Superhuman Mode, In Review
This went out yesterday as issue 21 of The Angelo Report, a weekly newsletter published every Sunday afternoon.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about going into “superhuman mode” for the month of November. The conceit was that I'd make a deliberate and concerted effort to kick off/stop some habits and routines, track things meticulously, and that it would take a superhuman level of effort to do this for 30 days as it's just not a sustainable way of living.
Last week, I… didn’t write anything. That should give you a pretty good idea of how superhuman mode went.
So, yeah. For me, it wasn't even sustainable for thirty days. But I think it's worth digging into the whys and wherefores.
First, and I think foremost, I didn't have a strongly motivating reason to do any of this. The quote says that you can't manage what you don't measure, and I believe that true, but I also think that some people —especially those in the software business, like me— have a tendency to collect way more data than we'll need and figure out how it's useful later.
(Side note: that's how tech companies get into trouble with privacy violations and data breaches.)
Data that's collected without a guiding principle, or even a hypothesis, isn't especially valuable. Instead, it injects overhead into the system and noise into the signal. Sure, I had a reason to track certain things: I wanted to avoid “breaking the streak” in trying to change my habits. As I wrote:
I've mentioned before that I'm generally not feeling especially great. I'm dealing with some pain, my sleep has been pretty spotty, I feel anxious more often than not, and I'm regulating my mood with things that aren't great for me. I don't really have any hobbies anymore.
I didn't used to feel like this, and I want to give myself a solid kick to get back to it.
It turns out that “I don't feel great so I'm going to make a bunch of changes and also track all of that stuff so that it really feels like work” isn't strongly motivating reason to do something. It just amplifies the effort required to make a change, and only for the sake of making a change.
The second issue I encountered is related to the first.
“Try a bunch of stuff and see what sticks” might be a reasonable approach for 3M, but doing so in the hopes of finding something that interests you is a recipe for burnout. For me at least, it's hard to get particularly excited with a thing when I see minimal progress, and minimal progress is what you get when you spread your efforts across a bunch of projects. Your willpower and discipline are depleted faster than you think over the course of a day, and once that tank runs dry, you're done until the next day.
Around The Web
Fitting with the theme of this week's newsletter, Joan Westenberg writes about the manufactured anxiety of self-improvement culture:
Burnout is the inevitable endpoint of this vicious cycle, though we rarely recognize it for what it is. Instead, we call it laziness or weakness. We berate ourselves for not being able to keep up, for not having the energy to “crush it” every single day. But burnout isn’t a personal failing. It’s a predictable response to an untenable way of living. When every moment of your life is spent chasing some unattainable ideal, it’s only a matter of time before you collapse under the weight of it all. And yet, even in burnout, we’re not allowed to rest. The moment we stop striving, guilt takes over. Rest becomes another task to optimize. We start reading articles about the “right” way to relax, as if relaxation itself is something we can fail at.
As a reformed productivity acolyte, I can't agree more. We went from 43 Folders, inbox zero, and Lifehacker to an entire industry designed to monetize your anxiety about failing as a human being. And now that the pushback against hustle culture is growing, my feeds are getting overwhelmed with thoughtpieces about the best books, apps, and products to help you accept that you're never going to get everything done.
This one, single thought in Jorge Galindo's article on the kind framework was a lightbulb moment:
Being nice is the new punk.
We're so triggered by each other that listening respectfully and replying thoughtfully might just be an act of rebellion. Damn.
Thought Of The Week
A natural consequence of guided introspection —for example, learning to meditate, journaling prompts, or cognitive behavioural therapy— is that you start to pay more attention to how you interact with others.
You start paying attention to what you’re thinking while you’re listening. Are you being curious, or have you already made up your mind? Are you hearing a feeling, or is it the truth?
Not only do you notice this when you’re interacting to others, but also when you’re paying attention to your own thoughts.
Don't accept your thoughts as true.