Yes, You Want to Work

When work is your own thing, you won't want to stop. Most people never get this feeling, which is a real shame.

I was addicted to DotA 2.

Before that, it was World of Warcraft.

Before that, Halo 3, 2, 1.

You get the idea.

Here's the thing that no one told me when I was a huge gamer: Your brain is a dopamine seeking machine. Dopamine = the chemical in your brain that feels good when you get something or are about to get something. When you give it easy wins, whether that's video games, shows, junk food, scrolling, it just found the quickest path to a reward. If that's the quickest path, why would it take any harder paths?

Magically I was able to stay consistent with going to the gym, but that was about it. What was really rough is that there were other things that I wanted to work on but I "just couldn't get myself to do them." (ha).

When I did sit down to work on some project, it was a struggle. My games were right there. Why would I spend my time doing with this "thing" no immediate reward?

I watched a couple habit forming videos and realized that I could stick video games at the end of my project sessions as a carrot on a stick. That worked out well, but I'd always end up staying up too late. Then my mind was fried because I had just finished a super stimulating game and now it was 10pm. (Sleep is important. Don't do that.)

We want to be able to work on our own things consistently. Maybe you want to work on music. Maybe you want to get back into the gym. Maybe you want to start a business of some kind. What's holding us back?

Obviously there's a lot of entertainment in the way, and we'll deal with that soon, but I want to remind you that you're not lazy and work feels good to you.

Yes, You Want to Work

I just went on this rant about video games vs personal projects. I want to zoom out.

I think there's this stigma against work in general. Work goes beyond jobs. You may or may not like your job, but you do like to work. This is why on some level you feel good after you clean your house or finish tasks at work or finish a TV series. Same goes with video games. Leveling up to 60 in Vanilla WoW is not a passive activity. It feels good even though it doesn't have real life returns.

I'm going to keep talking about video games because I think it's important. This is the only entertainment that you're actively involved in. The character doesn't do anything unless you do something. We are drawn to them because we feel this sense of achievement and progression. Then there is some sort of reward. A new level. A new item. The ability to go to new zones. Gaining status. The ability to join high ranking guilds, and in those guilds the ability to defeat the biggest bosses in the game. The list goes on. The rewards are also more immediate than what we'd ever get in real life. You may be able to level up to 60 if you binge hard enough for a month, but you can't add 200lbs to your bench press in that same time frame. Since things in the real world are harder, we retreat back into gaming.

Sadly people only live in two extremes. They have school or work they don't like. Then they have entertainment to help them forget about that stuff.

What if there was a combination of the two? Work that feels like play? Yes it's possible.

The Flow State

Flow.

Getting "in the zone" as a sports analogy.

What is it? It's when you get so immersed into an activity that you forget that life and time even exist. You merge into the task itself. Have you seen that movie "Soul?" It's good. If you haven't, the main character plays piano and when he really gets into it he gets an out of body experience and can talk to other people in the flow state (hilarious).

What you need to understand is that this is when you feel good. It's not being in a rut without any goals, but it's also not getting the goal itself. Even the astronauts felt depressed after going to the moon. Why? Because where do you go after the moon?

The best way to achieve this flow state is to be making progress towards a goal, ideally of your own making.

I heard this from Earl Nightingale. "The progressive realization of a worthy ideal." It's not "hitting the end goal." What if you were an Olympian? You trained for 20 years. You win the gold medal. You stand on the podium just long enough to hear your national anthem. Then what? I'd hope you'd have something else to work on after that, because the glow lasts for a couple weeks.

So what does this mean?

You want to be working.

It doesn't have to be grueling 8 hour days. It just has to be a series of tasks connected to a series of goals connected to a vision of a day to day life you enjoy.

Are you a musician? Then you'd want to be making music all day.

My favorite example is John Williams, the composer (because there's a classical guitarist of the same name). We share the same birthday, which is awesome, but the last time I checked he's in his 90s and I haven't heard any mention of him retiring. Why would he? He's the composer of Star Wars!

You need to find something that you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life. This where life is found, not just existing.

Play Your Own Game

You are not lazy.

You are just either not bored enough or you haven't found "your thing" to work on.

This is how you start playing your own game.

Step 1: Accept that work is a good thing.

• I hope what I just said is convincing enough. You want to find something that gets you into the flow state. You want to be actively doing something because that's when your brain is in the zone.

• Work itself is not evil. Don't confuse "work" with what most people think of: their jobs that they can't stand.

Step 2: If you're lost, detox and try stuff

• Why all this talk of dopamine detoxing? Well, if you just blast your brain with entertainment all day, you'll never want to work hard on anything.

• If you detox from bad habits, you'll be bored out of your head. Congrats! Now if you're completely lost and have no clue what to do, you have to try new things out.

• Take a course. Take a class. Go to a meetup. Do a YouTube or social media scroll as a researcher and see if there are people that are doing something that seems cool. Once you find anything, give it a fair chance for a month or two. You'll be bad at first, but that's the price you have to pay to get better. You fell down 100s of times when you tried to walk. You can stick it out for something more advanced.

• If you start to get discouraged, keep searching and thinking "what's something I can see myself doing for a long time with problems I'd actually enjoy solving?" You may need a week to chew on that one.

Step 3: Broad Vision and Goals

• This may be hard at first, but go for things that you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life. Don't go for 30-90 day challenges if you're just doing it to reach the end. What's a life that would be cool to you? The better the question the more you'll want to answer it.

• The vision determines the goals. Want to be in the gym? Then you're probably going to have to lose a certain amount of weight, lift a certain amount of weight and repeat steps daily to achieve both of those. What are they?

Step 4: Pick Challenges Just Beyond Your Reach

• Want to hit the gym? You wouldn't start trying to rep 300lbs on anything. Enter the "fog of war" from video games. Take the smallest steps and you'll see the easiest monsters. Defeat them and move on to the next ones. The trick here is that you have no clue what steps to take until you actually start taking steps.

• This is actually where the flow state is achieved. If the task is too overwhelming, you'd get anxious and give up. If the task was too easy, you'd get bored and…give up. The task has to be just beyond your capabilities. If it isn't, then take the smallest step towards it.

This is your game now

I always harp on entertainment vs you. I'm not anti-entertainment. There are plenty of video games, shows and movies that I love. But for a lot of people it's taking their life away.

If someone watches TV every single night for an hour, it's not a problem if they don't care. But if they have something in their lives that's nagging them in the back of their head, that one hour is just making things worse. That hour could either be spent on a personal project or spent getting ready for bed early so you can wake up and work on it in the morning instead of at night.

Be honest with yourself. Is there something you really want to do? Do you have no clue what that is? Well then the only way out is to work towards that thing or experiment until you find it. There will never be a magical moment where the stars will align and give you all the free time to work on it (if anything, more free time won't help).

Play a bigger game.

Thanks for reading!

Check out my music here.