energy

That’s rubbish: positive vs negative thinking

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I'm British and a journalist, cynicism comes to me a lot more readily than happy happy joy joy thinking. But the kicker for me is that it's quicker to think positively.

You know this already: when things are bad, you spend an awful lot of time brooding. That's too feeble a word: worrying, fretting, chewing, pondering, hating. When things are good, you get on to the next job.

I have also realised that it's true: I shouldn't make decisions and I definitely shouldn't act on them when I'm depressed. I still struggle with the concept of telling myself everything is wonderful all the time but I like the idea of head-down getting-on-with-it-all regardless.

Which is what I take away from this piece on The Simple Dollar about negative thinking:

You have to recognize when you’re telling yourself to make poor choices. For me, the best way to counteract this is to have a checklist of the things you’re working on and review it several times a day.

Today is the hardest day for keeping resolutions.

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I think it is, anyway. Sorry: no science or research here. Just a lot of years where some of it was in companies and the first Monday of the year was a hard one to ramp yourself up for. And for actually a lot more years when I've been working for myself and today is the day you feel you're starting over again from scratch.

That would be because you're starting over from scratch. All those books you wrote last year, you wrote them last year. Gone. What have you done this year? Bugger-all.

But don't think of today as a new working year. Don't think of it as a year at all. Think of it as exactly what it is: a day.

Today I'm working at a school for the day and part of me feels this is postponing all the freelancy getting-new-work stuff until tomorrow. But this is new work, this is a new school to me and it's working with the staff instead of with the kids and it's working with two other writers for the first time. So it's all new, it's all work, and it should be all great.

And I will worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. I will worry about it, but it will be tomorrow.

Small moves, Ellie.

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You already know that making too big a statement at the start of the year ain't going to work. I will go to the moon, salvage all the junk that's up there, bring it back and sell it. Or even just I'm going to lose three stone in weight by Tuesday. But there are also apparently small resolutions that you give up on because they are out of your control: I will get an agent this month, that kind of thing. There is a huge amount you can do toward getting an agent if that's what you need and you can do a gigantic amount of it right now, but the final step requires them saying yes and offering you a deal you want. You can't control their schedule, therefore you can't control yours. Not in this one case.

But if you pick smaller goals and ones that are within your control, you aren't just making life easier for yourself, you're helping to convince yourself that resolutions are achievable. If we never did the bigger ones we'd never do anything, but having small, concrete, possible resolutions that we then actually do and actually stick to, it helps a mile.

So says an article in Pick the Brain anyway.

Hat tip, as so often, to Lifehacker for spotting this.

Complaining does not work as a strategy

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Via the always excellent Swiss Miss design blog:

“If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out… Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.”

 

― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture