Aim at the big

I’m feeling on a bit of a roll today. I got up early and did a bunch of shopping, ate a good breakfast, did some work, and also wrote a very cathartic post. Though I find myself wanting to write another. The other post is about trying to unpack my avoidance behaviours, and attenuate perceptions of failure. This one is more about the way I need to face up to my PhD. Overcoming avoidance is one thing, but I also need to work smart as well. One of the few things I remember from a book about habits, is something called Motion vs Action. Imagine a journalist plans their next 20 articles, that’s motion, when the journalist writes an article, that’s action. Motion does not necessarily move you in the direction you need to go, but it is not useless either. You cannot operate on motion alone. Motion, for me, tends to manifest as things like reading, or planning (me? plan?!), and not doing the actual work. For example, I need to expand on some code I wrote a while ago, and I need to run some tests and write it up. Realistically, the code is the most important thing, if I do not finish it, I cannot write up the chapter. So it follows that I should focus on the code to its completion, and the writing can follow. However, I find myself trying to do some reading and write some ancillary parts of the chapter. I have previously been afraid of this code for usual avoidance reasons, such as fearing that it will not work. But I got it working, and it works well, I just need to take it to the next level. It follows that I have done most of the work, and I have a stable version, so I can proceed forward.

I had this thought, that if I just aim at the code and nothing else, then I will inevitably finish it, eventually. Anything else that needs to be done will present itself. As I work through the code, I will be able to make some notes in the writeup of the chapter for things I should present in it. But until the code gets done, I cannot truly unlock my writing potential. Ideally this is how a thesis should be, you finish all the work and then there is nothing to stop you from writing it up completely, aside from the usual hardships of writing a thesis. If I just aim for the big, instead of skirting around, this can also mitigate any risk of feeling like I am avoiding, even though I am working. Remember, motion vs action, I could find no end of motion, but that will not work to truly attenuate avoidance. To overcome avoidance, I must be working smart, doing the most useful thing. Right now, that means code, code and more code. As an aside to writing the code, is the way in which I implement the next levels of it, which is natural, and I will need to do that as I go. But you see, that’s what I alluded to before. When I proceed with the code, I may find there is something I am not sure how to do, and thus I will find that out. A problm presents itself directly in my line of sight, and I proceed to deal with it. If something truly important needs to be done, it will present itself in the direction I am looking. I cannot proceed with motion, I must move forward with action.

If I frame the rest of my work as a small group of large areas, and I pick the biggest, baddest, most difficult, then I will be able to unravel anything else that needs doing alongside it. Logically, if I am tackling the biggest problems, then I will not be avoiding anything. But I can seemingly be challenging my hangups, but it is only motion.

Aim at the big, notice when I am avoiding, unpack the avoidance, mitigate definitions and feelings of fear.