Welcome to week 2 of the Curiosity Collective. Week 1 was about ‘PACT,’ and this week is about ‘ACT.’ I will add the notes from the session and also my reflections on the prompts and ideas shared by Anne during the session.
A little recap of Week 1:
- Becoming the scientist of your life starts with observation
- Self-anthropology is a way to conduct an audit of your life, question the default, and reevaluate your ambitions
- A pact is a template for tiny experiments in the format I will [action] for [duration]. Mine is I will write 500 words for the next 5 days.
Two Ingredients of Self-Development: Action and Reflection
Meaningful growth requires both action and reflection. If you are ambitious, action matters and to be curious, you need reflection. If you are both ambitious and curious, you need action and reflection.
A new mental model of self-development: Loop Not Ladder
The previous model relies on goals and expects you to achieve them by climbing step-by-step on a ladder. The new model is based on iterations where you mix your courage and curiosity to try new things and iterate. This will help in your growth but the difference is, unlike the ladder method, you don’t know what the end goal is going to look like. The beauty of this method is that it takes you on a path of growth that the ‘current you’ cannot envision for the ‘future you’. The process will take you on a journey of self-reflection and inspire you to take action towards the betterment of yourself, beyond a fixed goal.
Death by Two Arrows
Hello Procrastination, my dear old friend.
Anne shared an excerpt from Chapter 5 of her book, and asked us to read and reflect on these prompts:
- What part resonated the most and why?
- How do you normally respond when you procrastinate?
I have been struggling to beat procrastination since I was young. I did not know I had ADHD until 3 years ago which means I spent a large portion of my life blaming myself for being lazy and overbearing guilt that I wasn’t living to my ‘full potential’. I developed systems to beat it and establish discipline but they have mostly been fear driven. I rely on anxiety to get things done and shower myself (too generously) if I don’t finish the thing I set out.
While this has helped me succeed in my career, get my finances straight, and become an adult, it has induced a negative feedback loop inside me. I heavily depend on time anxiety and task urgency to get shit done but constant high levels of cortisol mess up my creative thinking, sleep, and mental well-being. Being late for a meeting means I spend the first 10 minutes feeling like a failure and find it hard to focus.
Anne talks about the same idea in the form of two arrows. The first arrow is procrastination itself where we set out to do everything except the task at hand. I usually resort to scrolling, cleaning my home, or reading to avoid writing my ideas. The second arrow is the emotional reaction to it which I have briefly touched on from my previous example.
“There is nothing like the downward spiral of procrastination to make you feel like an
abject failure,” said Dr. Tim Pychyl, one of the world’s foremost experts on procrastination.
“That’s why the strongest emotion associated with procrastination is guilt.”
Is there an alternative way?
Maybe don’t shoot the second arrow? Let yourself wander and do another task before coming back to your original task. Avoid the emotional reaction and skip the shame or guilt altogether. Reframe it like switching the order of switching instead of framing it as an ordeal or moral failing. In Q&A, someone brought up a great point – shoot the second with curiosity and not guilty.
Another way to think is if you aren’t interested in the main task and that’s why you are distracting yourself.
I will add a personal example here. I work as a data scientist and work very closely with AI and data. I want to start my business in AI but after 8 hours of office work, when I sit down to create content or update on the latest happenings, I find myself distracted from it. I would scroll, go out, and do anything else but AI. It is understandable. I am not 100% invested. I do it because my expertise lies in it but not my interest. I had this epiphany a couple of weeks ago and this has helped me resolve the mental agony I go through every day that I am not working on my business. I need to think differently. See procrastination as a signal!
Anne touched briefly on productive procrastination which is about not beating yourself up for procrastinating. Think about what is it trying to tell you. Anytime you procrastinate, add it to your log and use it as data points to decipher what is really happening. Your interest might be less, your environment might not be supportive or maybe you are just tired? Not everything is about willpower.
Exercise: Conducting your First Tiny Experiment
We will realize the power of repeated trials. This week, we will conduct the experiment of I will [action] for the next 5 days and keep a log for the next 5 days, and at the end of 5 days, we will reflect:
Plus: What went well?
Minus: What didn’t go as planned
Next: What will I focus on next?
Conducting successful tiny experiments to take action, follow the pact, and reflect on what can be improved. Then use it to tweak the process.
In the next blog post, I will come back with my progress on my pact this week.