Discussion Forum > "I will..." versus "Will I..."
michael:
That's indeed a very interesting article.
I think that it's very relevant to scanning a list. For example if you have a list of five tasks of varying difficulty, doing them in order can be quite stressful. But if you can do them in any order it's much easier. I think that is the difference between "I will do Task 1, then Task 2, etc." and "Will I do Task 1 or Task 2, etc?"
Another thing which may be related is that when I am about to be in a situation about which I am somewhat apprehensive, I've learned that it's not a good idea to psych myself up by saying "Of course I'll be fine. If A happens I will do this, and if B happens I wlll do that". I've learned that it's much better simply to say "Just let it happen".
I think I will write a blog post about this.
I wonder if I will write a blog post about this?
Just let it happen.
That's indeed a very interesting article.
I think that it's very relevant to scanning a list. For example if you have a list of five tasks of varying difficulty, doing them in order can be quite stressful. But if you can do them in any order it's much easier. I think that is the difference between "I will do Task 1, then Task 2, etc." and "Will I do Task 1 or Task 2, etc?"
Another thing which may be related is that when I am about to be in a situation about which I am somewhat apprehensive, I've learned that it's not a good idea to psych myself up by saying "Of course I'll be fine. If A happens I will do this, and if B happens I wlll do that". I've learned that it's much better simply to say "Just let it happen".
I think I will write a blog post about this.
I wonder if I will write a blog post about this?
Just let it happen.
February 12, 2021 at 14:51 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
michael:
I wonder if it works for negative things as well.
"I won't have a second slice of cake"
versus
"Will I have a second slice of cake?"
Just let it not happen!
I wonder if it works for negative things as well.
"I won't have a second slice of cake"
versus
"Will I have a second slice of cake?"
Just let it not happen!
February 12, 2021 at 21:53 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
This article really got my attention mainly because I currently am in a 12 step recovery program, trying to lose weight, and working on my guitar and singing skills.
Giving myself ultimatums has really never worked and I agree that it tends to perpetuate a guilt/shame cycle. Negative self talk is a real and powerful enemy, a form of self sabotage.
It haunts my productivity efforts as well. I never seem to be organized enough, never able to do enough, never be able to do it well enough, etc.
It's exhausting and frustrating.
Giving myself ultimatums has really never worked and I agree that it tends to perpetuate a guilt/shame cycle. Negative self talk is a real and powerful enemy, a form of self sabotage.
It haunts my productivity efforts as well. I never seem to be organized enough, never able to do enough, never be able to do it well enough, etc.
It's exhausting and frustrating.
February 17, 2021 at 22:30 |
TopherJake
TopherJake
Mark said:
<<I've learned that it's not a good idea to psych myself up by saying "Of course I'll be fine. If A happens I will do this, and if B happens I wlll do that". I've learned that it's much better simply to say "Just let it happen".>>
I really like that. Curious... because you learned this, would you be willing to share what you observed by "just letting it happen"? In other words, my first reaction to this was: Could Mark have raised his kids, wrote his books, etc., etc., by just "letting it happen" vs some internal locus of self-control, rituals, etc. I mean... most of your list techniques have very specific rules you encourage people to follow.
<<I've learned that it's not a good idea to psych myself up by saying "Of course I'll be fine. If A happens I will do this, and if B happens I wlll do that". I've learned that it's much better simply to say "Just let it happen".>>
I really like that. Curious... because you learned this, would you be willing to share what you observed by "just letting it happen"? In other words, my first reaction to this was: Could Mark have raised his kids, wrote his books, etc., etc., by just "letting it happen" vs some internal locus of self-control, rituals, etc. I mean... most of your list techniques have very specific rules you encourage people to follow.
February 18, 2021 at 14:06 |
avrum
avrum
avrum:
<< most of your list techniques have very specific rules you encourage people to follow. >>
I don't see that anything I said in my comment contradicts that. I referred to two specific scenarios:
1) Selecting tasks from a list.
2) Situations in which I am apprehensive of what might happen.
Where do you see the contradiction?
<< most of your list techniques have very specific rules you encourage people to follow. >>
I don't see that anything I said in my comment contradicts that. I referred to two specific scenarios:
1) Selecting tasks from a list.
2) Situations in which I am apprehensive of what might happen.
Where do you see the contradiction?
February 18, 2021 at 15:44 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Mark:
I think I erred in assuming you meant - taken to it's extreme - that "just letting it happen" equals doing whatever you want, whenever.
I think I erred in assuming you meant - taken to it's extreme - that "just letting it happen" equals doing whatever you want, whenever.
February 21, 2021 at 15:12 |
avrum
avrum
"Just let it happen" unleashes our creativity, giving a sense of freedom, openness, exploration, and adventure. This is the world of intrinsic motivation -- following wherever the work takes us, trusting our intuition to guide us to the right outcomes.
But if we take this motto too literally, it also invites risk and uncertainty - the potential to fail, to miss our commitments, to be unreliable. If taken too far, the freedom turns into chaos, and the adventure turns into a nightmare. We can't deliver great results if we are unreliable.
On the other hand, "Just get it done" or "Just do it" is the motto of the reliable person - always meet your deadline, always reach your goal, always deliver the results. This is the world of checklists, order, reliability, consistency, making and meeting commitments, and so on. This world of order has its own inherent risks -- the order can becomes stifling; the extrinsic motivation can start to feel oppressive; the daily routine is forced; creativity dries up; opportunities for improvement become invisible.
So this seems like another form of a very common fundamental conflict that appears over and over in time management but also in other domains. http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2745088
So how do we break the conflict?
It seems impossible to live by both of these mottos at the same time.
Or is it?
While pondering this question, I remembered that completely open-ended freedom generally does not enable creativity -- it works much better when there are constraints or boundaries or structure placed around it. For example, you need to have a basic competence in a skill before you can really "just let things happen". When you have basic competence, then "just letting things happen" might result in some pretty good outcomes.
But if you don't know how to form sentences, you won't be able to write a good essay. If you don't know how to play the basic chords, you won't be able to compose a new piano piece. Etc.
But basic competence seems more like something in the domain of reliability -- the domain of "just get it done". So does this mean we need to first be reliable, and only then we can be creative? I would say Yes - that does seem to be true.
This then suggests that "reliability" is at one logical level, and "creativity" is at a *higher* logical level. You can't get to the higher level without first having established the lower level.
This means you need to have at least some basic competence in "just getting it done" as the price of entry to the domain of "just letting it happen".
But then I realized something else. When I need to learn a new skill, it is always more effective for me to learn by doing: by having the freedom to try something, fail, repeat, figure out how to get it to work, get feedback and guidance, try it again (and again), and finally succeed. Then repeat and keep going at it till it becomes smooth, it becomes habit. When I approach learning this way, without the fear of failure, I can develop basic competence much faster, and I can also internalize the competence more deeply.
This seems to suggest that the best way to establish new competence is to have the freedom to explore and fail.
So overall it seems to work in a cycle, or maybe like a spiral staircase:
1-- I don't know much and can't do much.
2-- So I try something (explore, fail, try again, learn, eventually succeed). This is the "just let it happen" process, with its openness and freedom and intrinsic motivation. The result is a higher level of basic competence.
3-- This higher level of basic competence allows me to do new things -- to have some level of reliability, to be able to make some level of commitment, to deliver some level of result.
4-- But then let's say I want to achieve some new task -- something more difficult that I may not have done before. This cycles me back to step 1.
So perhaps this is a way to resolve the conflict. The conflict is actually the result of a confusion of the logical levels. The resolution to the conflict is to re-establish the logical-order relationship between the domain of exploration/creativity and the domain of execution/competency. When considering something new (a new commitment, a new task, etc.), it's better to start at step 1 and follow "just let it happen". When considering something already well-known, you can just start at step 3 and follow "just do it".
What's interesting is with a well-established habit (something that happens almost automatically), you can't even distinguish between "just do it" and "just let it happen". It's pretty much the same experience.
And if you adopt the habit of "freedom to fail" whenever you are trying to develop a new competency or trying to figure out how to get something done in an unfamiliar domain, it's also hard to distinguish between "just do it" and "just let it happen". The thing you have to "just do" is to "just let it happen"! In complex/chaotic situations, the faster you adopt the "just let it happen", the faster you will make real progress.
So yes, that seems to resolve the conflict. Or at least it seems to point in the right direction.
In retrospect, I wanted to connect these ideas back to the SciAm article. In all the examples, the subjects of the experiment were being asked to consider some new unfamiliar task, or to consider a new commitment in regard to their health. As "new" tasks, these would start at step 1 -- "I don't know much, I need to be open and free to explore, fail, learn."
I wonder if they'd get similar results if they had some way to test *familiar* tasks. For example, if the subjects first had several rounds of learning how to do anagrams, getting more familiar with the task, getting better and faster at it, being guided by something like "I wonder how many anagrams I can complete in 5 minutes?" After doing that for several trials, having given the subjects plenty of time to learn the task and their own capacity for the work, what would happen then? Would there be any difference at that point between subjects prompted with "Will I be doing as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes?" vs "I will do as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes". Some new experiment along these lines would need to be done to test familiar tasks, and give us a complete picture of the impact of the different wording/mindset.
But if we take this motto too literally, it also invites risk and uncertainty - the potential to fail, to miss our commitments, to be unreliable. If taken too far, the freedom turns into chaos, and the adventure turns into a nightmare. We can't deliver great results if we are unreliable.
On the other hand, "Just get it done" or "Just do it" is the motto of the reliable person - always meet your deadline, always reach your goal, always deliver the results. This is the world of checklists, order, reliability, consistency, making and meeting commitments, and so on. This world of order has its own inherent risks -- the order can becomes stifling; the extrinsic motivation can start to feel oppressive; the daily routine is forced; creativity dries up; opportunities for improvement become invisible.
So this seems like another form of a very common fundamental conflict that appears over and over in time management but also in other domains. http://markforster.squarespace.com/forum/post/2745088
So how do we break the conflict?
It seems impossible to live by both of these mottos at the same time.
Or is it?
While pondering this question, I remembered that completely open-ended freedom generally does not enable creativity -- it works much better when there are constraints or boundaries or structure placed around it. For example, you need to have a basic competence in a skill before you can really "just let things happen". When you have basic competence, then "just letting things happen" might result in some pretty good outcomes.
But if you don't know how to form sentences, you won't be able to write a good essay. If you don't know how to play the basic chords, you won't be able to compose a new piano piece. Etc.
But basic competence seems more like something in the domain of reliability -- the domain of "just get it done". So does this mean we need to first be reliable, and only then we can be creative? I would say Yes - that does seem to be true.
This then suggests that "reliability" is at one logical level, and "creativity" is at a *higher* logical level. You can't get to the higher level without first having established the lower level.
This means you need to have at least some basic competence in "just getting it done" as the price of entry to the domain of "just letting it happen".
But then I realized something else. When I need to learn a new skill, it is always more effective for me to learn by doing: by having the freedom to try something, fail, repeat, figure out how to get it to work, get feedback and guidance, try it again (and again), and finally succeed. Then repeat and keep going at it till it becomes smooth, it becomes habit. When I approach learning this way, without the fear of failure, I can develop basic competence much faster, and I can also internalize the competence more deeply.
This seems to suggest that the best way to establish new competence is to have the freedom to explore and fail.
So overall it seems to work in a cycle, or maybe like a spiral staircase:
1-- I don't know much and can't do much.
2-- So I try something (explore, fail, try again, learn, eventually succeed). This is the "just let it happen" process, with its openness and freedom and intrinsic motivation. The result is a higher level of basic competence.
3-- This higher level of basic competence allows me to do new things -- to have some level of reliability, to be able to make some level of commitment, to deliver some level of result.
4-- But then let's say I want to achieve some new task -- something more difficult that I may not have done before. This cycles me back to step 1.
So perhaps this is a way to resolve the conflict. The conflict is actually the result of a confusion of the logical levels. The resolution to the conflict is to re-establish the logical-order relationship between the domain of exploration/creativity and the domain of execution/competency. When considering something new (a new commitment, a new task, etc.), it's better to start at step 1 and follow "just let it happen". When considering something already well-known, you can just start at step 3 and follow "just do it".
What's interesting is with a well-established habit (something that happens almost automatically), you can't even distinguish between "just do it" and "just let it happen". It's pretty much the same experience.
And if you adopt the habit of "freedom to fail" whenever you are trying to develop a new competency or trying to figure out how to get something done in an unfamiliar domain, it's also hard to distinguish between "just do it" and "just let it happen". The thing you have to "just do" is to "just let it happen"! In complex/chaotic situations, the faster you adopt the "just let it happen", the faster you will make real progress.
So yes, that seems to resolve the conflict. Or at least it seems to point in the right direction.
In retrospect, I wanted to connect these ideas back to the SciAm article. In all the examples, the subjects of the experiment were being asked to consider some new unfamiliar task, or to consider a new commitment in regard to their health. As "new" tasks, these would start at step 1 -- "I don't know much, I need to be open and free to explore, fail, learn."
I wonder if they'd get similar results if they had some way to test *familiar* tasks. For example, if the subjects first had several rounds of learning how to do anagrams, getting more familiar with the task, getting better and faster at it, being guided by something like "I wonder how many anagrams I can complete in 5 minutes?" After doing that for several trials, having given the subjects plenty of time to learn the task and their own capacity for the work, what would happen then? Would there be any difference at that point between subjects prompted with "Will I be doing as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes?" vs "I will do as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes". Some new experiment along these lines would need to be done to test familiar tasks, and give us a complete picture of the impact of the different wording/mindset.
February 22, 2021 at 5:49 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
Seraphim:
<< ... having given the subjects plenty of time to learn the task and their own capacity for the work, what would happen then? Would there be any difference at that point between subjects prompted with "Will I be doing as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes?" vs "I will do as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes". >>
Would they need the prompts at all at that stage?
<< ... having given the subjects plenty of time to learn the task and their own capacity for the work, what would happen then? Would there be any difference at that point between subjects prompted with "Will I be doing as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes?" vs "I will do as many anagrams as possible in 5 minutes". >>
Would they need the prompts at all at that stage?
February 22, 2021 at 10:38 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
Mark Forster wrote:
<< Would they need the prompts at all at that stage? >>
If the purpose of the experiment is to see whether the prompt changes the outcome, then yes, you still need the prompts.
But I would guess the prompts wouldn't make any difference in the outcome.
<< Would they need the prompts at all at that stage? >>
If the purpose of the experiment is to see whether the prompt changes the outcome, then yes, you still need the prompts.
But I would guess the prompts wouldn't make any difference in the outcome.
February 22, 2021 at 14:56 |
Seraphim
Seraphim
Isn't this the balance between challenge and skill in flow state psychology? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
February 23, 2021 at 11:13 |
michael
michael
michael:
Quite possibly, but as the Wikipedia article is long and I have other priorities at the moment, could you summarize the relevant points in a few lines?
Quite possibly, but as the Wikipedia article is long and I have other priorities at the moment, could you summarize the relevant points in a few lines?
February 23, 2021 at 11:16 |
Mark Forster
Mark Forster
I would say the Flow model is applied by allowing a challenge to rise to the edge of creating anxiety and then the pre-frontal cortex activates to raise skill to the point of control and then continuing in this step-like approach.
"Will I" allow challenge to rise followed by "I will" put some discipled effort to reducing anxiety.
The first is the AF list. The second is the scanning. (I speculate).
"Will I" allow challenge to rise followed by "I will" put some discipled effort to reducing anxiety.
The first is the AF list. The second is the scanning. (I speculate).
February 23, 2021 at 13:40 |
michael
michael
A more relaxed mind appears to be a more willing mind. I imagine this could usefully fit in with Mark's simple scanning and goal-setting methods, but I'm not sure how.