Rowan Spazzoli

One of my favourite blog posts of all time is Why Procrastinators Procrastinate by Tim Urban. In it, he describes two different “brains”, one of the procrastinator, which looks like this:

And the brain of the non-procrastinator, which looks like this:

As you can see, the main difference between the two is the instant gratification monkey. This monkey derails the rational decision maker constantly. He directs the procrastinator to seek food (even if he’s not hungry), meander through the internet, take naps and clean the house. All of this instead of working.

My brain looks like the procrastinators brain. Except the monkey is not a cute, innocent looking creature. I have an instant gratification gorilla called Dave and he is very prepared to beat the daylights out of my rational decision making side as often as possible.

Actual picture of Dave, ready to ruin my day (Photo by Pixabay) 

So Dave is regularly able to derail my day. But it’s okay, I’m usually able to recover some productivity. And on deadline days, Dave lets me have an extra bit of time as long as I feed him properly.

A week with no Dave

Dave and I have gotten quite good at living together. However, I have a major problem:

I never take into account that Dave will still be around tomorrow, next week or next month

For example, I’ve said to myself that next week I have no appointments for anything. So I’ll be able to put in at least 50 hours of work. Which would be fine, if Dave didn’t exist.

But he does.

And so I will get some work done.

And Dave will take his share of time too.

I did the same thing with this week. I estimated the amount of time I would have to work based on the idea that I would be completely rational and able to stay focused for an outrageous amount of time.  And I do the same with most of my work.

When I then get to the time that has been planned, I realise that Dave is still around. And I’m sent into a panic when I try and achieve maximum output when, in fact, I have a giant gorilla distracting me.

What are you on about Rowan?

Hold your horses (and monkeys), there’s a point to this.

When I plan my life and time, I do so with the maximum objectives in mind. As if all my time is spent optimally and there are no hiccups along the way. And 99 times out of 100, there will be something that sets me off course. Whether it’s internal, with my instant gratification gorilla distracting me, or external, with my stuff being stolen

This makes me feel like I’m consistently not living up to my expectations. As if I’m failing, again and again.

But I’m not.

I’m actually just plodding along at normal Rowan pace. Though my expectations are set way above that. So I feel as if they are constantly being missed.

I try to plan my life as if there is no Dave. But I should plan it with the active recognition that he is around. That he will be here tomorrow, next week and next month. Therefore I can continue to fight him (and lose) or I can accept that he is going to be here and make room for him.

I should plan for a distraction. For tiredness. For unexpected events.

I need to plan with Dave. Set up time to drift off, allow for naps and the odd derailment.

And in doing this, I’ll set more reasonable and achievable expectations for myself. Allowing me to be less on edge and allowing Dave the play time he needs.

Image was taken at Cape Point a few weeks ago. I’ve uploaded a different picture of this guy before, but I’m still upset he stole our Doritos

Blog: 204/365

Song of the day:  Fin Evans – Never Forget You (Feat. Alex Foster)

A few weeks ago I read a blog by Seth Godin where he said he was completely out of ideas. After 16 years of blogging and over 8000 original posts, he had finally gone dry. The barrel was empty.

This struck a cord with me. I was only 170 posts in and I was starting to feel like I was running low on ideas. All the deep insights I had seemed to been used. Sometimes it felt like I was just rewording old ideas.

Maybe I only had around 150 ideas and they had been spent?

It was only  later, in a follow up blog, that Seth revealed it had been an April fools joke:

And today, give or take, is the sixteenth anniversary of this blog. Not quite on April Fool’s Day a bunch of years ago, but close enough. I feel badly that so many people were fooled by this morning’s post, and I’m grateful to those that wrote in with concern. But no, I was making a point, not telling the truth. It turns out that showing up is a great way to find new ideas, and I have no plans on stopping.

Despite knowing that it was light prank, it has played on my mind quite often. There are some nights that I just sit at the computer screen, not knowing where to start. And others where I’ll write a post, only to realize I wrote a similar one a few months before.

This was again brought to my attention today when a comment on my blog today said that it appeared I may be getting bored.

I thought about this and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t bored. I’ve been really enjoying my blogs over the past while.

Instead, I have run out of ideas. I’ve run out of my well formed ideas.

• The ideas you spend years thinking of.
• The ideas that you carry with you through different stages of your life.
• The ideas that you have convinced yourself are absolutely true.

And now, I’ve started entering unfamiliar territory. A place where I have to conceive new ideas, challenge them and leave them open to scrutiny.

Where they haven’t had years to form. Where they might have gaps. And where I might not fully understand them.

It’s the next phase of my blogging and development. More rapid idea formation and more letting myself go.

I’m not out of ideas.

I’m just learning how to come up with them more quickly.

Image was taken in 2006, and this is a picture of that picture (I can’t find the original). The three brothers are in the picture, with Fabio looking how I feel at the end of the day

Blog: 202/365

Song of the day: Don’t stop me now – Queen