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Weekend Upgrade (by R.J. Nestor)

Weekend Upgrade 16: Feelings and Friction

Published over 1 year ago • 5 min read

Happy Friday!

Misdirected rage

There are two people in this world who receive our most passionate rage. Two people we curse, two people we punish.

The first is any guy who cuts us off in traffic. He’s a maniac and a dishonor to his family name.

The second is ourselves.

When we make a mistake: “What the f$&% is wrong with me?” When we forget something: “I’m so stupid!” We pound our fists on tables, we stomp our feet. We blame productivity failures on our irredeemably flawed character. We tear ourselves apart for lacking discipline.

But there's something we don't do. We almost never fix the problems that cause our self-loathing. We don't even look for problems, because we think we are the problem.

Practical Psychology

Last newsletter we set aside the psychology of productivity to focus on a specific practical matter. This newsletter we'll explore an area where psychological and practical aspects overlap.

We have two potential solutions to our productivity self-loathing.

One, we can cut ourselves some slack. Because if we talked to colleagues the way we talk to ourselves, we’d get fired.

The book Nonviolent Communication (read my takeaways) teaches us to lead with compassion when we talk to others, because it helps solve problems and defuse conflicts. That same compassion can be directed toward ourselves. It's nearly impossible to fix productivity problems until you've found compassion for yourself, because you're simply too frazzled by your frustration to do anything.

Two, we can fix the friction that's causing our frustration. When we encounter productivity friction, we can ask ourselves: "How do I change this process to resolve the friction?"

Define friction broadly. When you're so overwhelmed by your work that you're afraid to sit down in front of your computer, that's friction. When you're surrounded by work but you can't motivate yourself to get off the couch, that's friction. Your immediate goal should change from finishing the work to identifying the friction that's keeping you from finishing the work.

💡Unfrazzle your feelings, fix your friction 💡

👆 That's your weekend upgrade.

And it’s filled with “F-words” that are much kinder to say to yourself than that other F-word.

It's a two step process: first manage your reactions, because until you're free of your frustration, you won't be able to focus on solutions. Forgive yourself: frustration is normal—this isn't the first time in your life you've been frustrated, and it won't be the last.

Then, once your self-compassion has opened up the bandwidth to think clearly, figure out what specific aspect of your work is at the root of your friction, and make a plan to fix it.

Sample friction

Let's explore specific examples and solutions.

Space dysfunction

When my family and I moved into our current home, I struggled to go to my home office in the morning. I would rather plop down on the couch than go downstairs to my computer.

To solve this, I first recognized my avoidance reaction as a manifestation of friction and forgave myself. Once my head was clear, I realized the primary friction was the physical space. The coffeemaker was upstairs, my office was downstairs, and the coordination of "when I should do what" was disrupted.

My solution was two-fold: I bought my own personal coffeemaker and put it downstairs, and I programmed my alarm app on my phone so that I can't turn it off without taking a picture of the new coffeemaker. That friction is gone: I'm in my office first thing, and I can stay there to make my morning coffee.

Inbox volcano

Here's one almost everyone has encountered. You're so overwhelmed by anxiety that you can't open your task app. Even a glimpse of your CVS-receipt-length Inbox sends your heart rate into the stratosphere.

What's our solution? First, forgive the anxiety reaction. Be compassionate: anxiety is normal, you've felt it before, you'll feel it again. So what if your Inbox is overflowing? That's fine—everyone's has at some point. It doesn't mean you're a bad person.

Once you have a handle on the anxiety, look through the Inbox. There are likely several issues: items are stuck there because you don't have a place in your system for them, or you don't know the mechanics of your system well enough to efficiently process the items, or you're "capture-happy" so a zillion things are coming in faster than you can make sense of them.

Find problems, pick one, and fix it. Create places for items without a natural home (and create a complementary recurring task to regularly review the new place you created). Or practice your system mechanics to process things more efficiently. Or create rules for yourself about what you capture and what you don't—maybe even capture certain Inbox clutter with a separate app.

Regardless the issue you choose to fix first, this is the process. Forgive the reaction, then fix the friction.

A virtuous cycle

In the book The Explosive Child, author Ross Greene explains that misbehavior in children indicates skills they lack or expectations they can’t meet. And, thus, their behavior can be fixed by helping them learn the skills or meet (or change!) the expectations.

Though the book is about the behavior of children, guess what? It applies to us grown-ups too. Our frustration with ourselves indicates skills we lack or unmet expectations.

This is great news! It means we can benefit from a virtuous cycle. When we forgive our negative reactions, then fix the problems that caused the reactions, we make it easier to forgive our negative reactions next time. Our improved skills will make future reactions less frequent and intense.

Want to fix today's productivity problem? Forgive your reaction, then fix your problem.

Want to fix next week's negative reaction to a productivity problem? Fix today’s problem.

How can Tools for Thought help?

If you’re new to the Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I explore how processes can be created in Tools for Thought (TfTs). TfTs are apps optimized for linking your ideas, thoughts, notes, etc.—apps like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, Obsidian, and Craft.

TfTs are uniquely flexible for capturing information. By and large, if you can think a thought, you can capture it in a TfT.

This is valuable for unfrazzling our feelings and fixing our friction because it allows us to capture everything: (1) what went wrong, (2) how we feel about what went wrong, and (3) what type of system failure(s) occurred—whether it is system design or user ineptitude. And writing those things down creates a record that we can review for long-term patterns.

In your TfT, when you’re stuck, or you forgot something, or you missed a deadline, etc., write down the problem, how you feel about it, and whether it was a system flaw or a user error (or a combination of factors). Then over time, prompted by a recurring reminder, review the problems you've noted.

You'll see patterns emerge, and that gives you the power to identify underlying problems. Once you identify a problem, create a task to fix that system friction.

Using a TfT to capture our feelings and friction helps us reinforce that "it's not failure, it's data." When we greet our reactions as information and document them, it helps us "unhook the triggers" that cause us to attack ourselves. And because we wrote them down, we have the data to fix the problems we discover.

What do I do next?

(1) Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

(2) Create a [[To Fix]] page/note/file in your TfT of choice, and create a recurring action to review that To Fix list.

This solves a specific friction in this process. Once you've unfrazzled your feelings and identified the friction, you need someplace to capture the tasks required to fix the friction. Now that you have this list and the reminder to review it, you no longer need to fear that issues you find will be forgotten or remain unresolved.

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters

Until next time, friends:

When your work makes you anxious, figure out the friction and fix it!

R.J.
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Weekend Upgrade (by R.J. Nestor)

Weekend Upgrade provides tools to improve your productivity and communication, especially if you use Tools for Thought like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, or Obsidian.

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