self-sabotage through the medium of failure

[kaberett]

A framing I have been mulling particularly this week, with respect to playing the horn but also other topics: if I want to Do A Thing, then setting a minimum amount of Thing below which I have "failed" such that I can "fail" while Doing the thing at all is... actively counterproductive.

If horn practice "doesn't count" if I don't play for half an hour, then that's twenty minutes of actually playing plus the executive function involved in getting there that... I'm beating myself up over, because it's "not good enough", so I get all the exhaustion and all of the shame and a lot of the "there's no point even trying" and none of the dopamine.

Which is, I think, why "play one note! any note! there you go You've Done The Thing" is working so well for me: it's a minimum I can do reliably, and then of course once I've actually picked the horn up it's fairly easy to trip and fall into doing at least 15 minutes' practice I otherwise wouldn't have, and hey, guess what, that practice is cumulatively leaving me in much better shape than I was even a month ago.

And: even when I don't like the sound I'm making, the "one note is enough!" lets me go "hmm, I'm noticing that I'm hurting... here, what's going on with that?" and, you know, at least trouble-shoot! Noticing and thinking about problems is way better than never having them arise in the first place.


I note that this general attitude is also the thing that gets me unstuck on PhD-related writing (write some bullet points; convert some bullet points to highly informal conversational prose; ...) and a variety of non-musical physical skills: "hey GO YOU you DID A THING and FOR BONUS POINTS you can see what you want to work on next!" is Very Much the opposite of failure.

But good grief have I got a deep-rooted historical pattern of looking at something I've done, judging it inadequate, and giving up -- which is a not dissimilar thought process, but is skewed enough to lead me fairly badly astray.

Comments

[batrachian]

Well now, don't that sound all too gosh darn familiar.

<3

[lunabee34]

For me too.

[kaberett]

*headbutt*

[ewt]

Yup.

For me, part of this is also about permission to *stop* doing the thing if I still don't want to do it after I've done my ridiculously low-bar minimum. Most of the time I won't do that -- most of the time I will keep going. But if Before-Activity Me thinks that During-Activity Me will be stuck doing a potentially unpleasant activity for too long, then I just... won't start. "Too long" seems to vary with stress levels and their effect on executive function and anxiety.

Tangentially, I think this is why starting my Focusmate sessions for the day with morning prayer and journalling is so helpful, too. They're both pretty easy things to do. If I tried to start with, say, PhD stuff, or something that required leaving the house, it would be a lot more overwhelming. But praying the Office is literally reading a website, and I have permission to skim. And journalling is sometimes emotional heavy lifting, but often just train-of-though daydreaming about the allotment or what have you, and a sentence of journal is sufficient if it comes to it, so if I think of something else that's urgent, I know I can do that. And then I am downstairs and in my dressing gown (usually; sometimes I achieve clothing beforehand but again, it doesn't *matter* if I don't), and I may as well keep going.

[kaberett]

Yes! My take is very much "okay, done the thing for the day, anything else is gravy but also I get to STOP", and actually the number of times it's been A Single Note so far this year is... probably less than five? I've mostly done at least an arpeggio? So hey!

[niqaeli]

yes! this phenomenon is so familiar to me.

the other thing I've been trying to keep in mind, in addition to making my bar so low that I can't have failed at it if I even tried, is... most of the things I am good at, I got good at because I enjoyed doing them so much I did them all the time a bunch. and I'm more likely to enjoy doing things if I haven't put a bunch of restrictions on what counts!

so making Do Literally Anything (eg, knit one stitch, play one note) my bar lets me feel like I have Accomplished Tasks but also lets me have plenty of freedom to fuck around, or slack off or whatever, and I'm STILL getting something out of it (even one goddamned note a day is more than I've played IN YEARS!) but I'm not making myself crazy.

it's been interesting fucking around on recorder, too, that I'm definitely noticing things in my wrists and thinking about how to avoid pain/discomfort/extra stress. and thinking about that stuff while I'm fucking around and amusing myself is also something I'm pleased with, that I not only register it but am thinking about ways to mitigate, like, it turns out that years and years of practice at taking care of my body has also netted good results! (also pragmatically speaking that thinking is totally best done now and not later after I've re-learned everything in a way that hurts, ha.)

[kaberett]

Yes! This is very much an attempt on my part at pushing myself toward "do the thing, even a little, and YOU'LL GET BETTER AT IT", and it's... Particularly noticeable with the horn-playing, heh.

The fucking around also is SO IMPORTANT. Like, because I'm explicitly not aiming for "let's get this Perfect before we Move On", I'm instead getting to just... notice what's difficult, and whether it's as difficult as it was last week, and recognise all the progress as progress & then celebrating "heyyyy I managed one of these arpeggios completely cleanly!" as opposed to going "ugh but the legato STILL isn't perfect and I'm STILL not keeping the volume uniformly loud throughout" or w h a t e v e r.

[madgastronomer]

I must remember this, it's very applicable to me, too.

[kaberett]

Thank you for saying!

[cesy]

Yes, this has helped me a lot. For doing exercise, I get points for getting myself into a swimming pool, regardless of the amount of swimming that happens, and I get points for getting my bum onto a bicycle, regardless of amount of cycling. Generally by the time I'm in a pool, at least some joint-friendly cardio is likely to happen, whether that's splashing around or walking through the water to chat to someone or swimming lengths. Oh, and points for entering a gym and picking up a weight or sitting on a machine. Also Habitica gets me a green tick for leaving the house and looking at daylight. It tends to lead to some walking and some vitamin D absorption, but I get it for stepping out the building.

[fyreharper]

I should probably follow your example on the 'just leaving the house is enough' thing. I suspect I'd do a better job at checking off my Go Outside reminder if I didn't have an unspoken 'and do a Significant amount of Something' attached to it (and then I think I don't have time for that so just... don't...)

[silveradept]

This is a useful framing, and perhaps I should think about adopting it in some manner and finding some way of making it stick in my head so that the small successes still galen.

[vass]

(This is good and I'm making a note to come back to it and engage in more depth.)

[halojedha]

Yeah this is great. I'm doing the Habit pledge for Get Your Words Out this year, which tracks days on which you do something related to your writing project, any actual activity counts - planning, note taking, etc. The Anything Is Better Than Nothing approach works well for me. Starting is the hard part!

[frobisherw]

WELL SAID. Good reminder. Thank you for writing it.

[ludy]

Thank you. This is helpful untangling.

[horselizard]

this thing <3

[applenym]

I've been thinking about this over the past week, and it's been very helpful. There are SO many small projects I want to do, but I haven't been starting any of them because I think I won't have time to finish them in one session. This is a ridiculous trap to fall into, because it means I'll probably NEVER do the thing, and yet it's the obstacle my brain throws up every time. "Just START the thing; you don't have to finish it" has been a very useful thought.

Thanks for sharing this!

[kaberett]

You are very welcome! Hurrah for progress :)