I enjoy job simulator type games and really like the aspect of decorating and taking something and improving it. I’m a sucker for visual progress and I’m comfortable with physical labor in real life, so why can I only do it in games and structured activities?
I don’t mind drudgery though. I’ve done real life construction work, I love legos, before I had internet I dug a hole in the backyard just to see how deep a hole I could dig. Progress being made is the goal sure but that doesn’t make me shy away from the boring and frustrating parts. It’s just that when it comes to decorating my apartment, cleaning my room, doing dishes, mowing lawns, whatever, I just can’t find myself getting started in the first place rather than giving up partway through.
Is it a lack of motivation?
Walk us through what happens when you decide to do the dishes? What is the process for preparing? What actually happens?
Are you unable to force yourself to “just do it?”
Is this a constant issue and does it cause trouble for you in your life? E.g. always a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, can’t have people over, etc?
When I want to do dishes I usually start sitting at my desk or laying down on the couch or bed. Then I think about how if I want to eat later I’m going to have to do dishes because I’m out of clean plates/silverware/bowls/pots. Then I think about how I mind as well round up all the dishes in the apartment. Then I want to clean up the apartment. Then I usually start wanting to clean my room because it’s gross. And then I think that I’m gross and should shower and brush my teeth. Then I get depressive and stay where I was feeling bad.
Sometimes I manage to power through and because the dishes are backed up so much I get the hot water going and let the dishes soak for a few minutes, then I have to overcome depressive thoughts again and do the dishes otherwise I sleep on the couch and the entire day has failed.
When I do manage to do dishes anyways I can only do so much until the drying rack is full, and when it’s full I just drain the water and grab whatever I cleaned to make spaghetti or something.
Depression & shame is rough. I fight that all the time too. Both are very demotivating. Hopefully you will find the exercise helpful. I am trying to get back to that again too. I walked to the store and back (15 min, hills) Sunday. I didn’t get a chance to do anything today. Will try again tomorrow.
What (sometimes) helps me in situations like that is exercise in a gym and a plan for the day that includes leaving the house. Most days are though tough.
Does it have to do with the difference between one-off tasks and recurring tasks? I’ve asked myself similar questions to yours and sometimes I wonder if tedium is harder to accept when you know that, even if you finish this task today, you’ll have to do it again tomorrow, next week, etc. So why not skip it this once? (We all know it’s never just once)
I don’t think so? Even when I’m not thinking about the temporary nature of things I struggle with doing stuff. I want to learn guitar and experiment with painting and sewing, apply to jobs, and all sorts of beans that aren’t temporary in terms of my lifespan. Starting just about anything I want to do is just plain difficult for me.
Ok those are really big things. For those really big intimidating things, I found Barbara Oakley’s book/lectures on procrastination quite helpful. I think they are on YT. They helped me get unstuck during my PhD. For the smaller recurring things, let me know if you find a good strategy :) When it’s non-life-changing fun stuff (e.g. music/drawing/crafts), I try to focus on the joy that I get out of even just dicking around instead of how I suck compared to Picasso.
Because modern life is utterly exhausting and humiliating in a million different ways. Your body knows that and isn’t that interested in gambling a bunch of mental and physical energy on projects that don’t directly help you feel rested and prepared for the next dumb bs you have to deal with. The thing about a video game is there isn’t that risk, there isn’t the blowback either from negative feelings around failure to complete the task or direct real world consequences.
Video games fundamentally are about rewriting the conditions through which we are forced to have a conversation with the environment around us. They allow us to remake our relationship with ideas, projects and other humans into healthier ones that elevate our quality of life. Video games are gifts of agency that serve as sanity checks on how healthy our real world environments actually are.
Understandable, consequences of my actions are pretty demotivating. It does seem easier to blow money on a lamp in a game then decide it doesn’t fit what I was going for anyways than it is to buy anything that doesn’t directly aid my survival. Fear and financial instabilities are probably some big motivators to inactivity, at least for me.
Absolutely, the best response to most real world dangers is often to do nothing, keep your head down and conserve resources both for a prehistoric human and a modern day human. Doing nothing is a lot of times far better than doing something strictly from a survival standpoint. It totally makes sense that our bodies would be wired to react to fear and financial instability this way, but obviously after a certain point this rational defense mechanism can hurt us.
I think a lot of the stimulus that comes from interacting with mobile devices is more insidious than most people realising.
Try changing your phone to grey scale in the usability settings for a day and you’ll see what I mean.
Basically, real life just doesn’t stimulate dopamine production in the same way, it’s not as satisfying.