River: Aha! moment: what I'm afraid of

[mdlbear]

I was sitting here trying to figure out why I feel the same sense of dread about making phone calls, upgrading servers, and moving my email from rahul.net to dreamhost. And then it hit me:

I'm afraid of doing anything irrevocable.

It probably even has a lot to do with why I put furniture together with screws and adjustable shelf brackets instead of glue and dovetail joints. I'm terrified of making some horrible mistake and being stuck with something I can't fix. It certainly has a lot to do with my fear of paperwork, and my inability to make hiring decisions the one time I attempted to be a manager. It has everything to do with the financial non-decisions behind our current trainwreck.

It relates to phone calls because I can't take back or even edit my words. I can't even take back the fact that I've made the call and the other person has answered it.

In retrospect it's surprising that I do anything irrevocable at all. I was terrified when I married Colleen all those years ago.

Not sure how the heck knowing this helps me move my email service. But that has to be done, and this week. Deadlines help, even though I often miss them.

(10:10 Just realized that the fear of doing something irrevocable has, on several occasions, been all that's kept me alive. Maybe I don't want to cure it altogether.)

Comments

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

It all makes sense now: you're a UNIX user!

Perhaps you even have post-traumatic sudo root rm -rf memories. ;-)

j/k. Glad to have seen you at Conflikt, sorry we didn't get to talk further.

[mdlbear]

:) That's why I use version control and keep three sets of backups.

Yeah, we'll definitely have to sit down and talk some time, in a place where we're unlikely to be interrupted.

[egoldberg.livejournal.com]

If you're ever in Seattle, you are absolutely welcome for a meal at my place (or I can meet you anywhere else.)

I'll probably be in the Bay Area for at least a weekend again this year. Probably not up for the weekly social gathering of fans (I'm afraid I learned from Conflikt that I don't really enjoy that social medium like I used to), but would be happy to meet up with you for lunch or dinner or anything else.

[mdlbear]

Sounds good. I'm not likely to get up to Seattle again until maybe this summer.

[kyrielle]

It might help by letting you analyze the situation and find ways to get around the irrevocable part, at least in some cases? (Paperwork can often be refiled if need be....)

(My iPhone spell checked that to reviled. Also true, but....)

[mdlbear]

:) I can certainly agree about "reviled"!

Deadlines help, and I usually manage to get my taxes filed on time. Or at least an extension. I have to have somebody or something pushing me off the edge.

Knowing about it will almost certainly be useful, but I can't see how at the moment.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I can relate to that one. Your mind seems to be saying "Noooo, don't do anything you can't undo!!"

How about seeing if you can get your mind to say "Don't do anything irrevocable without planning it out." or "Don't do anything irrevocable in a hurry."

I tend to make the worst mistakes on irrevocable stuff when I don't think it through, plan it out, or get in a hurry.

The "Don't do anything irrevocable" is fine as far as it goes, but it needs its safety valve "except", "unless", "until" type clauses.

$safe = &evaluate($action);
if ( $safe ) {
&irrevocable($action);
} else {
exit;
}

Does this make sense, or should I shut up?
}

[mdlbear]

Makes sense, but I *do* plan it out. Over and over and over.

do {$safe=evaluate($action);} until ($safe);
commit($action);

The loop never terminates because the $safe bit seems to be stuck low. Need to track down that const declaration.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

"the $safe bit seems to be stuck low"

Or, to stretch the analogy some, I wonder if the problem is evaluate() rather than the ability to store the result. I sometimes have similar symptoms, because -- as near as I can determine -- my evaluate() only returns true for an action that is at least as safe as my current state.

(Actually, for me it's not so much safe as comfortable, I think. I tend to take "better the devil you know" far too seriously.)

[mdlbear]

Almost certainly right. It's probably more like:

{$previous=$plan; $plan=plan($action, $previous); $safe=evaluate($plan);}
... so I keep making plans, but they never evaluate to safe.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

Ah, then you need to look at the &evaluate() function. Instead of returning true on an absolute:
sub evaluate {
my ($act)=@_;
my $ret = 0;
$ret = 1 if ($act == 100);
return $ret;
}
return true on a reasonably high likelihood of success
sub evaluate {
my ($act)=@_;
my $ret = 0;
$ret = 1 if ($act >= 85);
return $ret;
}
Basically, you lower your perfectionism demand (I'm trying to get mine down to 75%, but...)

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I would suggest evaluating the safety of "doing $plan" and "not doing $plan" the same way.

I mean, it's not as if "doing" is always the most irrevocable thing. Sometimes "not doing" is more irrevocable.

For instance, if you do move your e-mail, you can always move it again tomorrow. So it's not exactly irrevocable. You can't undo the move itself, but you can undo/change the results.

In contrast, right now, if you do NOT move your e-mail, sooner or later some of your e-mail messages will get irrevocably lost. No chance at all to retrieve them. And if there are any time-sensitive ones, you can't see them, and the longer you delay the more chance you won't see them until the time has passed. There's no way to un-do the delay. If my assessment is accurate, the delay leads to more problematic irrevocable results than doing it now.

So, now, you can focus on your fear of the irrevocable consequences of the conscious choice to not take this action, instead of only thinking about your fear of the possible irrevocable consequences of taking action.

Of course, you can compare any number of options for that matter, when you could choose to do nothing or one of a variety of options, looking for the possible irrevocable consequences of each. Then you can evaluate the options for recovering from an imperfect result for each. I suspect that if "take no action" is clearly less safe in your evaluation, that will help you to take action. The computation is more complex, but I don't get the impression that complexity, per se, is a problem for you.

Does that make sense?

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

P.S. I think this is a wonderful insight! It doubtless won't solve everything for you, but I think it has potential to allow you to be much more effective in lots of ways.

[mdlbear]

It makes sense, but then again the fear isn't at all rational, so I'm not sure I can apply it.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I think the root of the fear IS rational. You're afraid of screwing things up. That's a very rational fear. You're also afraid that your social skills won't be up to particular challenges, which for someone whose brain works very differently than most peoples' is also a very rational fear.

What I have found is that if I can identify a rational root for what seemed like irrational behavior in myself, then I can acknowledge the rationality of the fear or desire, and the huge irrational gut reaction becomes more manageable. It's as if once my conscious brain has acknowledged that the root concern is real, and is important, and starts to work logically on it, then my subconscious brain doesn't feel it has to overwhelm me with fear chemicals (or anger or whatever the overwhelming gut reaction was) to get me to take action to protect myself.

This doesn't necessarily mean the action I need to take suddenly becomes easy, of course. But it becomes possible to try, and also possible to analyze and learn from the results, good or bad.

I hope that you will find this, or a variation on it, works for you too, though I will be the first to acknowledge that people really are different, and there's very few things that work the same way for everyone.

[mdlbear]

Thanks. That sounds as though it might be helpful.

[mdlbear]

On the other hand, it might not. What I've developed over the years is a set of habits that keep me away from things that might make me scared.

Still, understanding the mechanism can't hurt.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

What I think of when I see this is:

It is okay to decide not to decide yet.

But there comes a time when not deciding is deciding on the default that results if you take no action.

One of the reasons I built the canoe is that when Mom died I realize that sometimes putting something off means you *never* do it.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree that it is OK to decide not to decide yet.

And yes, sometimes putting something off means you never do it; it's sometimes hard to realize that an opportunity can be irrevocably lost by not taking advantage of it when you first see it. Just because you think you will have time later doesn't mean you actually will have the time and resources later. There are definitely things I wish I had NOT chosen to be patient about.

[mdlbear]

Same here. In spades.

[firecat]

Serious question: If you are afraid of doing anything irrevocable, how did you get past it to have children? or to remodel your house, for that matter.

[mdlbear]

Sometimes events have a way of forcing the issue, and other people can help to push me over the edge. Colleen helped a lot with the decision to have kids, and the kids in turn forced the remodels.

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Ahhh--Please God don't let me fuck up! I have that one, too. I start a lot of projects that I don't finish because after they're finished they might be imperfect.....

[mdlbear]

*Hugs*

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this has something to do with why *I* don't finish a lot of stuff...

[brmj.livejournal.com]

This is definitely a problem I can relate to, though I don't have it all that badly.

[saffronrose.livejournal.com]

I was terrified when I married Kurt those many years ago, too. Likely different reasons though!

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice..."

But, as others have pointed out, most things aren't really completely irrevocable - although some things can be incredibly unpleasant to try to undo or repair.

And, on the third hand, it totally sucks when your personal mythology states that you are smarter, better, superior to ordinary people, and then you go and screw something up. (Been there, done that, threw up all over the T-shirt... washed it, wore it till it was full of holes, and eventually used it to wax the car...)

[mdlbear]

*wry smile*

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

I think I have a milder version of that too -- tempered by my very strong "do what's right" bend.

Part of why I don't do things sometimes leads back to not remembering them, so I've developed a spreadsheet with many tabs.

Each tab has some columns: Key number (5 characters dash number -- the nth time I do that task it will be dash n) date I decided I needed to perform the task, date the task is due, Description of task, date the task was accomplished.)

On the daily task, the due date will be the start date plus 1. On the weekly task, plus 7. Etc. I even have some annual tasks. My semi-annual tab is what just insured (no pun intended) that the car insurance, which had become lost again, actually got paid.

Each tab has a different color, so I can see at a glance which one I'm on.

I use conditional formatting to highlight the due date when it is present or close.

No, I don't do everything that I "should" do. I avoided the "clean the upstairs toilet" task from December 22 through about a week ago. And when there are 3 days in a week that I don't get home from work until 11pm, then there are 3 days that I don't even *look* at the daily tasks. If I'm gone to a con, oh well -- stuff won't happen. But if I'm home, I look. I usually start with the "on interrupt" to the daily and work past annual to the "ASAP" page. Do it, mark it off, look for the next item.

When I finish something I copy (or cut if it was a one-time event) the row, pasting it to the "complete" tab. (I think there are over 800 items there, and I think I started this spreadsheet last May...) If not a one-time event, I go back to the appropriate tab, increment the number after the dash, change the start date to today, and look for the next thing to do.

One of my 6 daily tasks is "do *something* in my office. (It's currently stacked nearly floor to ceiling with boxes or stuff, with the exception of a path I can use to get to my computer.) I may call "something" sorting through an entire box, or perhaps only picking up a book that had fallen to the floor to put it into a more appropriate location (preferably out of the room) -- but I did SOMETHING.

On another thread: I think that if you don't have set standards -- kissing her before you get out of bed, kissing her before you eat breakfast, kissing her as you leave for work, kissing her at 5:37 pm -- whatever, then putting a reminder "Have you kissed your wife yet" into your reminder of choice (a pda, a spreadsheet like mine, a rolodex...) is a WONDERFUL idea.

[mdlbear]

Well over 12000 goodnight kisses so far. Other times are up for grabs, but the probability that either of us will get to sleep without a kiss is pretty low.

She's finally learned to signal when she wants a hug, though. Works wonders.