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That is interesting. Your experience sounds very similar to mine. I find myself wondering what affects the way that concentration difficulties and akrasia feels.
What does 'difficulty concentrating' feel like for you? I often find that value words, like 'good', 'bad', 'difficult', 'happy', 'sad', mean different things for me than for most people.
I spend much of my free time working on a game that I intend to sell at some point. The indie game community talks a lot about focusing, overcoming difficulties concentrating, etc. But I've never seen someone describe in detail what 'difficulty concentrating' or 'difficulty getting to work' feels like. I find myself wondering if they are talking about what I think they are talking about. It's possible that their tips don't often work because we are thinking about different things.
Akrasia gets talked about a lot here, as well as ways of improving productivity, and I'm really curious what akrasia or difficulty concentrating actually feels like for other people. Taboo the words 'akrasia', 'procrastination', 'distraction' and other similar words, and tell me what it feels like.
Here's what 'difficulty getting to work' typically feels like for me: I look at my list of tasks and I get a strong feeling of despair. Starting work on the list feels like I'm chaining myself to an assembly line in a grey factory in a grey world making grey featureless joyless objects, and I'm going to be there for the rest of eternity. It's strange because I actually feel like what I'm producing is colorful, beautiful and interesting. I'm not sure if it is related to the length of the list. I thought it was perhaps due to nebulous definition of the task leaving uncertainty as to what the finished task was supposed to look like, but I've had the same problems even with well defined tasks.
Here's what 'difficulty concentrating' feels like: Imagine that you've got a good sized dog, and you're trying to make it look at something. You grab its head and hold it down to look at whatever it is, and the dog fights you the whole time. Sometimes this will pass if I start with a simple task and get going. Other times it feels like every line of code I write is a continual struggle to hold the dog's head in place. Or imagine that you've really got to go to the bathroom, and you're trying to ignore it and just work. There's a pressure that demands release. It's almost like there's a voice in my head (not an actual voice, it's not schizophrenia) screaming for me to turn off my brain and play a video game or do something else that requires no brain power.
I would estimate that I have difficulty with these feelings at least 30% of the time I try to sit down and work. Sometimes these bother me at my day job, but they show up most frequently when I'm working in the evenings and weekends.
So what does it feel like for you?
I imagine someone will ask about this at some point: I have been diagnosed with Bipolar Type II, I currently take lamotrigine, quetiapine, and bupropion to manage it. I've had problems like this at least since my early teens.
It's been a while, but if I recall correctly, my mouth felt pretty dry, definitely no excess saliva. I may have to buy a big bag of fries and conduct research.
I used to get a feeling in my upper throat/back of throat that sounds similar to what you are feeling. It has been several years since I've felt it. It seems like the only time I ever had it was when eating thick cut fries. It felt like I had a wad of food stuck in the back of my throat or upper throat, even though I didn't. I usually found it to be uncomfortable and it seems like it was often accompanied by a slight sensation of heartburn. It didn't typically last long though, no more than ten minutes, possibly less if I drank a lot of water. But aside from having felt something similar, I have no further light to shed on the subject unfortunately.
That is very interesting. Kind of validating, and one more bit of evidence in favor of trying exposure therapy. Thank you for sharing that.
That's an interesting possibility. I don't have any particularly strong memories of being warned about choking hazards, about the only one I remember is warnings about plastic bags.
For lentils, I'm fine handling them in bulk, and eating spoonfuls of them doesn't bother me. When most of them are gone, and there are only a few scattered in my plate or bowl they start to trigger the revulsion a little bit, although not nearly as strong as many other things.
This actually seems to suggest that there is some desensitization going on. I never had lentils until I was an adult, I have however been eating rice for as long as I can remember, and individual rice grains don't trigger the reaction under most circumstances. Small candies, like skittles, m&ms, smarties, etc. don't really trigger it either, in most circumstances, which again, I have been eating since childhood.
Interesting, not exactly the same thing, but it does sound similar. You're probably right about desensitization, there are some rather small things I can handle without problem. I'll have to give that a shot. Thanks.
Ha, it was actually looking through the Universal Experiences comments that prompted me to come here and ask if anyone had any experience with something like this. I didn't see anything in the comments there that sounded similar.
I kind of doubt it's related to fear triggers, because I don't like spiders either, and my aversion to spiders feels very different from this. Interesting thing to think about though. Thanks.
I think I recall seeing somewhere that the open thread is a good place for potentially silly questions. So I've got one to ask.
As long as I can remember small things give me the willies. Objects around the size of a penny or smaller trigger a kind of revulsion response if I have to handle them. Things like small coins, those paper circles created when using a hole punch, those stickers that they stick on fruit. I'm not typically bothered by handling a lot of the objects at the same time, a handful of pennies wouldn't bother me.
One thing that's odd, well aside from everything else about it, is that it seems to be especially triggered by jewelry. Rings, basically any piercings, even smallish necklaces. I'm alright as long as they don't get too close to me, but I start feeling weird if I have to interact with them.
Anyway, I've always thought this was pretty strange and it recently occurred to me that someone here probably has some idea of what's going on. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
I submit my preferences for review: B > A > D > C > ~E > E
I want to echo the sentiment that Sunday typically isn't a real great day for me for meeting up. Thanks for noting it, and thanks for organizing the meetup. I'll look forward to meeting you all next time.
Thank you, that's going to give me a lot to go through and process. Very interesting looking stuff.
Hello, I've been lurking around Less Wrong for several months, mostly reading through the sequences. I especially enjoyed the ones on free will and happiness theory.
I finally created an account a week or so ago so that I could express interest in a Salt Lake City meetup. And now here I am introducing myself.
I’m a thirty year old white male living in Salt Lake City. I write point of sale software by day, and video games by night.
I think my primary motivation into rationality was my upbringing. I was raised in a very religious, and rather unhealthy home. That coupled with the facts that the LDS culture isn’t particularly friendly to nerds, and that I seemed to believe in a different God than most of my fellow churchgoers led to me being told all the time that I was wrong. So, the only way to ever be right was to painstakingly trace my beliefs back to original assumptions that anyone would agree with.
Less Wrong is actually the first source I’ve found on rational thinking, so my self taught methods seem a bit sloppy next to the elegance of the thinking that goes on here.
My big interest, the thing that drives me, is art. You know the feeling you get when you hear an amazing piece of music? Or see a fantastic movie? Or play an incredible game? I want to understand that, I want to know what it does to your brain, and how I could reproduce it.
Anyway, I look forward to being a part of the community. I probably won’t comment much unfortunately, still have some biases that tend to get in the way of that, but I’ll be here lurking, and watching.
I would be interested