Stop fighting yourself

Sometimes it's easy to think of your path to competence as a struggle, and in fact this is quite a common metaphor. Struggling against nature, struggling against the world, and struggling against yourself. This makes a certain kind of sense, visualising your associative self as an unruly beast that must be tamed by force. But I've been thinking about this struggle in the context of drawing bold lines, and being in the right place at the right time, and I'm starting to believe that it does more harm than good.

When you do something, there's a question of how directly you do it, how many of the actions that you take are moving you towards your goal versus how many are just extraneous, or even moving you away. When you walk, any effort that is not propelling you forward is wasted. When you draw a line, any movement that is not along the line is wasted. But the answer isn't to fight hard against this, to tense up and focus and struggle against every extraneous movement, it's simply to learn not to make those movements in the first place.

Making a decision is one activity that can often elicit unnecessary struggle. It's easy to go back and forward between the different options for ages, agonising over which one is correct. However, it's important not to forget that the decision isn't between the best option and nothing, it's between the best option and the next best option. If that difference isn't very much, then the effort you're making to decide between them should also not be very much. In many cases, struggling with yourself over every difference is wasted effort. If you just decide quickly and arbitrarily, it'll probably be fine, and if not it'll help you to make a better decision next time.

Another kind of struggle is repeatedly second-guessing decisions you've already made. This is basically what I was talking about in points of articulation. The ideal picture is that you decide a course of action, then forget the decision and just work on making it happen. But, much like drawing a straight line, there is sometimes a nearly irresistible urge to meddle with the plan once it's in motion. Sure, if things are going disastrously, maybe it's time to cut your losses and make a new plan, but just struggling with yourself about your decisions long after you've made them is yet more wasted effort.

One last one, the struggle of trying to stick to something you intend to do. It's considered normal to struggle to maintain a habit or a routine, but I don't believe this has to be the case. Often it's a matter of unnecessary tension you're putting into the situation, worrying about the consequences or feeling bad about past mistakes. Another common problem is that the plan doesn't actually make sense; it's made without understanding the mechanics of the situation, expecting some outcome without actually pushing on the right things to make it happen.

Ultimately, the right intuition isn't that you struggle and struggle and eventually subdue yourself, it's that you struggle less as your ability improves and eventually relax into easy competence. Just doing something well is hard enough without having to fight yourself at the same time.