Themeattics

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

T.S. Eliot

This whole LEGO thing is out of control.

I’m not writing this article on the goal I mentioned last week of assembling a LEGO to plan per week, but I did think it’d be a neat exercise to include the final product each week in here whether it’s referenced or not. Still working out the kinks there – the fallout of the last PC breaking hasn’t fully settled and the new one isn’t in its proper order to write this there, so things are still a little hackneyed. Still, this is as good a place as any, no?

There are four or five or ten partially-started builds upstairs right now that I moved on from in frustration while trying to find one specific, weird, tiny piece or another in a mess of unsorted boxes and stray pieces on shelves and in drawers. I couldn’t decide if I should start big and therefore reduce the overall pool by a noticeable chunk while I worked or go small. Well, I tried both, but in the end you can see I went small. Very small. But, hey, a plan done is a plan done.

Despite not wanting this post to be about the LEGOs, they do dovetail rather nicely with the topic. If you’ve hung around here for more than a few weeks you’ll know I’m something of a goal-setter. I love goals. Tasks. Planning. And, as one would, I’m always interested in hearing from people who make their livelihoods learning more about discipline and the like. Recently, that led me to a video put together by a psychologist discussing how we may be wiring our brains for failure in a seemingly counterintuitive way – by rewarding ourselves.

It was a short talk, but it was fascinating. I’ll admit I’m a little biased as I’ve always had a hard time with rewards for hitting goals – what am I going to do, go have a big meal after hitting my weight target or spend a bunch after paying off the next part of my debt? – but the way this was approached shifted my understanding a bit.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’ve got a summer trip planned. You’ll be hanging around good friends and some acquaintances that have caught your eye when you go out after work. You want to show up at your best, so you set your diet and exercise plan. You get at it, and hit the weight. The trip comes and goes, it may or may not have gone how you liked, but regardless – how invested are you in getting back on the plan? The thing you set it up for is over. Now, you might set a new one, but it’ll be tough to hit that same level of conviction. All you’ve done is move the goalposts and your brain is real good at picking that up.

We are all wired to crave that next hit of dopamine. There’s no avoiding it, really. We want to feel good. So, what, then? Set no plans, have no expectations?

Quite the contrary. What we should do, the video argues, is essentially trick our brain into treating the challenge – the struggle – as the thing that draws out that dopamine. If you reward yourself after the fact, it’s going to take bigger and bigger rewards to get the same satisfaction, to the point the difficulties you encounter along the way will ultimately deter you. If you give yourself little pep boosts in order to get started, well, eventually you’ll decide that you can just keep the pregame and skip the rest. No, you have to make the one thing that’s not going anywhere be the thing that drives you.

Don’t exercise for the number on the scale, do it for the soreness. Do it for the very concept that you’re pushing your body to its limit, whatever that limit might be. Don’t write to get on a store shelf, do it because you love to create. Do it because you have stories that need to be on the page. Because you have something to say, no matter if it gets read or not.

Now, I’m not going to pretend this is easy. I don’t think I’ll ever stop getting on that scale, and when it’s gone the wrong direction it’s going to be frustrating. I’m not going to give up the dream of seeing my name on a shelf but I can’t let that be something looming ahead, Eldritch in its power to sap my joy of writing. No, I have to find my pleasure from the path. From the discipline.

One down. Fifty-one to go. Until next week, Dwellers. (Don’t worry, I’ll cover the name then)