General Info

My email: marc@marccarsoncoaching.com

If you replied to me on Reddit or somewhere else online, we haven’t really met, and even worse, I might not remember you. I never claimed to have the world’s best memory!

So, please introduce yourself as if cyberspace is not that real. Like, introduce yourself as if cyberspace is kind of embarrassing and meatspace is truly where life happens. That’s about right. Not that cyberspace (strange word, but I’m going with it) is fake, but it kind of hobbles communications. Stuf dosn’t get comuanittecated corekctly, specialee emotively phraised stuf. And I remember your face much better than your Reddit username.

If you don’t need coaching, it’s OK. I don’t really want to coach everyone, and in practice the relationship has to work for me, too.

I can’t reply to all emails but I do try.

Why doesn’t your blog have comments? I have information to share.

I think you’ve put your finger on the problem! When I enabled comments in the past, lots of people had information to share. But that’s the catch: People tend to share informationally, in the best-case scenario. So there’s very little attention given to style and the way the communication looks to the other party.

The quality of internet comments is unfortunately very low, even among groups of super amazing people like you. And I blame tech—we need better tech to help us usher in a comment experience that’s better for all parties.

So, it’s not your fault. (Unless you’re like me, in which case sometimes it is you.)

And thus, for now, the easiest way to share information with me is email.

People I generally enjoy hearing from:

• People with questions
• People with interesting experiences to share
• People who are struggling with an INTJ and need to vent a little
• Readers who are letting me know they exist—tell me a bit about yourself.
• People who want to send me some music to listen to
• People who want to share a unique fictional character, like a superhero they enjoy

People who I may hear from whether I like it or not:

• People who have some serious information for me, like a podcast I’d enjoy. (But the thing is like an hour long! Whine)
• People who wonder if I like what they like, because liking the same things is life-giving (But what if I don’t? Awkward)
• People who want to share how great they are because they’re INTJ, completely missing the point (And I get it, but I can’t really encourage it, can I? Maybe I’ll just shoot that person a congrats or something)
• People who have something they did that I should check out, mainly because they’re an INTJ (I love what you create—but if it’s an app, or if it requires a lot of time, what if I can’t?)

(I’m generally OK with this stuff but my tolerance for it varies. You see, sometimes I commuicate a;nd relationship bebrokenly also’s.)

All you have to do is sign up for my app / their app, it’s amazing

Do you know how many INTJ apps I’ve signed up for? (Writing this brings to mind exhausted LMAO sentiments on my end.) Seriously, this is not as easy as you think. I mainly do this kind of thing for really special friends and clients these days…

How much does your coaching cost?

Pricing

I’m one of those INTJs who hacks everything. Can I hack a free coaching bundle? I will write a blog post about you on my blog which currently receives 10x the local average of traffic in my rich suburban area. People say I’m a vampire in relationships but I don’t like feeling bad about myself and it’s causing problems and here are a few words on why you should pity me.

I may not be able to handle you. Send me some links to your favorite music on Youtube anyway.

But but I can usually get free admission to seminars. Here, I’ll give you my login to Jordan Peterson’s site, you should check him out, my boss paid for me and I think we can both be logged in at the same time.

I want you to spend some time thinking about how this looks.

I know a book you need to read.

On a good day: Maybe this is interesting but often not. I might give it a look, but I have a long to-read list and don’t prioritize reading like I used to.

On a bad day: I mean, really…you want me to read this whole book AND I don’t know you? Let’s get real here. This is not exactly a book review blog, is it?

I know a Youtube video you need to watch. Upside: It’s an hour long.

It looks like a great documentary. But don’t do this to people!

Have you ever heard of (inspiring person)?

No, but now I’m feeling guilty and lame. I’m glad I’m not the only one who sometimes starts relationships with such ego-crushing sensitivity.

So you write this blog in order to sell or promote coaching?

Not really. Go back and read what I wrote above and ask yourself how promotional it sounds. I love you all but this blog is mostly a subjective exercise.

If something I write pleases you, and you get in touch about it, I love you for that. And I’d rather treat the resulting dopamine as a pleasant, transient artifact of some good ol’ hard-thinking than proof that my marketing funnel is fully operational.

Filed in: Relationships /78/ | Technology /41/

I thought I’d take a moment to step into the “world’s dumbest guy” shoes today, because sometimes that’s healthy.

I’ve learned to see some value in trying not to be an INTJ or any other type. The idea is to give some of yourself up so you can have a bit more space for the best the world can offer. In one way, I’ll always be an INTJ. In other ways though, it’s best to hold that model lightly. I wrote about this a bit in the introduction to the COVID-19 Guide I just published.

So in order to not be INTJ, I find it helps to be able to call yourself dumb, or to take a dumb perspective, and periodically move out of the self-protection mode. If you can do this, you can finally learn some of the stuff you’d always hoped you could. It’s weird that way. Or at least that’s what I’ve discovered.

As a group, INTJs don’t like this. “We” don’t like me saying this. As I write this, a part of me is also saying that it doesn’t like me saying this. It’s a very quiet voice by now. But when I was younger, it was often the loudest, most prominent voice: “Are you crazy? Don’t give anybody anything but the best of yourself! Believe! Project that strength! Protect yourself!” (Tangentially, can you imagine with me what this kind of thinking could do to a vulnerable relationship?)

As a group, you see, we INTJs are often caught studying to become legendary. (Here I would note that some of us are nowhere near ready to call ourselves dumb, so we shoot for the opposite and that’s OK. This dumb-stuff is not an exercise for people who are struggling with questions of personal value—I’ll let you judge where you’re at.)

But being legendary doesn’t work out in the way our conscious cultural hive-mind wants us to think it does.

Quite the opposite: It turns out that we also need to embrace becoming, and appreciating, poop.

Legendary does not come to us by becoming something. You want to become legendary? Then every legendary part of you will have to die. If you’re not ready for that and you still want to become legendary, you might as well go make action movies because you’ll be living in one giant fiction anyway.

(And what is this “legendary” stuff anyway? Isn’t it funny how easy it is to pick up such a word, and run with it as if it’s unquestionably good? It’s questionably good, if anything!)

This led me to reflect on my experiences with people who project wealth, power, knowledge, wisdom, and experience. People who would love nothing more than to make you feel like you’re great, we’re all great, but simultaneously less than, them.

Hmm!

Believe it or not, some of these people seek out coaches, therapists, psychiatrists…(Why would they do that? It makes no logical sense given the typical social view of who these people are.)

We love calling these people “narcissists” these days. But sadly that’s just not good enough. Part of them is part of us. There’s so much displacement in this label. IMO we need to go a bit deeper.

So, for starters: Here’s what some of them have taught me. Each statement conceals Meaning:

I’m wealthy and powerful! I have it all.

Meaning: I’m fundamentally running from a sense of poverty. I’m deathly afraid of being stepped on, metaphorically speaking. This could all collapse in a moment. And the truth is, I am even more afraid that if such a thing happened I wouldn’t care at all. Because if I don’t care, then what was I working toward? It could mean I made a huge mistake, one that I can’t even fathom. That’s scary and embarrassing.

I did it all by myself. You have to look out for number one.

Meaning: I built everything I’ve ever done on the ideas, generosity, and charity of other people. I’m worried that I’m pretty much an empty shell of a person who has never had an original idea or creation.

I’m also afraid that I’m terrible at caring for other people. I’m a failure at relationships.

I’ve read all the latest and best books.

Meaning: I wish I had my own really cool ideas about things. Wouldn’t that be incredible? My vapid intellect is one of the great shames of my life, when it comes down to it. Why haven’t I lived up to my potential?

I know what you should do. I can tell you everything you need to do.

Meaning: I’m not really listening to you. And I wish I could better control myself and my habits. I’m afraid I won’t be able to leave my mark on the world.

I have more experience than you.

Meaning: Every day I fear that the knowledge of these past experiences will slip away. Also, I never really got the recognition I wanted. And I shouldn’t have to listen to what you’re saying, because that’s hard and I’d like to think I “solved” that part of my life. If I didn’t…well, I couldn’t handle that thought.

Conclusion

While brief, this was a good exercise for me. Why? Because sometimes I’m also that guy.

But also, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes it’s you, or that person over there. And the topic deserves attention, among INTJs. Otherwise we’ll keep taking ourselves way too seriously, and inflexibly, and this can only hurt us.

Do you ever celebrate your weakness?

…can you?

Filed in: Openness /49/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Control /110/ | Relationships /78/ | Feeling /64/ | Essays /52/

A lot of us are experiencing grief right now, in different ways.

One of the “leveling-up” lessons within the grieving experience is recognizing that grieving is a nuanced experience. It naturally contains some expression of opposites.

Sentiments of Inexperienced Grieving

• This is a sad time.
• If I don’t act sad, people will think I’m not grieving.
• If I don’t ask others how terrible things are for them, I might disturb their grieving.
• Nothing is good, nothing is joyful.

This person is going to miss out on the richness and subjective / qualitative healing factors of the grieving process. And unfortunately they may also aggravate suffering or psychological damage in friends, family, or their social group.

Sometimes it is easy to become this person when we are trying to learn how to be a more effective Feeler-Harmonizer. It’s one of the early signs that we are at least giving feelings some due attention. It’s easy in those early days to overshoot the goal.

Sentiments of Nuanced Grieving

• This is a sad time, but sometimes I may find myself laughing just as much as I cry.
• If I act sad all the time, I may end up suffering in my inauthenticity. It may make the situation worse.
• If I share some highlights, joyful things, or even funny things, it may help others who feel they don’t have permission to be happy about something.
• Some things are sad. Some things are good. Some things give me joy even in the darkest times.

This person is going to be more resilient and balanced in their energy during a time of grieving. They are more likely to learn a variety of high-quality (subjectively powerful and effective) messages through a grieving process. If they are brought into contact with a social group, they will tend to be a healing force.

My wife shared this relevant item with me today: One of the messages of the film Life is Beautiful is that yes, it’s sad—but also, it’s a game. Treat it as a game, the father tells his son. What can we learn from that viewpoint? Does it apply to our current personal context?

After we lost twin daughters many years ago, my wife recalled that she found herself one day laughing at an episode of The Office. This was an early lesson—grieving is going to involve a lot of feelings, some of them seemingly at odds with others.

And in general, if we tell ourselves, “no, it’s deadly serious, it’s never a game, never funny,” exactly what are the dynamics of such a didactic and possibly dogmatic viewpoint? What stressors are at play, and what are the outcomes we can expect? It’s worth the analysis.

(Among other things, in my experience: The dogmatic approach seems to invite the unhealthy version of Trickster archetype into our lives. And it usually puts on quite a show!)

Filed in: Fe /20/ | Feeling /64/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Control /110/

After some hours of work, here it is…

I had contacted a very talented illustrator to do this for me, but unfortunately he was really overbooked. So, one of my Circle items this week became: Make a Task BATL illustration.

While working on this, I learned a lot more about Inkscape than I knew before, even though I’ve used it for something like 15 years now. Hope you like it.

Filed in: Publications /44/

Since I just published the INTJ Guide to COVID-19 Resilience (which is free and probably worth a look), I thought I’d share some other things I’ve been up to…

Book Publishing

Writing even a simple book is currently a huge pain in the ass. Maybe it’ll get easier, but for now it’s true. I wonder if I even want to write another one, but then the bug gets me again. Meanwhile I already have a list of about 30-40 books I’d like to write.

So…eh, one step at a time.

In the future I’ll try more frequent Debriefings, which may be a familiar module if you’ve read about Task BATL.

And the tech side is fine; I’m pretty confident that I can whip out a reasonably readable PDF or EPUB. Really it’s about the mental organization and one’s attendance to it. It’s about developing the flexibility to say, “no, this book can’t go this way. I need to destroy the last chapter I wrote and then go back and edit everything so that it’s (simpler, or different, or whatever).”

That part sucks so I’ll look at developing some tools to help with it.

Tool Writing

Speaking of which, some new tools:

• I wrote a new productivity timer which still has a long way to go, but has been really helpful so far.
• I created a random city / weather / scenario / character generator script, for quick roleplaying game while I’m working in my text editor. The editor already uses dice rolling scripts that I added some time ago. The generator script also provides a character archetype (superheroes only, currently) to provide a template to think about. The crime-fighter, the battlesuit, the shape-shifter, the martial artist, the gadgeteer, etc. These are drawn from the Supers RED! book, which is an RPG I like. A bit less simulationist, more narrative-heavy, but that is really helpful sometimes.
• I wrote a little app to tell me how old I am. I kept forgetting. (Ever do that? I’m well over my hack-your-memory days so this is what I’m doing instead.) I type “aged” in my text editor, hit tab, and it gives me a rundown. Will add my kids in there too. I recently one-year-offed my daughter’s year of birth, which was pretty entertaining to her dentist’s assistant, who was checking my memory to make sure I was her real father, or something. Sigh. Check something else! Anyway, I wrote this app in Pascal using the Free Pascal Compiler, which has been fun and nostalgic.
• I’ve updated other system scripts and added keyboard shortcuts like one that triggers a full-text search on a specific folder. I’m still blown away by how much can be accomlpished via system scripts.

Art

I worked up a little concept art recently, which was entertaining. Sucked me right in for hours. Inkscape has some pretty nice tools for this, like the “star” tool which lets you add some randomization. This assists in priming the intuition by producing a variety of different shapes to work with.

Gaming

I got into DCSS and learned quite a bit just from keeping a file with notes on the topic. My highest score so far is 6153, with Marnok, TrBe-10. Slain by a great orb of eyes (D:9).

This game is pretty fun. I like flight simulators, and so the best way I can describe how this feels is “person simulator.” Not totally accurate, since I play as a gargoyle or draconian or troll…but close enough.

IMO it’s pretty important to keep a log of tips / lessons learned on a really deep game like this, or at least it seems to speed up progress.

Other games I’ve enjoyed recently:

• Infra Arcana
• ION Fury
• Doom (Old School)
• Zorbus
• Spelunky
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
• Streets of Rogue
• Torchlight II (with my kids)

…with many, many others on my to-try list.

These game-playing sessions are all part of my little-picture values system.

TV and Movies

I’ve enjoyed Picard so far, even though I’m continually late to each new episode and have to un-twirl each one to unlock the exact plot. I really enjoy Picard in his detective-archetype role.

Other movies re-watched: Impossible Planet, some Trek fan films like Deception and The Holy Core on Youtube, When Eight Bells Toll, and The Final Countdown. I learned a bit from each.

I am less and less of a film snob recently. I was a film major back in university and that kind of set my expectations to “nothing really impresses me anymore” in no time flat. I don’t think that’s what my professors wanted, but anyway, I’m feeling much better now.

Napping

I’ve needed more naps lately, so I’ve taken them. No big surprise, given the additional Pandemic stress. But after getting say 9 hours of sleep, it’s always a bit weird to think, “I’m worn out, and need a nap” halfway through the day. I’m still getting such solid mood, cognition, and composure benefits from the naps that they have earned their place high on the list of things I take seriously.

Food Products

I really like Inka (Inka Classic) lately. It’s good. I like to add a bit of sweetener and maybe some cinnamon and/or milk.

Previously I tried Leroux, Pero, and a few others. So far I like Inka the best.

Nootropics and Things Like Them

(I’m learning that “Nootropics” is kind of a vague & lame word and we need better vocabulary for this stuff)

Lately I’ve cut back on my L-Theanine use because it can literally make me “nope” out of things that are otherwise worth a bit of stress. So that, I’ve learned, is the annoying part of “calming effect.” However, it’s still really nice at the end of a long day when I’ve been a bit over-productive and it is time to chill out a bit.

Gingko has once again not really done much for me. I upped the dosage and am trying it again.

Melatonin, god bless you. Doxylamine, god double-bless you when I have too many ideas swimming in my head and can’t get to sleep. Early bedtimes, also great. All of this put together and my mood scores are still high enough to make me happy.

Caffeine still helps a lot. I’m very careful / nuanced about how I use it. It has to fit in at just the right time. After a good nap? After 9 hours of sleep? That’s often exactly the right time for a little caffeine, to me. It really boosts the intuition (lots of ideas) and helps my executive processes as well.

Finally, Turmeric has been a good one for me. It relieves some of the little inflammation-feelings I can experience, which aren’t really worth the Ibuprofen. It’s good.

Other Updates

• I updated my interests file and still get a lot of help from reviewing it.
• I made a bunch of updates to the aforementioned Task BATL. If you haven’t tried it out yet, it’s also worth checking out. Feedback from INTJ friends and clients is good and getting better.

Summary

Overall: Every day is certainly seeming like a new and interesting challenge lately; some days a bit more new and challenging than others. I’m grateful to be in good spirits in general though, not having been sick so far. We’ll see how things go from here!

Filed in: Memorization /5/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Interests /111/ | Productivity /119/ | Energy /120/ | Intuition /62/ | Openness /49/ | Books /10/ | Fe /20/ | Thinking /70/

I’m releasing a free, 19-page INTJ Guide to COVID-19 Resilience in case it can be helpful to other INTJs. I’m making this guide available for free in order to support the worldwide community of INTJs (yes, there is such a thing!).

Download the Guide

PDF Download →

EPUB Download →

HTML Version (BETA, needs some work) →

I’ve been pretty busily engaged since the beginning of the pandemic really hit here, so this is later than I wanted it to be. Still, I hope it’s helpful. It contains a lot of information that ought to be useful, pandemic or no.

If you get a chance to read it, I’d love to hear what you think.

Filed in: Fitness /31/ | Anxiety /32/ | Rest /21/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Publications /44/

“What are your values?”

Lately I’ve been reflecting on this question. The nature of the question and the usual answers trouble me a bit, especially after recent progress in cataloguing my interests, which was very much a values-related exercise. (I highly recommend that exercise by the way, if you could use some more energy and enjoyment in life.)

First, when asked “what are your values,” it seems like no one ever answers with little-picture values like, “I value golf,” or “I value donuts,” or “I value spy films”. They’d get laughed out of the room, or possibly even rebuked, especially in a corporate setting.

Instead people will naturally use big-picture words. “I value personal growth.” “Learning.” “Passion.” “Creativity.”

Sure, those are passable answers, I guess. They also lower the mental overhead of finishing a simple group exercise. That’s for sure…

“Creativity? Oh, that’s nice. Who’s next?”

But I’ve never heard anyone talk about the qualitatively frustrating results and potential costs of discussing values at this level. (By the way, I discuss values all the time with my coaching clients, and this also inspires my thinking here…)

First, a big-picture, vague-wording bias can make it hard for individuals to act on their values. A vague word like “passion” looms large as a nebulous cloud of things. And which of them should you choose and act on? Where do you even start with that? Do you remember them all? And which do you choose to the exclusion of which other passion-related thing?

In that way, the issue of acting on values can become front-loaded so heavily with executive function requirements that we can blame no one for finding themselves distracted or bored with values.

Values are boring!? What a thought. I can’t imagine that being anything but the opposite of the real intent of values discussions.

So, are you “passionate” and yet struggle to live a values-centered life lately? Do you value “Creativity” and yet find yourself adrift and uninspired?

Maybe anchoring one’s identity such a vague, big-picture description is part of the problem.

So let’s look at some little-picture, specific values: Do you really like donuts? If so, it’s almost hard to not know what you should do about that: You go and enjoy a donut. Or you put that on your calendar for tomorrow, a near guarantee that the day will be at least a little bit more enjoyable.

In my view, that’s positive energy right there. Good vibes, good feelings, and easy to execute. This is how it should feel to work on any value, whenever we’re in the mood.

Another issue: A single, big-picture answer like “personal growth” can also lead to a state where people wear themselves out unnecessarily, due to work on their values. Doing one thing about personal growth is great! But the risk is that it can grow deadly-boring in the blink of an eye. Even though it answers the “am I doing values-based work” question, the fact is, you can do values-based work and still feel like you’re ready to give up on a values-centered life out of sheer annoyance, boredom, or exhaustion!

And so one of the best advantages of tracking little things like “I like donuts” as a value is that it’s never the only value. Even Homer J. Simpson also likes beer, for example. If he gets bored with donuts, he can switch to beer and still live a values-based life.

This has all only highlighted, to me, the importance of cultivating a broad set of very specific interests-as-values. For many people, INTJs certainly included, the big picture answer can in fact be a psychologically damaging outcome of a values discussion, if the little-picture answers are not also taken seriously.

Bored? Want to live a values-centered life? Like golf? Great! Watch it on Youtube, go hit the putting green, play golf online—at least two of those things are usually instantly doable.

Exhausted with your “Creativity”-values project? Like donuts? Go try a new kind of donut! It’s still creativity. And even if it wasn’t, you’d still be living a life according to your values, because you like donuts.

Feeling down, but like spy films? Go watch one, and pat yourself on the back for successfully completing this values-alignment exercise.

So, if you’re feeling like your values could use some attention, and life is feeling dry or boring or exhausting: Take those little-picture values more seriously. In doing so you might actually discover what it really means to lead a values-centered life.

Filed in: Interests /111/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Feeling /64/ | Sensation /40/ | Publications /44/ | Fi /35/ | Energy /120/

Today I was reflecting on the way I used to feel a near-constant pressure to produce and create. That feeling has really diminished in recent years. It’s diminished so much that its absence is now a peaceful feeling that I absolutely love. And that is something I never thought would happen.

It used to be that writing an article was the thing I just felt I should do, or writing a book was the thing, or just in general making a new thing available was the thing.

So many of my goals were based on this stuff I would make for others to read, or consume, or admire, and so on. If I did those things, I’d be great, special, and everything! Can you imagine? People would react in all sorts of great ways.

Part of this is down to my upbringing. There was a lot of pressure to do stuff. I was taught that a big part of life meant performing in this amazing show one would put on for others. And if I didn’t produce—well, I really had no backup plan. Somehow my internal math told me that I just had to do it, no excuses.

So when I wasn’t making progress, I didn’t feel happy, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Result: Depression, anxiety. And other depressing labels: I’m a “procrastinator,” and so on.

My INTJ dad was in this boat too—he’d stomp around the house late at night, tired, grumpy, frustrated with himself for not publishing one of his 10 to 20 work-in-progress books yet, and stress eating. And imagine the pressure if you get another idea for a book, on top of those! Phew.

If you wanted to get on my dad’s bad side, you’d ask something like, “how’s that book coming?” I don’t think even a good friend could ask him that more than a few times before receiving a withering and deeply emotional reply.

But I also hear about this pressure from other INTJs, all the time. So I thought I’d write about a few things I’ve learned along the way to a more comfortable “production zone”. Here are three big points:

First, I’ve learned that my comfort is super important to me. I never really thought about it much before. but I found that I’m really good at pressuring myself to leave my own comfort zone! And I was tired of being depressed, tired, and grumpy. I started to take better care of myself and just enjoy things more. That made me a lot more comfortable.

Second, I realized that production, publishing, and making things made me uncomfortable. Don’t want to be uncomfortable? Want to be more comfortable in life? Then plan to do less! Think more, do less, make less. (I hope you can see how this plays to INTJ strengths, in part.) Instead of writing for others, I would just write down my thoughts. For me. No one needed to see them.

Third, after these two things made me feel more comfortable than I was before, I no longer placed “production” on a pedestal. So I was comfortable—did I really need it at all? It made me wonder. New writing projects, even if relatively polished, were now just for my pleasure. If others wanted to criticize, that’s fine: Production is hard. And it makes me less comfortable. So no big deal if I don’t produce something.

(Let me just add that I completely understand if this rubs you the wrong way. I don’t know if I could have convinced myself of this, 20 years ago, as a new entrant into the workforce. Visualize something amazing, try hard, produce, repeat. That was my plan. No one ever told me though, that it might not ever feel like it was enough, and that it could leave me with a crippling feeling of near-constant discomfort.)

But I think that third point is what helped me come out the other side of this as a more productive person. I went easier on myself. I developed fewer big, huge, gigantic production ideas, but ended up producing lots of little ones. Once a little one is out there, maybe it grows up into a big one! Who knows.

Regarding the little, fun projects: It’s amazing how those little works really add up in terms of quantity, as well. Ironically, I produce more work now than I ever did. The amount of content on this blog since 2015 easily displaces the content of every blog I’ve ever created since 2001, and every article I’ve ever published online, combined.

And this isn’t even the only place I’m writing—In addition to writing online, there’s journaling, planning, and framework-building to consider. In this work my digital notes have grown to fill thousands of text files.

Then there’s paper. In the last few years I’ve filled something like 20-25 notebooks. That’s at least a few thousand pages, probably more. Prior to that I think I filled up about one notebook per year, and a lot of that was hesitant, precious paper-saving, fantasizing over what I could write and how great it could be.

I used to buy really expensive notebooks. I had my name engraved on one of them, and never filled more than a page or two. I could probably fill it up in a couple of months now.

Nowadays, I don’t exactly buy super cheap notebooks, because I’ve had some of them fall apart on me, but I don’t really feel the need to buy anything expensive, either. I’m way more likely to reach for a Bic ballpoint than one of my fountain pens.

All of this because I realized I was uncomfortable, decided I wanted to be more comfortable, and stopped caring so much about things that got in the way of my comfort.

It wasn’t a fake-out, or a lie I was telling myself. It wasn’t present-me trying to trick future-me into producing more. It was, very seriously: “F*** that.”

Filed in: Rest /21/ | Feeling /64/ | Essays /52/ | Goals /52/ | Productivity /119/ | Procrastination /23/ | Anxiety /32/ | Therapeutic Practice /144/

Lately I’ve been doing a bit of brainstorming on the Fi-Te dichotomy and productivity. One of the outcomes of which I’ve been very proud has been Task BATL.

Today I’d like to discuss another outcome that’s been really amusing. This is a new productivity technique that’s rooted in emotion, play, and more balance. I call it the “Howl at the Moon Hack”. Here are the steps:

The Howl at the Moon Hack

1. Put on a “soulful” guitar backing track
2. Sing about everything that sucks or that bothers you or concerns you about the work you need to do. Be as corny or sarcastic or serious as you feel you need to be.
3. Address even the hard, seemingly dead-end problems you don’t want to talk about (break that emotional barrier!)
4. Keep singing until the singing is no longer fulfilling in any way, and you don’t have anything else to sing about
5. At that point, it should become a bit easier to plan / organize / move ahead with those difficult projects, as you switch from Fi toward Te-type thinking. Hope you have a list handy!
6. Consider taking advantage of the momentum of this switch to get up and get moving around, if you can. Even just to get a drink of water or take a short walk around the block. You can work on your to-do list while doing these things as well.

Seriously, try it if you haven’t already, and especially if you’re really into productivity techniques and hacks. I have received good reports from others who have tried it.

The idea is to address any emotional barriers that could be preventing you from getting to the next step.

Sometimes you just can’t force things to happen. As much as we may want to work like a robot / computer / etc., and have a program or be the program, we’re also emotional individuals. And avoiding emotion, or just doing nothing about the emotion while it is buried further down, can lead to some really embarrassing and alarming situations.

Here are a few other techniques that have been amusing:

• “Hijacking” to-do list bullets to just gripe about everything for a moment
• Doodling funny pictures of aspects of one’s duties, for stress relief
• Writing funny, work-related lyrics to popular songs
• A lot of other unholy and irreverent things

The cool thing about these is that, while they initially seem fickle or immature, they can open up a deeper and qualitatively superior dive into one’s own values, and help us ask really important questions:

• Do you really feel connected to your work at all?
• Have you just been buried by too many to-do items?
• Are you enjoying life?
• What is needed right now in order to feel better?

Even those last two questions can be absolutely huge.

Filed in: Therapeutic Practice /144/ | Te /36/ | Productivity /119/ | Energy /120/ | Control /110/ | Fi /35/ | Thinking /70/ | Feeling /64/

Learning is changing.

If you can learn, you can change. To value learning is to value change.

Given questions such as “can I change,” “can they change,” or “can we change,” the immediate follow-on questions will relate to learning.

Filed in: Openness /49/ | Relationships /78/ | Productivity /119/