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Getting Shit Done Personal Growth Work

Read What Works

Read What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin

What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting is not really a book about goal-setting. It’s not a book about achieving anything. It’s a systematic deconstruction of the stories that keep us hustling, striving, and always looking for more. It’s also a guide for reconstructing an approach to personal growth, planning, and productivity once we’ve shed those stories.

Loved this! So much writing about work doesn’t acknowledge the pressures of the system we are in, and how those can influence our priorities and practices in ways that are unhealthy and unfulfilling. This was a full excoriation of the effects of toxic individualism, capitalism, and the Puritan work ethic on our approach to productivity and goal-setting. It offers a framework for digging into the psychological barriers to making progress on what really matters to us, and both recognizing and resisting the draw of conformity to these systems.

“I want to help give structure and meaning to growth based on curiosity instead of achievement.”

“Every day is an opportunity to practice satisfaction rather than striving.”

Categories
Personal Growth

No More Problems

Liked Are we there yet? by Oliver Burkeman (oliverburkeman.com)

I think virtually everyone, except perhaps the very Zen or very old, goes through life haunted to some degree by the feeling that this isn’t quite the real thing, not just yet – that soon enough, we’ll get everything in working order, get organised, get our personal issues resolved, but that till then we’re living what the great Swiss psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz called the “provisional life.”

“Are you still under the illusion that you’ll one day reach a point in your life where you no longer have any problems?”

Hahahahahahahahaha 🙃 yeah I sometimes fall prey to this magical wishful thinking.

Yet they rarely escape the trap of implying that once a habit’s been implemented, it’ll become totally automatic – and life’s suffering, at least in that domain, will have ended for good.

Makes me think of Fight Club: “You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled.” – Chuck Palahniuk

Allow yourself to imagine what it might feel like to know you’d never fully get on top of your work, never become a really disciplined exerciser or healthy eater, never resolve the personal issue you feel defines your life’s troubles.