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- On sleep: When I used to oversleep at the weekend, I used to see it as a failure to adhere to my aspirational sleep-regime, and criticize myself. Now, when I sleep for longer than planned at the weekend, it is generally only on one day. If I let it happen for two it will break my regular sleep pattern; stopping this happening gives me confidence my efforts “aren’t all broken/wasted”. It is not ideal, but is useful information that I didn’t get enough quality rest during the week, rather than failure. I also recognise that it means I must have worked pretty hard to need the rest, and that berating myself for that isn’t constructive or what I deserve. I don’t know if all this relates to changes in my attitude towards sleep, or changes towards my attitude towards failure, but either way its all good.
- Thought about blogging; blogging is best when it captures an instant. When I wait to blog, I tend to forget what I really meant to say, or end up with a backlog that never gets blogged. But what really would add value to any blog is working back through it some time later, and pulling out all the really useful information or observations that have stood the test of time. These can be added onto static pages and consolidated, to act as a ready reference.
Yesterday I took a look at the Square Enix website to see about cancelling my FFXI subscription. Its been gradually seeping dollars from my VISA card since 2004, and for most of the last two I’ve barely touched the game. Of course my character had lots of hours invested, and I always thought I would find time to get back into it. Now I’m not surrounded by FFXI mania and the old gang have moved on, it doesn’t appeal the way it used to – and even when it does, it just isn’t the same. Having got back into my own routine, its also tough to justify the hours you’d need to spend to progress; its the kind of game that you could lose yourself in for about four years, if the landlord didn’t evict you first for losing your job and defaulting on your rent. I like to remind myself these days that when the power goes off, games like that leave you with nothing. Invest that time in a martial art, practical hobby, social activity or sports, and its yours to keep (no subscription required).
Dealing with Failure by Chandresh Bharwaj
Dealing with Failure by Dion Melchior
Conscious competence (learning model matrix) from businessballs.com
Dunning-Kruger effect at Wikipedia, and associated article at DamnInteresting.com
- Keep it in perspective: balance the frequency of your failures against the frequency of your successes
- Could they have been worse – could you have failed more dramatically if you hadn’t used your existing skills and experience to intervene (even if you were not able to completely avoid difficulties)?
- What actions or behaviours or assessments might have changed the outcome?
- What systems (skills, knowledge, processes) can be put in place to avoid repetition?
- Can this knowledge be shared to benefit others?
- We only find our limitations by stepping over them and stretching ourselvers; the cost of adopting any approach that diligently avoids failure is never to challenge ourselves, and ultimately to prevent any chance that we might fulfil our full potential
- How many toddlers are so destroyed by their failure to walk first time that they give up for life? Can we learn from their lack of self-consciousness?
- “Try to be a failure” – look back over the things you have done and see if you really can classify yourself as a failure. If there’s any successes in there, you’re just not enough of a failure to qualify (this is what your perfectionist negative filter is doing, just the other way around).
- What is there to be redeemed from failure? If it is unrealistic or limiting/counter-productive to try and avoid it completely, is there something in the experience in which we can find some redemption? (such as being good at identifiying the lessons to be learned from failure, without being hindered or paralysed by the challenge it poses to our pride and appearence)
- Acknowledging a personal limitation that might have lead to failure can be uncomfortable. It can also be a useful opportunity to really get inside the experience of that acknowledgement, and identify what it is that is holding you back in recognising your own limitations. For example, are you reminded of an instance in the past where your limitations have had intense or negative consequences, that has left an impact. What is the risk if you fail or are responsible for failure? What is the risk if you never risk failure?
- If you are very unable to acknowledge your own limitations, it is impossible to become consciously aware of your lack of skills, the impact of that on the situation, and the limits it places on your future opportunities. You are stuck at “unconscious incompetence” forever, because you are unable to (or refuse) to become conscious at it. Failures can be painful experiences; those around us who may also have their own issues around failure in their life can be critical and destructive. Don’t let them rob you of the opportunity to learn and develop yourself to your full potential.
- Need to work harder at circadian rhythm experiment
- Bed-times drifting later, 10pm is ok, 11pm (last night) is bad, 9pm would be best.
- Perhaps need to start preparing for sleep 8.30 latest.
- Need to pull back morning times, sun is rising earlier and am getting into bad habits.
- More tired this week, but should go to bed earlier to address that not get up later.
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Thoughts about irrational worry
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Feeling as though perpetually “have to be doing something” to avert illness (otherwise “haven’t tried hard enough”!! tsk!) or sense that if not constantly aware something bad could happen
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Seem to be covering the same ground over and over again
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Perhaps would be helpful to start rating days for “happiness” and/or find some well written “happiness scale” to use to record this.
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Would be interesting to identify any patterns and capture stats (could be used to manage own expectations when feeling down)
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Could start asking questions such as “what could I do today to make me happy”, “what has happened today that made me happy/was good” to balance focus and avoid negativity
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Not to be misused for pretending to be happy when not! Repressing feelings is not healthy.
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- Have to accept my own limitations (as the woman at dancing said – perhaps I expect a lot of myself)
- Can’t decide what to do about dancing
- Releasing anger is good, although slightly crazy
- Circadian rhythm experiment still going ok
- Mon: sleep 22:15
- Tue: wake 6.27, sleep 12:00 ish? 11:45?
- Wed: wake 6.27, sleep 22.30
- Hope for an early night Thursday
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Circadian rhythm experiment going well but stayed up too late last night.
- Fri: start … sleep 19:15
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Sat: wake 06:30, sleep: 8:30
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Sun: wake 4:15 then doze on and off to 6:20, sleep 22:15 (45 minutes later than planned)
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Mon: wake 6:50 with alarm, sleep 21:45 (hopefully)
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Could use capturing sunrise/sunset figures alongside these to identify any correlation
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Received reply from Dr Wozniak about circadian rhythms and mental alertness, needs a proper read to make sense of it
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Today wasn’t good for the soul
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Tried too hard to “carry on regardless” which actually just delayed release of work stress and delayed return to productivity. Work fears became focused (unhealthily) inwards as personal professional doubts, which then clouded everything. Could use active focus on externalising more.
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Research funding position is slightly bleak. Long term research path will need to be identified early to tackle this. It probably doesn’t need to be a concern at this stage; look far enough down any country road and you’ll find a tractor.
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Will it be possible to “stick it out” until next year? Need to monitor decreasing resilience to upset (such as today) and waning patience; this isn’t a test, just a means to an end. There are others.
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Would like to meditate more, would like flat to be tidier
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Still managed to squeeze in a morning walk and jog through the woods and half way around the playing field; a good start to my first work-day under the circadian rhythm experiment.
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Haven’t decided whether notes like this are better here or in my paper notebook, we’ll see.
