I’ve thankfully been able to move beyond that a little bit. A large part has been getting more confident in my work; or more precisely more confident that everyone else’s work is generally terrible as well and mine is just fine in comparison.
One thing I’ve found incredibly useful is having developed people who I can give first drafts to. I can accept that I’m doing “sub-standard” work because they’ll tell me if it’s actually bad or not.* I’ve been surprised at how positive some responses have been to things I thought were terrible.
Getting over that inner critic can be tough. Sometimes it helps to have a team.
* My mom was the first person I’d this with- her “I have no idea what you are talking about, but it looks convincing to me” stamp of approval has always been amazingly encouraging. Thanks Mom!
I think that's why writing my PhD thesis is taking so long. The final deadline is december which means i have to self motivate the whole way, something that is alien to me after 10 years of "the fear"
I've always approached this thought from the perspective of "how much time can I spend" instead of energy levels. Thinking about it, it's likely a mixture of the two. Thanks for widening my perspective.
Pre-covid I was regularly doing an intense morning spin class before going to the office, so I was "tired" when I started my day, and my productivity was great. Not perfect, but much better. Since WFH/SIP I don't have the opportunity to do the same kind of intense cardio, so I've relegated myself to blocking my afternoons so all my meetings get scheduled in the morning. Even then, I still am not that productive in the afternoon, and sometimes resort to getting work done in the evenings when I feel I can take on a larger task.
Its been hard to adjust to forcing myself to write and do the hard stuff.
Being tired is terrible for your short term mental performance and your long term health. It also increases the chances you will be involved in an accident.
Yeah I’m like that too except my doctor had a name for it
1. What do you think you are supposed to do now? 2. What kind of difficulty are you facing?
And then it's easier to continue working.
[1]: often attributed to Voltaire
You can also have a deadline. Productivity goes up as deadline approaches.
When I'm tired, I don't have the mental capacity to go above and beyond, so I just concentrate on producing something, anything. Turns out it's much easier to modify something that is sort of crappy but exists than create something great out of thin air.
The take away is that if you can, just produce the crappiest, quickest thing you can first. Once you're done, seriously evaluate if it actually needs to be any better, because often this crappy solution isn't actually that crappy and perfectly sufficient (I'm looking at you, Unix). If you think it can be better or needs to be better, don't be afraid to throw the whole thing away and try and make a slightly less crappy version. Even if you redid the same thing 5 times and the result is only slightly better each time, it's often less effort than if you tried to create the final solution from scratch on the first try.
I don't know where this quote comes from, but I really like it and I think embodies this kind of philosophy and thinking: you don't understand a problem until you've solved it.