And what to do about it? My personal pseudoscience
The other day, I had a bit of free time so I ended up dialoguing with myself like they do. (Side quest— hope that someone else comments that they do this self talk thing all the time too so you don’t seem fully cuckoo.)
Q: So, what are you up to these days?
A: Well, I’m a wantrepreneur. I quit my job, moved back in with my folks, live on the equivalent of Ramen every day.
Q: How’s that going?
A: Hah. It’s going…I know that the chances are extremely high that I will fail, bomb, give up, tail between my legs shooting off resumes and reading posts on how to stand out above the average job seeker. I’ll probably end up looking like this guy. I’ve got the hairline down, though flip phones are so 2005!
I’ll probably end up looking like this guy (Courtesy: Pexels)
Q: Why?
A: Because a vast majority of wantrepreneurs end up like this and I’m nothing if not aggressively middle of the pack when it comes to entrepreneurship!
Q: Ugh! That’s probably statistically true but why will YOU specifically fail?
A: Because I stop working on shit all the time! I’ll start something which will seem amazing and may even start gaining traction in some way. But suddenly, out of nowhere, I will find that my enthusiasm for the project waning. This happened with Lug-it (a p2p shipping network), with Datajoy (a DNS based ad blocker built around pies and cavities), it even happened with my mobile gym which had paying customers! Damn…
A: So why do you stop working on shit?
A: Because shit gets boring. Or because I find something else, newer and shinier, to chase.
Q: Why does that happen?
A: There are times when I don’t know what to do next minute. For example, I may have a couple of interviews lined up two days from today but that very minute, I’m out of things to do.
Or I might have to spend an afternoon chasing facts and figures or run some models on future profitability of a line of business. And when I’m faced with a mountain of work to do that I am not very good at, I just shut down.
Q: So what happens then?
When this happens, I start tinkering around new ideas. Or I may start writing code just to see what my website may end up looking like. Anything to avoid the stupid, unfamiliar stuff
Q: Hmmm…So why do you do that?
(Side note — At this point, I was entering the world of pure guesswork and half baked science knowledge but I *think* this is basically true for me and is likely to be true of many other wantrepreneurs.)
When I am bored, I guess my brain’s reward seeking behavior kicks in. It makes me do things which are likely to give me a dopamine rush.
For example, I may start to build out my website — not because my strategy needs a website right now but because building websites is just something I do and doing it gives me pleasure. So I’ll waste an entire day tweaking some stupid CSS just to keep my mind occupied.
Or, instead of the open-endedness of finding and collecting data to build a decent predictive model of the future, I start reading blogs and self help posts (Are you also doing this right now??). I am usually vaguely aware that I need to work on the boring stuff but reading posts is just so much voyeuristic fun.
Or, instead of writing content to boost my searchability, I might end up tweeting at some important figure in my target list — not because tweeting at this person is important right now but because I get a dopamine rush from having my tweet read and responded to.
Upshot
Paradoxically, the more versatile you are, the harder it is to resist the siren call of dopamine. After all, there are so many different ways you can indulge your brain that doing actual work seems that much harder.
If all this pseudoscience resonates with you, you will also agree that constant stimulation is not feasible. With every step forward, you will move sideways a whole bunch of steps and that will kill your forward momentum.
Is there a way to fix it?
Yes, there is and it is laughably simple. What has worked for me to a degree is to
- build a daily schedule and
- stick to the schedule.
I put literally everything in my schedule. Here’s yesterday’s example…which is mostly the same as today’s and day before yesterday’s.
This does the trick for me. When I have down time, I don’t give myself permission to surf the web or tweet at someone. I mean, I may still do that to an extent but I know I have finish up stuff in my list — I end up practising my music or reading a random post just so I can find something to comment about. Those checkboxes aren’t going to check themselves.
Results?
- I have written 30 posts since March 10th
- I (may) have found a co-founder (After years of working solo, I can’t tell you how exciting this is to me.)
- I was able to practice music 4 times last week which is way up from previous weeks
- I recorded 4 blog narrations which has made me much more comfortable with the sound of my own voice and articulation
- I read two fat books — one being the excellent It can’t happen here which should be required reading before every election.
I’m liking this strategy of guardrailing my day to keep my focus. Hope this helps (at least) some of you.