to do it, even if it requires thinking or strength. You are locked in.

I mean whether it's coding or gym, surely you must have experienced it. When you are in the middle of the activity and you are not questioning whether you should be doing it or not.

The state of flow is familiar to most coders. Coding is nice because your mind is so busy building the castle that there is no place to be thinking about yourself. There is just code. So you are not questioning whether coding is something that you currently want to be doing. The same state can be achieved doing just about anything and to me the trick is to make narration without contradictions. Out of all things in the world, given my current life context writing this comment is the thing I want to do the most. Even if nobody reads it.

Btw I don't have that luxury 100% of the time. I can get hang up on the question of what do I actually want (in my case it usually drops down to not being honest with myself regarding the fact that what I really want is more sleep).

Regarding not liking situation, one that you choose to be in. I've had big mental shift from thinking in patterns of "lesser evil" and choosing what you want packages from the reality you are in (i.e. dropping wishful thinking). IT seems subtle but it's not.

"You choose to do it because you want it done. It is an axiom." is the right track. But not liking it, is the same as not liking that the sky is not green. It's fair, you might have preferred the green sky by a lot, but it's so ridiculous that you wouldn't experience anything negative because of that. It's the same with reality you are in and options available to you.

How do you handle long-term tasks that are painful to do? Things that you don’t want to do in the moment, but which have a payoff you want?

For some reason you want to do them. It's not like some dummy algorithm to decide what you do right now. What you want is a very complex computation which is basically already done and takes into account everything you know. There's no reason to try to outsmart yourself. If you are excited about the future associated with some task (or about the future in general) you are excited about doing the task. Some grim outlook on the future makes it rational to optimize short term results. E.g. sleep deprivation gives a glimpse of that.

Basically seems pointless to fight with yourself. Maybe you don't really want the long-term task + result package. Or maybe wishful thinking is causing you to fantasize about getting a result without doing the task. (I'm sorry about using second person, seems most straightforward way to communicate it).

I guess there's also some element of narration creating fictional character - e.g. I can't stop playing chess - playing chess is who I am. Which basically is daydreaming again.

And btw it all sound pretty analytical but in practice is mostly value driven. But if necessary, I will debug the stack deeply. Honesty is required. It goes deep and into intimate places. I would leave my wife and kids if I wouldn't want to be with them (and I think that's best for everybody). Given that I do and want them to be happy a lot of stuff follows effortlessly. I think many people are afraid to question these deep assumptions. But it's worth doing it. Otherwise it's castles on sand.

Back when I was starting with debugging I once deeply considered our marriage since I needed to take some trash out :))

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