Intentions and the "Should"

 One problem that has dogged me for a long time is just that on the one hand I have a deep craving to live intentionally. I want to have some kind of purpose. I want to have some kind of direction where I am working toward a goal and can see concrete progress even if it is incremental and sort of slow. But on the other hand, what inevitably happens is that in an attempt to create actionable steps that I can take to make progress I frame a set of "shoulds". I should do tactics every day. I should play Suzerain today. But inevitably these shoulds lead very quickly to losing the inspiration or desire to do that activity. I quickly decide that I don't actually want to do that thing. This creation of "shoulds" is often described as a negative mental habit in the mental health community.

Sometimes I frame it as a head-heart thing. I just can't seem to get my head and my heart on the same page. When I feel excited and inspired about a game then I don't live intentionally. I just do what I feel like and often this means avoiding effortful activities or activities where there is risk. This often goes to the extreme of not doing anything at all except journaling or things I absolutely have to do because I just don't feel like it. So I will get my head involved and like make actionable plans to actually pursue the game. But then I feel like I just get stuck where I think I should but I don't want to.

So I have tried a lot of strategies to resolve this dilemma. I think the trick is just to realize that it is a gradual process and try to avoid going to extremes. Basically it is a proven fact that if I just do what I feel like I will devolve into just journaling. But it is also proven that at least some of the times that I force myself to take action I end having a good time and being glad I did it. Of course sometimes I force myself and I hate it and it is a total waste of time. But I think the process is I just have to trust that if I can get myself into action then a lot of times I will feel good about it. So I just have to learn to have some faith in that process. Things like setting small manageable goals that don't seem so intimidating. Or setting a specific time when I will stop journaling and start playing. But also to have some escape hatches and not force myself to accomplish huge things every time but making a simple idea to just play for half an hour or something like that. Also avoiding being too specific. If I insist that I have to play a specific game every day then I end up rebelling. But if I start out with the idea that I will just try to make the decision to play whatever as often as I can then I am moving in the right direction. So I need to kind of avoid that trap of falling into the idea that if I pick up the journal I will work myself into feeling like doing something.

On the other hand, it is proven that when I make elaborate and detailed plans of things to do every day I never follow through and just feel bad. I think the trick is to kind of learn to see through some of the tricks my mind plays. On the goal oriented extreme my mind will tell me that I am a total failure and I am wasting my life and if I want to accomplish anything at all I have to hardcore get in gear right now. This is generally false. I have accomplished things in life and even on the game front I have put a lot of effort to games in general when I think of all the stuff I have done. I have also done a fair bit of writing in my notebooks about games. I think I also have to work on giving myself credit for doing things. Basically I have a bad tendency to move the goalposts on myself. I will set out to do something that I find challenging to do and then when I get it done it will feel like somehow it wasn't that big a deal and I should really have much bigger goals. So I just have to see this problem of journaling instead of taking action as some kind of significant problem I am facing and I just have to give myself credit when I make progress.

So it involves some compromise. I have to tell my heart or my feelings that they are not the boss and I have to work on gradually tutoring myself to take more action. On the other hand, I have to compromise with the goal oriented ambitious part and like say it is a gradual process. I can't just flip a switch and suddenly become a hardcore go-getter. I also have to admit that a lot of the big long-term specific goals don't work out. So my specific goals should be more short term and like easily accomplished and my long term goals should be more general and open ended. This isn't very satisfying when I am in the mood that I want to be super intentional and like plan and goal oriented. It feels too loose and not motivating enough. But I feel like it is really a trap to think that some kind of like high pressure long term plan with a lot of specific details is motivating for me. In fact the more pressure I put on it and the more I make a lot of shoulds the more demotivating it is.

I think it is just tricky to kind of maintain this clarity though. But I feel like I am gradually getting there. I am gradually getting more clarity that this is the main problem right now, meaning these two extremes and the paralysis. Just have to keep working on it.