by jodrellblank | 2025-12-28 17:24:24+00:00
You can't appease a:

10 PRINT "You didn't do enough! Scum! Do more!"
20 GOTO 10

loop by noticing the things you do during the day and bowing and scraping, offering them up to the loop, trying to convince it that you did do enough. It doesn't have a definition of enough it only has a demand for more. When does a hoarder list all the things they own and then feel happy because they won at hoarding and they can stop now?

Worse, by trying to argue, the loop strengthens. It's inside your brain, it's a cognitive behaviour, apparently somehow you learned it as an important message to remind yourself of. Arguing back that you did enough isn't "hearing the important message" so the message gets more insistent, louder - HEY! LISTEN! you DID NOT do enough! SCUM! DO MORE!

The cognitive behaviour to change is the judging, not the response to the judging. Where did I learn to beat myself up about productivity with that addict's loop? Why am I holding on to it when it hurts and makes me feel bad? What desirable behaviour or values is it trying to achieve that makes me unable to drop it? How can I uphold the same values and encourage the same positive behaviours in a positive-reinforcement way instead of a negative-reinforcement way so I can let go of that and feel less shitty?

> "make it clear for yourself that you, in fact, do a lot of things throughout the day"

That's still framed 'I am only a good person if I do a lot of things'. It's you who controls your definition of a good person. You who holds the definition so high that you feel you don't live up to it. You who creates the bad feelings when you judge that you don't live up to the definition you control. Which is a sitcom farce of a way to live. The missing bit is that you didn't consciously set it, you accidentally learned it from childhood or society or religion or osmosis, and don't know that you can change it; it feels immutable and obviously correct.[1]

Either way it's the same chore of making of your bed, but in one multiverse you feel negatively compelled to do it, you feel bad while doing it and dreadful if you miss it. In another multiverse you choose to do it, feel good while doing it, and if you miss it that's fine. In one multiverse you're imagining future-you having a nice bed to climb into tonight so you're feeling mild positive emotions (satisfied, pleased, helpful, kind, useful). And if you miss doing it then future-you can forgive you because it's not a big deal and you're feeling neutral. In another multiverse you do it while imagining your tyrant grandmother scowling at you. However much effort you put into making the bed, it's never enough. If you imagine missing it, she's screaming at you-aged-6 about how you're the laziest child she's ever known and you'll end up homeless and destitute, an embarassment to her, a disgrace to your family, and she's going to smack some obedience into you[2]. So you do it while feeling mild to strong negative emotions (anxious, afraid, bad, scared, shaking, panicky). And you're probably aware as an adult how unfair this is so add in some (angry, resentful, unfairly treated, bitter) and if you can't easily get away from it some (frustration, contempt of yourself, envy of/inferior to people who don't live like this). There's no way to win in this multiverse - there's no way to get positive emotions. The best case is doing it promptly and thoroughly and trying to minimize the negative emotions by whirlwinding through and not thinking about it.

You can't list all the days of your life that you made your bed and show them to imaginary-tyrant-grandma hoping she will approve and you can feel good forever. She isn't real, she's a "10 SCOWL; 20 GOTO 10" loop stuck in your head. That mocking image of her will never be proud of you, never be satisfied. Nor can you try to say "she might not be happy but I can be happy about all the times I did this" because she's in your head so that you can't be happy and because that unhappiness drives you to put more effort in, which is the behaviour she wanted to instill. Reinforced by the nagging almost sub-conscious image of lying in a ditch with your mother disowning you, which gets stronger the more you try to be happy, and weaker every time you are scared and work harder.

The tyrant-grandma-loop is the cognitive behaviour that needs a mechanic, and all the related lifetime of images/ideas/behaviours that are feeding into it, or fed by it. Back to the article, after an entire year of tada-list, the author writes "forces you to have an accomplishment each day so you can write it down, and this added stress to my day". Hmm.

[1] (Then you think that if someone says 'you can change it', they must be saying 'it is easy to change'. Then you either feel bad that you haven't succeeded at something easy so you must be stupid, or you dismiss them by saying "thanks I'm cured" because you "tried" ignoring it and that didn't work so they must be stupid)

[2] Which, sadly, she probably felt was absolutely true, handed down from her mother or father, a torment she also lived under her whole life.