The Rest of the Day and Anti-Goals
Mar. 27th, 2023 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI walked over to the school and got A. We had a nice chat as we walked home, then she went upstairs and spent a couple hours in the bathroom and planning her outfit. At that point, I insisted she wrap up the outfit planning and do some homework. I have book group tonight and I wanted the homework done(ish) before that started, as R. will be doing an indoor bike ride overlapping with that so no one would be available if she had issues. Also, she should be winding down for bed at that point. I want to be clear that I did all of this _before_ listening to the Art of Decluttering podcast about anti-goals. And yes, Dear Reader, those were all anti-goals.
I listened to the rest of the Speaking of Psychology podcast about bipolar disorder. It is interesting that 25-30% of kids who look like they are cycling wind up being fine, even without being on medication, in their 20s and 30s, and they don’t really know why.
I tried listening to an Odd Lots with Betsy Cohen recorded on the 11th about SVB, but it didn’t age very well. I gave up in favor of trying a new podcast, The Art of Decluttering. Australian accent! So that’s interesting. It was about anti-goals, which I had never heard of, but which seem to be taking seriously the idea of You Know What You Don’t Want So Plan to Make It Not Happen. This comes under the heading of Tied up in Nots for me, however, apparently the kind of inversion works for some people. There’s a 2017 Medium article that might be an origin point:
https://awilkinson.medium.com/the-power-of-anti-goals-c38f5f46d23c
I wouldn’t call these anti-goals? I would call this boundary setting, learning to say no, making sure you understand the purpose of the unpleasant things you are doing (sometimes we really do have to do unpleasant things but if we don’t know why we are doing them, there is _some_ kind of problem going on). I think, however, that a lot of people attempt to adopt as goals things they don’t actually want, but they think they should want. And then they are not especially motivating. In general, these people are much clearer on what they do NOT want than what they DO want. I guess this is a starting point?
I’m not — this one time! — going to do a lot of links to random blogs and videos and whatever about anti-goals. It’s _really clear_ that a lot of people name goals they don’t really want (!!!) and they describe planning processes that are fundamentally unhinged (figure it all out in detail and then Life Happens).
Meanwhile, a comment on an earlier post pointed at a particularly apropos twitter thread about being motivated by anxiety, not enjoying the anxiety, getting it fixed with meds or whatever then suffering performance declines. Very Clear that people are in fact motivating themselves with anxiety. And once I realized that, I quit trying to fix anxiety and started working on an alternative approach to getting things done (obviously, going to be a streamlined GTD or similar, with 3 goals, one of which is taking care of one’s own basic needs, and one of which is knowing what the next step on the taking care of one’s own basic needs is, leaving an open slot for Whatever Else You Want To Do). As I am nibbling at bits and pieces of that project, it is become so very clear just how great the need for something in this general area really is.
I listened to the rest of the Speaking of Psychology podcast about bipolar disorder. It is interesting that 25-30% of kids who look like they are cycling wind up being fine, even without being on medication, in their 20s and 30s, and they don’t really know why.
I tried listening to an Odd Lots with Betsy Cohen recorded on the 11th about SVB, but it didn’t age very well. I gave up in favor of trying a new podcast, The Art of Decluttering. Australian accent! So that’s interesting. It was about anti-goals, which I had never heard of, but which seem to be taking seriously the idea of You Know What You Don’t Want So Plan to Make It Not Happen. This comes under the heading of Tied up in Nots for me, however, apparently the kind of inversion works for some people. There’s a 2017 Medium article that might be an origin point:
https://awilkinson.medium.com/the-power-of-anti-goals-c38f5f46d23c
I wouldn’t call these anti-goals? I would call this boundary setting, learning to say no, making sure you understand the purpose of the unpleasant things you are doing (sometimes we really do have to do unpleasant things but if we don’t know why we are doing them, there is _some_ kind of problem going on). I think, however, that a lot of people attempt to adopt as goals things they don’t actually want, but they think they should want. And then they are not especially motivating. In general, these people are much clearer on what they do NOT want than what they DO want. I guess this is a starting point?
I’m not — this one time! — going to do a lot of links to random blogs and videos and whatever about anti-goals. It’s _really clear_ that a lot of people name goals they don’t really want (!!!) and they describe planning processes that are fundamentally unhinged (figure it all out in detail and then Life Happens).
Meanwhile, a comment on an earlier post pointed at a particularly apropos twitter thread about being motivated by anxiety, not enjoying the anxiety, getting it fixed with meds or whatever then suffering performance declines. Very Clear that people are in fact motivating themselves with anxiety. And once I realized that, I quit trying to fix anxiety and started working on an alternative approach to getting things done (obviously, going to be a streamlined GTD or similar, with 3 goals, one of which is taking care of one’s own basic needs, and one of which is knowing what the next step on the taking care of one’s own basic needs is, leaving an open slot for Whatever Else You Want To Do). As I am nibbling at bits and pieces of that project, it is become so very clear just how great the need for something in this general area really is.