idk if it's exactly the same thing, but the problem I've experienced - and I don't really know how to put this in a way that doesn't sound demeaning, but trust that I am literally describing how my brain seems to work, based on the only evidence i have - is that I do not have the ability to "fool myself." i am, to put it plainly, too smart for my own good.
you know when you shake a feather behind a box, and the cat jumps through the box instead of just, going around to grab the feather? but then some cats understand that the feather is actually outside the box and they don't need to stuff their big soft face through a hole and look like a disgusting gremlin in their attempts to reach it? i feel like cat #2
i must point out that cat #2 does not have any fun, in this scenario. instead of wildly pawing at a thing they can't reach and having a grand old time playing, they just walk around the box and go "uh, it's right there" and lay down like a stuck up little asshole who's too good for your generous attempt to entertain them.
I feel like people who can develop good habits have brains that just accept what they're told. Like, not in a "you're gullible" sense, but in a "your godforsaken meat computer respects the instructions you give it, instead of acting like a petulant know-it-all kid who knows they're ahead of their class and thinks it means they get to skip straight from childhood to adulthood without any of the scut work in between."
I wish something like "set your clock 10 minutes late so you'll always be early to things" would work for me. It does not; the exact millisecond that I institute that policy, my brain turns to me and goes "I just started subtracting ten minutes from everything. Can we not... you know, do this?" It's response to every single thing I try is "do you think I'm stupid over here? I can see that the feather is attached to the string. I can see your hand moving it."
When you form "good habits," and when you try to create "systems," you're creating an outside authority, something bigger than your id. You tell yourself, "let's make a system where I write down everything I need to do on a post-it, and then I update the post-its, and then I can just look at them to see what needs doing."
This works for a couple days. In that time, you are letting the post-its police your behavior. They are in charge - you believe, for that period, that if it isn't on a post-it, I can't do it.
This works until you need to make an exception. You need to do something that's not on a post-it, something emergent, or a little convenience item that isn't worth walking over to wherever the post-its are, filling one out, going and doing the thing, and coming back two minutes later and crossing it off.
Whoops!
The system is now powerless. You have stripped it bare, you can see how naked it is, you can see that it never had any power at all, and you will never fucking respect it again. Your brain goes "post-it? what, you're still doing that? do you still believe in santa claus too?"
Is it ADHD? Is it something comorbid? Do I just have oppositional defiant disorder towards everything including myself? I don't know and it wouldn't matter if I did; the effect is that there is a voice in my head mocking every solution I try to create, as soon as it's revealed to be voluntary. Fuck that, it says; I know more than a pile of post-its or a kanban or a set of personal guidelines you created for me to follow. I'm smart, says the id, and I don't need any of that bullshit.
It's Scorched Earth Syndrome because you leave a trail of these broken, incinerated systems behind you, failed plan after failed plan. And every time you feel worse about it, because you remember how nice things were the last time, when the system was working. The post-its were wonderful! They fixed so many problems! You had a couple of the lowest-stress days of your life with them, until the moment they began feeling like preschool baby blocks that were being imposed on you by some demeaning third party.
As I wrote in my article six or seven years ago, I say again now: I have no advice. Knowing what the problem is didn't help me solve it and I still haven't figured anything out.
yeah the fact that a lot of mental lifehack shit relies on trying to outsmart yourself is kinda unfortunate because like. i can't reliably outsmart myself on account of i am myself. i am not immune to But We Can Open The Box, and once i have opened the box it kinda stops making sense to put the cookies in the box.
this is basically how i quit hrt, i forgot for like a day or two and then that was kinda it.
are there people who are immune to But We Can Open The Box? is that a real thing that happens?
i saw somebody sharing this like "idk, maybe brushing your teeth twice a day is a scam and once a day is enough" and i was about to be like "i think you read a different post than i did because that's so close that it's barely worth feeling bad about" but then i reread the top of the thread and that's one of the exact things op is feeling bad about. i am fucked.
