Shipping vs work
jasonleow • 10 Feb 2025 •
Been observing a unproductive pattern of behaviour when it comes to shipping vs work:
I build a PHP app, then a new career begins, and I lose momentum on PHP.
I start doing SEO, then a new job starts and I lose momentum on SEO.
I lost count of the many times in the past 10 years where I started a project, but a consultancy project threw me off and I lose interest.
I don’t know what the problem is.
Not enough interest, or not enough time, or self-sabotage?
Maybe it’s not about navel gazing and overthinking why it happened, but about how to prevent it. Maybe it’s a bit like how I managed to maintain momentum for daily writing, even when I had projects, even when I travelled, even on my busiest days – you prepare ahead of time. If I had a long day tomorrow, I’ll write a draft of tomorrow’s post first, so that I can polish and publish quickly. If I’m travelling, I make sure I got a bunch of ideas about what to write stashed away in my notes.
If I can do that for my writing, why not for my projects? It’s not like I didn’t know the new career/job is coming, nor the busy day. I can plan ahead, and prepare beforehand. Don’t leave room for procrastination, or self-sabotage to happen. Design the right environment for the habit to continue.
Same thing for SEO and PHP now.
Comments
@haideralmosawi
1 - For sure. I think I always try not to disappoint others, so the force of social obligations take over everything. There might be a tinge of seeking approval from others too. Hmm but I struggle to see how I can treat my own personal projects as social obligations… because they aren’t, there’s no external party on the other end…
2 - Yes I think in the end that’s the approach that might work for me. Making it clear the scope and what I need to commit to completing and doing it.
The advice Gretchen Rubin offers is to involve someone else (like an accountability buddy). I have come across an app that replaces an alarm with a call from an actual human being to encourage more of a commitment to wake up for the social obligers amongst us. 🤣
The point is to work with your people-pleasing tendency vs against it.
Good point. I hate troubling people for stuff like these, but maybe that’s the whole point
Two ideas came to mind as I read this post:
1- There might be a difference between a personal interest/opportunity vs a social obligation, and you tend to prioritize social obligations over personal interests. That’s why you park personal interests when social obligations show up. Gretchen Rubin calls this “tendency” an Obliger tendency: we are good with commitments to other people, but not commitments we make to ourselves.
What if you were to treat your interests in PHP and SEO as social obligations? As though you’re scheduling actual meetings with other people?
2- Writing is an activity. PHP and SEO seem to be projects that involve different activities you may not have fleshed out to the clarity of getting your writing done. It’s super clear what the end result of your writing commitment is (one post a day). What’s the output you’re working towards for PHP and SEO? Most likely it’s not not very clear.
How can you reduce PHP and SEO to super clear commitments you can work towards? How can you make the end result easier to commit to? MAYBE you can have the end result be a mini “lesson learned” post for both? Maybe it’s a single feature/tactic you put to practice? It can also just be time you put in to learning about these topics, so the commitment is nothing more than showing up to these topics (and you can figure out what results you want to work towards within that container).