Lost & Unhappy

October 2022


You'd like to be doing stuff - but you're not happy. Maybe you're in pain as well. You probably set some goals to "get your shit together" or "figure out what's wrong".

Why does it happen?

You're focused on yourself, and are identifying with your emotions. You overthink and under-do. You're stun-locked - you're stuck in thought paralysis. Whatever you think of doing, your mind talks you out of it.

You're probably engaging in many compulsive hedonistic activities (video games, junk food, infinite youtube/twitch videos), thinking that the relief it brings you is the long-term joy you are looking for. It's not.

You are always training yourself

Every action you take, you're training yourself to do more of it. If you let yourself spiral into the hedonistic void and accept it for a few weeks, thinking you'll just give yourself a break, you'll just get sucked in even harder.

This is the same with overthinking and right action - which directly links to the hedonistic spiral.

What can you do about it?

The first step is to take your mornings back - no dopamine in the first hour of the day! When you wake up, meditate for 10-15m and don't even touch any electronics. If your sleep schedule is messed up, work isn't really dopamine (sleep is more important). Just try to meditate for at least a few minutes and then no videos for an hour.

After that, you want to train to get back your right action reflex. No more thinking! Every hour when your watch rings, do 2 push-ups. Just do it. Then write it down in your Excel sheet.

Once your mornings are back, make some goals you nerdge! Don't do this immediately though - give yourself some time to recover. After a few days (or maybe even just one!) you'll naturally find yourself ready and willing to make goals. Your first goal is just to take back your mornings happyL

Setting up some kind of short-term, flexible plan on where you're headed is 100% the way to go here.

  • Draw up a list of all the crap you wanna do
  • Do you want the one result, or do you want to set up some kind of long-term process?
  • Are the goals realistic, specific?
  • Pick 1 or 2 of them per sphere of life (work vs home) to start on
  • Basically, some form of GTD kekw

Do you have a system to update them or track them? Reminders? Excel sheet?

This kind of system can be hard to keep, but without one you know you'll just revert to not having any goals again.

If you aren't swimming, you're probably sinking. -Senthil 2022