Fantastic essay. I wonder if, over and above the obvious reasons (the projects felt like busy work and you realized you didn't want to program anymore), it comes down to a difference between doing things for others and doing them for yourself. Your earlier endeavors as a missionary and in the military were in service of your church, your god, the state etc... whereas your degree was just for you, with no-one else depending on it or benefitting from it. Sometimes it's harder to do things for ourselves than it is to do them for others; there is a certain satisfaction in sublimating ourselves.
Thanks for posting, it means quite a bit to get to read it.
"I am a man at war with my own mind, trapped in what feels in my cynical moments like a world and a culture that seems determined to validate my lower impulses and discourage my best." A man of the people, and a line for the age.
As someone who barely dodged school-by-tablet and uni-by-Zoom, I can't believe the fallout from WFH and the move to digital life, and the damage it's done (or allowed me to do) to my career and education. It's bizarre to lose the forced-but-good-for-me features of life that people instantly took for granted not long ago. And yet, the smartest, most inspired and awesome people in the world, are on Twitter working at their tech/finance/research jobs while shitposting. And here I am, struggling to get out of bed, also shitposting. It's pretty damn hard to say "I am going to do this" and have it matter at all if the only reason is you said you wanted to. What gives?
The worst part of the Dark Playground is how everyone else there seems rich, successful, wholesome and motivated - Bryan Caplan included! You either have to believe that the Dark Playground is intrinsically motivating for everyone but you, or that you have work to do before you can enjoy the Playground, even though all these other people are just crushing it. I think the latter is much closer to the truth - that most of the best guys on there have essentially made their money and contributions, and are just chillin, doing whatever they find fun.
In light of that, it's nice to see someone on here who has done cool stuff in spite of very recent struggles. In making my December Resolutions (NY resolutions being insufficiently ambitious) this kind of post weighs heavily on my mind. Your writing and twitter have inspired me to do Real Life stuff that involves showing up and being part of a community. If this corner of the internet is as close as one can get to an ambitious, community-driven, pre-WFH and pre-cellphone environment, it's nice to have someone who tries to make it as good as possible. Thanks again for posting.
This is pretty much the most prototypical software developer experience that exists. I think the impulse is the real reason agile is a popular an effective team structure in software development. Short regular sprints keeps the optimal amount of terror in your heart after procrastinating the first half of the sprint. The Twitter developer with 10 side projects forever hustling isn't something I've ever seen offline.
Nov 22, 2023·edited Nov 22, 2023Liked by TracingWoodgrains
Thanks for writing this. I can imagine it was difficult to put it all out there.
Procrastination is easy to get used to. Always telling yourself you're too busy or you'll do it tomorrow.
Eventually you start to feel an increasing amount of shame (I'm a fraud) and overwhelmed (how can I finish this massive amount of crap I've created for myself?).
I know I've done and experienced this, and my gut feelings is that the majority of people have as well.
It's interesting that we feel so much shame for this. When we are struggling and drowning in stress, our first instinct is to lie about it (I'm fine, everything is fine) instead of reaching out for help.
It's like (speaking for me) it feels like some kind of moral failure.
'It's not that I just didn't do these things, but I'm a bad person because I didn't do these things. I'm ashamed that I didn't.' It makes you feel like you're less than. You're not worth as much. It hurts ego, pride. We feel ashamed, we don't want to talk about it or admit it or get help, and meanwhile it all sort of snowballs.
Obviously that's ridiculous. Like, people get stressed out and it's hard to handle. That's probably true for everyone. But: YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING WRONG, you're just a normal human being and experienced normal emotions and normal stress shit.
None of that makes you a bad person or "less than" or whatever. Obviously. You're just as good of a person as you always were. Maybe even better, because you're grappling with this stuff and growing as a person.
Yeah, I don't know. I'm really happy for you and you should be happy for yourself.
Ultimately, who gives a shit if you take a extra 1, 2, 3 or 5 years to finish whatever? People go back to college in their 40's and get degrees. If you knew someone who did that, you'd be proud of them, you wouldn't think less of them.
So stop putting these massive expectations on yourself and beating yourself up when you don't meet them.
Do a little bit of work every day to move towards your goals. Stop thinking so far into the future, that's where you get overwhelmed (this is called future tripping).
Try to stay more in the moment, in the day to day.
It's like most things (like for example) its better to clean your house a little bit every day, than it is to wait until it gets very mess and then clean it.
I think living life in the present is something that really helps (for me). It's advice I picked up from AA: try to focus more towards one day at a time, and living in the present. It started out with just not drinking, but now I try to just apply this as much as I can.
Anyways, that's my advice. Love yourself, put down the bat and be proud of who you are, because there's plenty to be proud of.
edit: lol sorry this was so long of a comment. tldr: love yourself, you're awesome.
Oh Trace, I've been there so much and unfortunately probably remain in the future, thank you for writing this.
> I know that I don’t actually want to program anymore
Keep in mind that as you progress, what "programming" is changes from writing a shopping list to writing an essay on how you spent your summer to writing a TIME editorial framing how people should vote to inventing Sindarin. So if you're into conlangs you might want to soldier through the boring stuff.
I don't know how to write this comment in a properly hedged way so I'm gonna be blunt and hope I'm forgiven.
You have ADHD. A mild version maybe but even mild is enough to procrastinate for 3 years when the stars fall out of alignment.
Not sure if you've looked into it before, but I'd recommend looking for actual lived experiences of people with ADHD, rather than the stereotypical understanding that people have from the outside. It looks especially different in people with high intelligence and love of learning. Obviously we had no issues paying attention in school! And we don't need to practice homework for most middle school classes so no issues with that either.
I only found out for myself when I was 32, and I still harbor some resentment for all the times I sought help with my issues and no one even mentioned the possibility, "cos my grades are fine" or "cos I'm smart but I just need to apply myself". It's not quite their fault but I still wish it had been different. So this is me hopefully giving you the heads up a bit earlier.
A few things stand out to me specifically:
- Executive function problems (that's what ADHD should properly be called anyway). Self-directed work that I've procrastinated on or have some minor "ick" about, it becomes increasingly impossible the longer it drags on. If I do find myself finally working on it I have to make sure to keep going because if I take a break now I'll never pick it up again. On the flipside, social external motivation is almost the only thing that works, and how I got my master's thesis written after avoiding it for a year. Also the very common story of doing 80% of a project and then the last bit becoming impossible. From the outside it looks like distractibility, but from the inside it kinda hurts and it's on my mind for a long time but it just sits there pushing at a wall, it doesn't go, it doesn't move.
"it leeches into every moment of your life, casting a quiet pall over the whole of it." Fucking ouch :(( that resonates with my last two decades :(
- Turning things into a competition/race gives a lot of motivation. 9 months is a long time for a hyperfocus, but the setup is almost optimal for it with trying to speedrun college. Only thing better would have been if you'd been competing against others, and if you had some system to break through blockers, like once a week you sit with a friend to work on the thing you're avoiding.
- The moments where you excel, with social motivation, rigid structure, pre-planned days, competition, clear and immediate rewards/validation, and a clear and understood task. That's like, ADHD-optimized environment.
Now, having ADHD or not isn't immediately gonna change anything in your life. The things you identified that work well or less well for you will still be true. But it makes things make a bit more sense for one, and if you want to go that route, the meds that exist for it are actually the most effective for all mental issues. ADHD being highly genetic and almost no "nurture" also implies that its issues are almost wholly chemical, rather than emotional, which can be helpful to know too. Emotional work can still be of benefit, but actually works best in combination with the medical approach. It's hard to feel a chemical imbalance when introspecting, so it often only feels like "my heart of hearts doesn't want it". And while that's somewhat true in that some things do have more intrinsic motivation, it's also the case that many people can do things without that intrinsic motivation anyway, for reasons more abstract, distant, or because of habits.
Anyway, considerations of what it would mean if you had ADHD are for later. You're pretty functional as is, and know your current needs and limitations. Just look up some first hand accounts and see what resonates, and see if that moves anything!
Thanks to some AP classes in HS, plus something that was within shouting distance of actual work at UCSC, and choosing a state school that charged by the year and not by the credit, I graduated undergrad in 3 years and skipped merrily along to law school a year early. Saved myself a boatload on student loans, and now I’m not only entirely student debt free, but I own a home in the SF bay, more bikes than is wise, and much more besides. I have an enormous amount to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
But now I’m slightly regretting not doing it even faster.
Hi Trace, I'm considering speedruning college myself (in part due to your blog). I'd like to get into software engineering. Do you still think WGU would be a good institution for this? What made you initially decide it over other places?
Wow TW! You were Mormon too? (Here's my story.[1]) It sounds like your ADHD might be even worse than mine... I did spend a couple of years doing very little, but I think it was mainly because I lacked even a single friend with common interests. After years of occasionally trying to convince a psychiatrist to give me a prescription, I actually took my first Vyvanse in years at 10 am this morning. So exciting! But I'm not convinced it works thus far! And you enlisted in the military? I can't imagine doing that , but I've been following the Ukraine invasion closely, and keep wondering if I could/should help somehow.
I suspect that the shame you feel regarding your procrastination problem is connected to the root of that problem. It's harder to be self-directed when you view yourself as your own enemy.
Working late into the night to finish the workday strong or writing the thesis you had 3 months for in the final 3 days. And it all works out fine.
I certainly don't feel my peers have 'surpassed me' in any way. Rather the opposite. It's like some Resource Curse min-max thing. I know my inherent brain power makes up for a ridiculous amount of slacking, so I slack off profligately.
I don't really wonder if 'I could have done more' on a grand scale, though. I know I never could have been a Newton or a Neumann.
"There are no weekends, no evenings, no moments of contentment in knowing you have done all you need to do." - this gets to me. You can always take it up a level. Could have done more Jiras and made twice the money this quarter. You could be financially free by now. Could have built that house. Could have had the (second) (third) child.
Interestingly I also felt the most content ever while doing an 11-month stint in the military. It was out of my control.
This was a really great and relatable essay. I'm curious what you think kept you going so strong through those first 9 months, and how that changed so abruptly?
Fantastic essay. I wonder if, over and above the obvious reasons (the projects felt like busy work and you realized you didn't want to program anymore), it comes down to a difference between doing things for others and doing them for yourself. Your earlier endeavors as a missionary and in the military were in service of your church, your god, the state etc... whereas your degree was just for you, with no-one else depending on it or benefitting from it. Sometimes it's harder to do things for ourselves than it is to do them for others; there is a certain satisfaction in sublimating ourselves.
Thanks for posting, it means quite a bit to get to read it.
"I am a man at war with my own mind, trapped in what feels in my cynical moments like a world and a culture that seems determined to validate my lower impulses and discourage my best." A man of the people, and a line for the age.
As someone who barely dodged school-by-tablet and uni-by-Zoom, I can't believe the fallout from WFH and the move to digital life, and the damage it's done (or allowed me to do) to my career and education. It's bizarre to lose the forced-but-good-for-me features of life that people instantly took for granted not long ago. And yet, the smartest, most inspired and awesome people in the world, are on Twitter working at their tech/finance/research jobs while shitposting. And here I am, struggling to get out of bed, also shitposting. It's pretty damn hard to say "I am going to do this" and have it matter at all if the only reason is you said you wanted to. What gives?
The worst part of the Dark Playground is how everyone else there seems rich, successful, wholesome and motivated - Bryan Caplan included! You either have to believe that the Dark Playground is intrinsically motivating for everyone but you, or that you have work to do before you can enjoy the Playground, even though all these other people are just crushing it. I think the latter is much closer to the truth - that most of the best guys on there have essentially made their money and contributions, and are just chillin, doing whatever they find fun.
In light of that, it's nice to see someone on here who has done cool stuff in spite of very recent struggles. In making my December Resolutions (NY resolutions being insufficiently ambitious) this kind of post weighs heavily on my mind. Your writing and twitter have inspired me to do Real Life stuff that involves showing up and being part of a community. If this corner of the internet is as close as one can get to an ambitious, community-driven, pre-WFH and pre-cellphone environment, it's nice to have someone who tries to make it as good as possible. Thanks again for posting.
This is pretty much the most prototypical software developer experience that exists. I think the impulse is the real reason agile is a popular an effective team structure in software development. Short regular sprints keeps the optimal amount of terror in your heart after procrastinating the first half of the sprint. The Twitter developer with 10 side projects forever hustling isn't something I've ever seen offline.
Thanks for writing this. I can imagine it was difficult to put it all out there.
Procrastination is easy to get used to. Always telling yourself you're too busy or you'll do it tomorrow.
Eventually you start to feel an increasing amount of shame (I'm a fraud) and overwhelmed (how can I finish this massive amount of crap I've created for myself?).
I know I've done and experienced this, and my gut feelings is that the majority of people have as well.
It's interesting that we feel so much shame for this. When we are struggling and drowning in stress, our first instinct is to lie about it (I'm fine, everything is fine) instead of reaching out for help.
It's like (speaking for me) it feels like some kind of moral failure.
'It's not that I just didn't do these things, but I'm a bad person because I didn't do these things. I'm ashamed that I didn't.' It makes you feel like you're less than. You're not worth as much. It hurts ego, pride. We feel ashamed, we don't want to talk about it or admit it or get help, and meanwhile it all sort of snowballs.
Obviously that's ridiculous. Like, people get stressed out and it's hard to handle. That's probably true for everyone. But: YOU DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING WRONG, you're just a normal human being and experienced normal emotions and normal stress shit.
None of that makes you a bad person or "less than" or whatever. Obviously. You're just as good of a person as you always were. Maybe even better, because you're grappling with this stuff and growing as a person.
Yeah, I don't know. I'm really happy for you and you should be happy for yourself.
Ultimately, who gives a shit if you take a extra 1, 2, 3 or 5 years to finish whatever? People go back to college in their 40's and get degrees. If you knew someone who did that, you'd be proud of them, you wouldn't think less of them.
So stop putting these massive expectations on yourself and beating yourself up when you don't meet them.
Do a little bit of work every day to move towards your goals. Stop thinking so far into the future, that's where you get overwhelmed (this is called future tripping).
Try to stay more in the moment, in the day to day.
It's like most things (like for example) its better to clean your house a little bit every day, than it is to wait until it gets very mess and then clean it.
I think living life in the present is something that really helps (for me). It's advice I picked up from AA: try to focus more towards one day at a time, and living in the present. It started out with just not drinking, but now I try to just apply this as much as I can.
Anyways, that's my advice. Love yourself, put down the bat and be proud of who you are, because there's plenty to be proud of.
edit: lol sorry this was so long of a comment. tldr: love yourself, you're awesome.
Oh Trace, I've been there so much and unfortunately probably remain in the future, thank you for writing this.
> I know that I don’t actually want to program anymore
Keep in mind that as you progress, what "programming" is changes from writing a shopping list to writing an essay on how you spent your summer to writing a TIME editorial framing how people should vote to inventing Sindarin. So if you're into conlangs you might want to soldier through the boring stuff.
// techi
Mazel tov!
I don't know how to write this comment in a properly hedged way so I'm gonna be blunt and hope I'm forgiven.
You have ADHD. A mild version maybe but even mild is enough to procrastinate for 3 years when the stars fall out of alignment.
Not sure if you've looked into it before, but I'd recommend looking for actual lived experiences of people with ADHD, rather than the stereotypical understanding that people have from the outside. It looks especially different in people with high intelligence and love of learning. Obviously we had no issues paying attention in school! And we don't need to practice homework for most middle school classes so no issues with that either.
I only found out for myself when I was 32, and I still harbor some resentment for all the times I sought help with my issues and no one even mentioned the possibility, "cos my grades are fine" or "cos I'm smart but I just need to apply myself". It's not quite their fault but I still wish it had been different. So this is me hopefully giving you the heads up a bit earlier.
A few things stand out to me specifically:
- Executive function problems (that's what ADHD should properly be called anyway). Self-directed work that I've procrastinated on or have some minor "ick" about, it becomes increasingly impossible the longer it drags on. If I do find myself finally working on it I have to make sure to keep going because if I take a break now I'll never pick it up again. On the flipside, social external motivation is almost the only thing that works, and how I got my master's thesis written after avoiding it for a year. Also the very common story of doing 80% of a project and then the last bit becoming impossible. From the outside it looks like distractibility, but from the inside it kinda hurts and it's on my mind for a long time but it just sits there pushing at a wall, it doesn't go, it doesn't move.
"it leeches into every moment of your life, casting a quiet pall over the whole of it." Fucking ouch :(( that resonates with my last two decades :(
- Turning things into a competition/race gives a lot of motivation. 9 months is a long time for a hyperfocus, but the setup is almost optimal for it with trying to speedrun college. Only thing better would have been if you'd been competing against others, and if you had some system to break through blockers, like once a week you sit with a friend to work on the thing you're avoiding.
- The moments where you excel, with social motivation, rigid structure, pre-planned days, competition, clear and immediate rewards/validation, and a clear and understood task. That's like, ADHD-optimized environment.
Now, having ADHD or not isn't immediately gonna change anything in your life. The things you identified that work well or less well for you will still be true. But it makes things make a bit more sense for one, and if you want to go that route, the meds that exist for it are actually the most effective for all mental issues. ADHD being highly genetic and almost no "nurture" also implies that its issues are almost wholly chemical, rather than emotional, which can be helpful to know too. Emotional work can still be of benefit, but actually works best in combination with the medical approach. It's hard to feel a chemical imbalance when introspecting, so it often only feels like "my heart of hearts doesn't want it". And while that's somewhat true in that some things do have more intrinsic motivation, it's also the case that many people can do things without that intrinsic motivation anyway, for reasons more abstract, distant, or because of habits.
Anyway, considerations of what it would mean if you had ADHD are for later. You're pretty functional as is, and know your current needs and limitations. Just look up some first hand accounts and see what resonates, and see if that moves anything!
Thanks to some AP classes in HS, plus something that was within shouting distance of actual work at UCSC, and choosing a state school that charged by the year and not by the credit, I graduated undergrad in 3 years and skipped merrily along to law school a year early. Saved myself a boatload on student loans, and now I’m not only entirely student debt free, but I own a home in the SF bay, more bikes than is wise, and much more besides. I have an enormous amount to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.
But now I’m slightly regretting not doing it even faster.
congrats! it took a lot of bravery to write this & it was a great read
Hi Trace, I'm considering speedruning college myself (in part due to your blog). I'd like to get into software engineering. Do you still think WGU would be a good institution for this? What made you initially decide it over other places?
The irony of me reading this when I'm supposed to be doing something else...
Nah. You get one go-round on this planet. Why waste time doing shit you don't wanna.
> For three years, I answered weekly calls from my academic mentor, reassuring her that I was making progress and that everything was fine.
You stalled out for 3 *years*, and your mentor didn't catch on?! Frankly, it sounds like she was asleep at the switch...
Wow TW! You were Mormon too? (Here's my story.[1]) It sounds like your ADHD might be even worse than mine... I did spend a couple of years doing very little, but I think it was mainly because I lacked even a single friend with common interests. After years of occasionally trying to convince a psychiatrist to give me a prescription, I actually took my first Vyvanse in years at 10 am this morning. So exciting! But I'm not convinced it works thus far! And you enlisted in the military? I can't imagine doing that , but I've been following the Ukraine invasion closely, and keep wondering if I could/should help somehow.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/juhSqE4H4tdSDezqC/book-of-mormon-discussion?commentId=AzWQfPbNKBoiwyfPa
I suspect that the shame you feel regarding your procrastination problem is connected to the root of that problem. It's harder to be self-directed when you view yourself as your own enemy.
Working late into the night to finish the workday strong or writing the thesis you had 3 months for in the final 3 days. And it all works out fine.
I certainly don't feel my peers have 'surpassed me' in any way. Rather the opposite. It's like some Resource Curse min-max thing. I know my inherent brain power makes up for a ridiculous amount of slacking, so I slack off profligately.
I don't really wonder if 'I could have done more' on a grand scale, though. I know I never could have been a Newton or a Neumann.
"There are no weekends, no evenings, no moments of contentment in knowing you have done all you need to do." - this gets to me. You can always take it up a level. Could have done more Jiras and made twice the money this quarter. You could be financially free by now. Could have built that house. Could have had the (second) (third) child.
Interestingly I also felt the most content ever while doing an 11-month stint in the military. It was out of my control.
This was a really great and relatable essay. I'm curious what you think kept you going so strong through those first 9 months, and how that changed so abruptly?