Fear of Failure: Are You Lying to Yourself?

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard Feynman

Why do some people accomplish great feats like Elon Musk whereas, most others lag behind? Its true that the law of averages dictate that most people will have average lives and only some will live a truly outlier life. Yet, it remains true that almost all of us have the necessary tools to make our lives better. Then where does it go wrong?

(Follow me on YouTube- RaihanRiad)

Have you ever wanted to help someone else? To turn someone else into a proper human being? Probably your own children, or someone else you are responsible for? Well, no matter who that is, you are at most 50% responsible for how their lives turn out to be. You know who you are 100% responsible for though? That would be you, yourself. Yet why is it that we find it hard to conjure up enough motivation to do something about our own lives?
It’s becuase of fear of failure. It would suck if you tried to do the right things and then failed. You’ll be 100% responsible and you will feel miserable. Fear of failure is one of the worst internal enemies that each of us battle with regularly. It lies to us and makes us work on projects where we can shift the blame on other people.
For example: how many people would say they want to solve humanities biggest problems? Better yet, how many people think that they could actually do better than the people currently responsible?
Yet when you look at their personal lives, maybe one of their parent is fighting with depression. Don’t you think that person should try his/her best to solve that problem first? What about your big aspirations that you gave up on when reality became unbearable? Don’t you honestly think, if a human can climb Mount Everest, walk on the moon, make a space shuttle company with only 100 million dollars (i’m thinking Elon Musk) then a human, namely you, could also break into the music industry or learn about Artificial Intelligence, or become a heart surgeon (or whatever your dream was that you gave up on)?
You are a very special being with incredible powers of neuroplasticity, adaptability and resilience. Don’t sell yourself short. Fear of failure will make you shift focus to other people’s problems and justify that by saying that its nobler. But the reality is, deep down you are just afraid.
Tackle the problems that would immediately make your life better. Stop cowering behind projects that would either take an eternity to complete or where you can easily shift the blame of failure to others. That’s how you beat fear of failure.

You are amazing.

Humans are a value assigning authority. If there were no humans, nothing would mean anything.

One could say that, hey supernovae mean something as they create the essential ingredients for life. But my question to her would be, who decides that life is valuable? Humans!

We are the sole source of meaning for the universe (unless there are intelligent aliens). That makes us the most valuable thing in the universe. As without us, nothing matters.

You have to hold your own hands

No one else can do it for you. Other people can give you advice. They can show you the path that have worked for them. They might even lend you a hand and pick you up from the gutter once.

But you have to be the one who holds your own hand and leads the way. You must be willing to put in the work, to show up, to love yourself like you love someone you deeply care for.

Don’t take yourself for granted. You are special. You can be useful to yourself and humanity at large. You can bring joy to others. You can end some unnecessary suffering that’s killing someone else.

But you must start with yourself. Lift yourself up. Everyday. Follow your path. Learn and grow from your mistakes.

You will fall. A lot. You might even feel like garbage on a regular basis. But that is exactly when you have to lend yourself a hand. Pat your own head and calm yourself. Life is too complicated for everyone. No one has figured it all out. Everyone struggles and falls. It hurts. You bleed. But what matters is that you stand up again. What matters is that you don’t give up.

Find out what helps you through tough times. Is it a certain band? Meditation? Running? Writing in your journal? Talking to a friend? Helping someone else?

You’ll need to come back to them. A lot.

Learn to hold your own hands. Take care of yourself like someone you deeply love and respect.

How to work when you don’t want to: Understanding Hyperbolic Discounting.

You want to reach the moon and touch the stars. You want to travel, be a ladies’ man and get good grades. You want to win the Olympics and the Nobel prize. You know nothing is beyond your reach if only you would work for it.

But you don’t. Why?

You see the movie Limitless once and decide you’ll change your life from today. Maybe you even do get some shit done for a day or two. But never more than that. Why!?

This question bugs every ambitious person that ever sets out for greatness.

Well don’t worry. You are not sick. This is a curse every human being is born with. You see, we are not very good at taking the future seriously.

They even have a name for this phenomena. Hyperbolic discounting.

If I offered you a 100 dollars now vs 300 dollars 5 years later, you will probably take the $100 bill.

Because money has a time-value.

Similarly, there is a time value of pain and pleasure!!

If you smoke today and the cancer is 20 years away, who cares! Right? If you work tonight and the fame and glory is waiting for you 8 years down the line who cares?!

I know you do care. Everyone does. But that’s the Pre-frontal Cortex talking. Sadly that guy isn’t in charge. He’s just an employee of the reptilian brain you have. And the reptilian part of your brain could care less about the future.

So, yeah, there it goes. We humans are in big trouble. By default :3

It’s a manufacturing defect.

Well now let’s see what we can do to work around this handicap.

I suggest 2 BIG Steps,

1. Get Clarity
2. The Farmers mindset.

how to beat procrastination and be more productive

Here’s what I mean by these terms:

1. Get Clarity:

   Productivity problems are often clarity problems. Here’s some steps towards greater clarity:
   a. Get clear on what exactly you want to do.
   b. Figure out how you are going to do that. And
   c. Break down the tasks to tiny little tasks.

2. Develop a farmer’s mindset:

   See every task you do as a seed you sow, It’s not the final product. It’s still on the embryo phase. Create  a good environment for your tasks and nurture them. But don’t worry if they are not perfect. They will eventually grow and become full fledged awesome crops if you keep nurturing them regularly.

P.S.

Here’s my top 10 tips for a productive day.

For some more awesome ideas about procrastination read this.

My Unfortunate Fascination with Motivation Porn

I usually disagree with people who say that self-help is crap. But I understand where they are coming from. It’s not that self-help is crap, but motivation porn is.

Some people tend to think that they are the same. But they are not. Self-help can range from a book that helps you to learn a new language to YouTube videos whose sole purpose is to shout at you and tell you that you are a loser.

I hope you can see the difference.

Well, I didn’t when I was a teen. I used to read all kinds of stuff. And I fell into the rabbit hole of motivation porn.

But something in me kept bugging me that there must be more to it. On hindsight I know there are fake gurus out there who put out contents without substance, who pretend as if motivation will see you through the finish line. But I didn’t know it then.

So, I nevertheless kept trusting these motivation gurus. And it’s no surprise that my life was stuck in stagnation for a long period of time.

Then I found some real gurus. There was a stark difference between them and the fake ones. They didn’t talk about amazing possibilities. They rather preferred to talk about scientific consensus. They didn’t try to motivate you, they urged you to research on your own and try their ideas to see if they hold.

Thus, I cut all my ties with the motivation industry. I would still sometimes see one or two of their videos just for the fun of it, but I don’t believe that they would solve any of my problems anymore.

Because procrastination is not about lack of motivation, it’s about lack of clarity. As James clear states in his amazing book ‘Atomic Habits’-

Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity

That led me to appreciate the works of real teachers and researchers out there. People like Charles Duhigg, James Clear, Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Barbara Oakley etc. have helped me improve my skills and attitude.

Hard work is overrated, do this instead

Extraordinary achievement is less about talent and more about special opportunity – Malcolm Gladwell.

21^st century civilization has stopped believing in the racist notions of ‘Good genes’ and ‘bad genes’. It used to be a very popular belief not so long ago. White people thought they were better than black people, Nazis deemed themselves better than the Jews and India was divided into ‘The Brahmans’ and ‘The Kshatriyas’, ‘The Vaishyas’ and ‘The Shudras’.

Now, when we see someone prosper, we take a different approach to justify it. We tend to assume that, the successful people are more hardworking. We think maybe they have made sacrifices that we failed to make.

This idea is way better than the former racist and culturist notions of ‘purity’. It has given us a solid blueprint of what it takes to be a better individual than the absurd notions of the past.

However, this modern way of thinking omits one of the biggest contributors to success- Luck.

This is Malcolm Gladwell. He has written several best sellers. In 2008, he published a book called Outliers.

(For those of you who don’t know what an outlier is: it’s the values that are very distant from the averages.)

Bill Gates is an outlier, The Beatles were an outlier, Lionel Messi is an outlier.

Outliers tend to outperform the masses by unfathomable margins. We the common people, can only dream about such results.

Malcolm digs deep into the lives of these types of people and finds out an uncomfortable truth. Luck plays an undeniable factor in their success.

Take Bill Gates for example. His school was very expensive and only wealthy parents could afford to get their children there. A mother’s club in the school, which had enormous funding set up a facility for computer programming, in the early 80’s, that most Universities didn’t have. This portal was extremely costly to access. But Gates having a rich mom, had no problem accessing it. When this facility was shut off, gates hung around University of Washington to practice coding as his house was at a walking distant from the U o W.

How many of us can expect to get such a head start? Malcolm’s book, which I urge you to read, is full of examples like this.

So, stop over idolizing the outliers and start looking for opportunities. What matters most in life is being in the right place in the right moment.

You don’t have to wait for luck to bring you the perfect opportunity. Go out there and look for opportunities. There are a lot of them hiding in plain sight.

(For starters, students can try: youthop.com

I’m sure there are many other online and offline resources out there to find you opportunities. Reach out to the local clubs, go to the toastmaster’s meetings, meet the Olympiad committees or just search for opportunities in your field in google. Even Facebook can help you find the right communities.)

( The title is there to catch eyeballs. I don’t mean to say hard work isn’t an essential factor for success. But it’s far from being the only one.)

Don’t play slot machines and you’ll defeat procrastination.

What can one do to stop procrastinating in the modern life?

The answer to this question is definitely not seeking more tips, tricks, knowledge or motivation.

Most of us are already aware of the available ideas, we just lack the will to implement them.

However, this is what has been working for me: I stopped using slot machines.

‘Well, I don’t use slot machines’, I can hear you say.

Trust me, you do. We all do.

When we refresh the YouTube or Instagram homepage, it works as a slot machine. When we read random posts in Quora, it works like a slot machine. When we go through the apps in our phone to look for the next fun thing, that also works like a slot machine.

The mechanism is the same. Uncertainty. Random rewards. Shuffling.

There’s something very addictive about it. Something very satisfying, even though we know it’s not what we really want to do with our life.

So, this will be my suggestion to any fellow procrastinator:

Shut your phone and put it away from your sight. Make a list of the things you want to/ need to do today. Start tackling them, one action at a time.

TL; DR:

Make your life boring enough and you’ll find joy in the most mundane task.

Give yourself the choice of using slot machines the whole day and see yourself feeling unmotivated to do even the things you love.

If you need a system to use your free time, maybe this idea will help:

The 30 day productivity challenge for the chronic procrastinators among us

Doing the wrong things are the greatest sacrifices

I have been thinking a lot about the idea of sacrifice lately (not the kind of sacrifice we make for others, rather the ones we think we make when we go for a workout and ignore our desire for fast foods). I think I’ve come to some interesting conclusions that I’d like to share.

First, I was pissed for being required to sacrifice my pleasure and comfort in this moment for gains in the future. What gives the future such an authority over the present moment? After all, the ‘I’ that exists in the present should have just as importance as the ‘I’ that lives in the distant future. Why does his well being trump my whims?

When looking for the answers to these questions, I realized some things.

First, there is no me in the past, present or future. There is just ‘me’, spread throughout the space time continuum. And there is no sacrifices either. There are just tradeoffs. When I sacrifice getting lost in the dopamine rich, continuous hits of pleasure that comes from shuffling the home page of Facebook or Instagram, just like a gambler playing the slot machine, I gain some thing else. I gain mental clarity, peace and TIME. Yah, time, the most precious resource in the whole omni-verse. Time, the resource that even Jeff Bezos- with all of his billions of dollars, can not buy. Time, whose productive limits are only bound by your own imagination.

 So long story short, if there were a sacrifice made in such a situation, it would have to be when you do the wrong thing. When you chose to stay longer in that dopamine rich artificial-social-environment created by those apps, and let go of your overall well being and time. This is the real sacrifice.

 You sacrifice each time you take a cigarette puff. You sacrifice your health and your integrity. You sacrifice the same things each time you consume sugar.

 Would you ever pay 20 bucks to get something that costs only 5? I don’t think so. But we make similar mistake when instead of money we deal with other types of resources. We take 5 minutes of sweet sensation in our tongue and pay for that with a life time of diabetes. Genius!

 

The logic behind sacrifices (for fighting procrastination and bad habits)

Is ‘me in the future’ evil?

For quite a few days now, I’ve been slacking off. All the while thinking to myself, what’s the point of anything? What’s the point of giving up binging anime, consuming sugar and putting things off? Why sacrifice awesome things now to get it delivered to me in the future? Who is this ‘me in the future’- that gets priority over the real me- now?

Then there’s always the existential crisis thoughts. If I am temporary, what’s the point of building myself up? What’s the point of sacrificing my hedonist desires for something so fragile? Heck, there’s even no guarantee of safety even if I do the right things! The non-smoker still gets cancer while century-old smoker lives!

This made me ponder about the idea of sacrifices. Why should I sacrifice for my future self? Why should ‘he’ get all the fun- I remember asking a friend yesterday.

 

The Epiphany

Today I had an epiphany. Sacrifices aren’t a one way traffic. They go both ways. Right now I feel stable and alert. Consuming sugar will make me feel dizzy and sleepy.

Consuming sugar will hamper my overall happiness, capacity and longevity. It’s not about me in the future or any other point of time. Rather it’s about ‘the me’- me spread throughout the space-time continuum.

Through each action I’m always sacrificing. There’s no activity without a sacrifice.

Thus, everything is a tradeoff. Meditate?- gain peace and clarity; lose time and opportunity cost. Consume sugar?- taste the goodness and stop craving; lose health, cognitive abilities, alertness etc.

It’s always a tradeoff. There’s no way out of it.

But, here’s the kicker- not every result have the same duration.

Consuming sugar may feel good for 10 minutes, while the bad consequences can linger way longer than that.

The question is then, am I sacrificing a bigger, longer lasting, dividend paying outcome for something that will leave me in an instant? Am I trading for less with more?

I think this is where wisdom stems from.

I could rephrase the question like this- Am I sacrificing the good of the many for the good of one? Maybe this is where morals stem from.

Then there could be another twist- some sacrifices may even enable us to gain an outcome that is very hard to get otherwise. In those cases we often make series of sacrifices because we deem it as good investments!

Neil Gaiman shares how he keeps writing day after day

Was listening to Neil Gaiman on the Tim Ferris show. I already admired the guy- for his silky voice, good looks, nuggets of wisdom from his masterclass and of course- his writing. This podcast didn’t change anything about that.

He shares an interesting secret here. It’s how he keeps producing so much content. I found the trick very practical yet amusing. Been giving it a try since I listened to him yesterday and trust me – it works!

He basically prepares for writing and sits down in his assigned place, blocking distractions. Then he tells himself that he has permission to write or NOT to write… but he can not do anything else.

Naturally his mind wanders around as writing can be boring and tedious if done day after day. But miraculously yet very much predictably, he picks up the pen and starts putting words onto the sheets. It turns out that, writing is more interesting than doing nothing.

Very practical insight indeed! Just show up to your work and give yourself permission to fidget around. But, avoid the slot-machine-like addictive YouTube, Facebook or any other entertaining stuff. Just be there- alone in the workplace. Sooner or later, your mind will start searching for more fun, and the only available fun is your work!