I constantly overestimate the abilities of my future self.
It never turns out well for me and usually shows itself in one of two ways. Micro-strangulation or blissful immersion.
Micro-strangulation
This is the most common of the two. It’s where you make 50 kinda bad decisions over the course of a week or two.
I just did this, so it’s painfully fresh.
For the month of June, I was the lead DP on a documentary shoot all over Europe. It was a great trip, but no vacation.
Needless to say, when I got back, I was slightly, mostly, kaput.
No problem.
I planned ahead.
I had one week of decompression scheduled. Reentry taken care of.
Except it wasn’t. Because for that week of decompression, I effectively strangled myself in slow motion. Nothing major, just loads of micro-decisions that pushed me farther down.
Binging
Late nights
0 planning ahead
It started slow, each decision a tiny bit worse than before. Social media was the first to creep in. Then I started staying up a little later. One thing led to another, and before long, I was throwing away hours on end with useless activities. Stuff that felt good in the moment, but dragged me down in the long run.
It’s easy to rationalize these types of activities when the goal is to relax and there are no other boundaries.
What’s terrifying about this is how fast I degraded in a week. Imagine if this went for a month, a year, or a lifetime? I only did this for a week, and it cost me 1-2 days of high performance. That’s a costly mistake.
What’s the alternative? What was I missing?
Intentionality. Few activities are energizing, beneficial, or rewarding if they are done passively or automatically. Intentionality is, in part, what gives meaning. I’ve written about intentionality (see below) pretty extensively, so I won’t repeat myself.
I’m reminding myself what the non-negotiables are. For me, sleep is one of them. For you, it might be something else. We fall proportionately to our weaknesses.
(Free) What Quiet Mornings and Productivity Have in Common
(Free) The Top 0.01% of Pure Productivity
(Paid) My Personal System for Being Intentional
Blissful Immersion
Yesterday, I was going through my planner from last month, looking for examples to put in an upcoming video. Specifically, the weekly review.
Quick note: After almost a year, my planner will be ready to purchase in a few weeks.
Flipping through my old planner was mostly boring, but I came across a particular review that peaked my interest. The question was “What distractions broke your focus this week?” and here’s what I wrote.
“I lost 80% of my productivity on Thursday because I played volleyball the night before. Realize the trade-offs.” The reason was that I went to bed about 4 hours later than normal and lost a lot of sleep. The next day was rough.
I call this blissful immersion because it’s jumping without looking where to land. The leap is great, volleyball was fun, but the landing was horrible.
This is a another classic example of overestimating the abilities of my future self. In the moment, I was so excited to play volleyball that I was oblivious to the trade-offs.
We get hit on both sides with these. On the one hand, it’s easy to assume that “one time” won’t make that big of a difference, like with staying up too late. On the other hand, it’s easy to let little disciplines slip without realizing it, or rationalizing that such a small decision won’t amount to anything.
Both sides are dangerous.
These are weak points I’ve noticed in myself and other people.
The antidote is consistently reviewing our position in relation to our goal and maintaining intentionality in what we do and say.
These are the non-negotiables.
I forgot them and it cost me.