Looking at your past selves lets you see the tiny seeds of thought that grew into prevailing patterns and frames that you take for granted now. And you learn what worked and what didn't, what was important and what wasn't. This is wisdom.
You are a four-dimensional being. You have definite bounds in length, width, height, and time. And you can cast your consciousness through time: into the past through memory, and into the future through prediction and planning. Are you acquainted with your one-year-ago self? With your future self?
I’ve been addicted to perfect conditions. Once there’s a “reason” for underperforming, a narrative explanation for it, then my body will take the opportunity to underperform.
Laziness/procrastination has a kind of independent momentum to it. When you're having an off day, even if you consciously commit to getting back on track, the rut tends to find its way back to you within a couple of hours. I list three different courses of action you can take to get out of a laziness death spiral.
This post is for overthinkers. Really it's about a specific kind of overthinking; we could call it "over-managing." It's when you know what you should be working on at a given time, but instead of doing the work, you continue to deliberate over big-picture / planning decisions. I call this pattern of thought the "Manager." By contrast, the "Employee" does most of the hands-on work without worrying about the big picture, thanks to the Manager's direction. As productive generalists, we have to be good Managers, but we also need to be able to call the plan "good enough" and be the Employee.
Some "generalists" are really natural specialists who suffer from fears or weird pressures that cause them to behave like generalists. So we wonder, "Am I living like a generalist because it's in my nature, or am I doing it in reaction to something negative?" Are you a True Generalist, deep down?