State change

This morning, I've reflected on the changes that have occurred in the last few weeks.

A few weeks ago, I was depressed. I cried or felt like crying all day every day. I didn't leave the house, because it was too hard. I didn't write, or cook, or take photographs, read new books, or do anything much. I hadn't called my family in weeks. I hadn't had a marginally acceptable night's sleep either, due mostly to insomnia caused by the depression.

What changed?

 Nothing.

I have a history of depression and anxiety. Quite a long one, really. Caused at various times by various things. This one was mostly culture shock compounded by hypersomnia, and adjustment to a lifelong illness.

This episode was, in some ways, the worst I've had for nearly a decade, and it was very self reinforcing. It was a feedback cycle - I didn't do things, felt I should, felt worse, so I didn't do things. That's a pretty strong cycle, and the generated feelings did leave me pretty much comatose or zombielike, and in any case were rather effective at preventing me from doing anything much.

But the cycle was clear. That, in the past, has frequently not been the case. To get out of this all I had to do was break the cycle. Amongst other things, this would return me to my normal sleep patterns, which would also tend to enable me to do my normal activities.

I used anger. Not the whiny, useless, energy-draining spinlock frustration I'd been engaging in, but full-blown raging anger at the universe. I said a giant "FUCK THIS!" to myself.

That's really all it took for me to start the process of getting rid of the backlog of tasks and associated guilt. I was too angry to be guilty, and I was energised by that reckless anger.

Of course, the anger wore off. But by then I'd accomplished enough and set up enough frameworks to keep accomplishing things that it didn't matter. I was free from the black cloud for the first time in nearly a year.

The somewhat daily posts are part of this framework. That's where I tell myself that I am doing things; I can do things; I have done things - things which matter to me. Doing a load of laundry or restacking the dishwasher doesn't sound like much, until you realise that those chores are things I've been unable to do regularly for the better part of the last 3 years. Mundane in the grand scheme, yes, but a vital part of helping me feel like I'm an able person.

Another element is addressing my physical fitness, and setting up support frameworks to ease the personal load on my mind. I know that my lack of fitness is limiting my physical energy greatly, so becoming more fit is a really cracking good idea. I find it easier to keep appointments than to just make myself go to the gym. And I find it easier to achieve goals if I set small, measurable goals, and if I have encouragement from peers and friends. Rejoining the Nerd Fitness community is a part of that.

Creativity is also rather important to me. To a limit, the more creative activities I do, the more I can do - similar to physical fitness, I suppose. On the other hand, having deadlines (such as the daily deadlines imposed by the 365 project I attempted) doesn't work for me at all, mostly because of my physical limitations. I therefore set myself this goal: for six weeks, I will write at least one blog post a week that wasn't the daily update. The weekly post could be a ramble, a photography post, a cooking post, a book review, or whatever seemed good at the time. I'd say, judging by my archives, that this goal is doing what it's supposed to be doing. It's giving me sufficient motivation to write, photograph, and cook, without loading me with stress. So instead of a single post a week, I'm doing significantly more than that - and not only that, I'm creating elsewhere.

A broad theme I've been thinking along, which is implied by all the ways I've addressed my situation, is self-acceptance. Learning to work within my limitations. Before, those limits distressed me greatly, which shrunk the limits hugely. The goals I've set have a great deal of flexibility built in, even though they are highly specific and time-driven. Some days I'm not going to be able to do much more than lie on the couch and read. Some days I will be able to take photographs for six hours. I can't predict when in advance which day will be which, but I can take advantage of the good ones, and not stress about the bad ones.

This has the effect of greatly expanding my limits. I have fewer bad days when I'm generally positive about the direction of my life.

I have a very long way to go in certain areas to get back to something resembling what I once was, yet I have significantly more confidence in my ability to get there eventually.

It's looking up.

But it'll only take 5 minutes or, The importance of sticking to the point

I have, for several years, been quite a fan of the Getting Things Done method espoused by David Allen in his book, "How to Get Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity."

One of the key parts of the strategy is that if you have a task, that will take 5 minutes or less, do it straight away.

If you've been following my achievements posts, you may notice that the vast majority of tasks there take 5 minutes or less. It is incredibly easy for me to fill my day with very small tasks. Don't get me wrong; they are things that do need to get done. But - well, let's take an example. Today, I intended to have breakfast early. I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea, while stacking the dishwasher, tidying up the bench, filtering some water for my water bottle, reading my current book, put my laundry in the washing machine, filled my water bottle, packed my handbag into my backpack, went to my desk, sat down and ... realised I hadn't made breakfast. So many tiny little tasks, strung themselves together, and I was distracted away from my original intent.

The next time I went to the kitchen to make breakfast, I put breakfast on *first*, and *then* hung out my washing. The books arrived midway through the hanging-out. I finished hanging out the washing, served up breakfast, and opened the parcel to find my books damaged. having been recently reminded of how easily I get distracted into a chain of small tasks, I posted on twitter, but did not immediately take photographs or go to my desk to start the returns process. I ate my breakfast first - although I did get up to grab a notebook and pen to take notes on the book I started reading. After I finished breakfast, *then* I took photos, printed labels, updated my achievements post.

But those tasks did need to be done - and putting off minor tasks because, well, they're minor is always a temptation. Perhaps I should schedule a block of time of a morning - say, after breakfast and shower - to do all those little, niggling tasks that pile up.

Has anyone else encountered the endless-little-tasks bug, and if so, how do you manage to still get those tasks done and avoid using them as procrastination?

Book review: 'Learned Optimism' by Martin Seiglman

A quick synopsis. In the first third of the book, Martin puts forth the hypothesis that success and happiness is tied to how optimistic or pessimistic a person is. This trait has three major axes: Pervasiveness, Permanence and Personalisation. He follows up this hypothesis with a test (to measure your own levels). The middle third of the book is mostly a number of case studies, with digressions into the positive use of pessimism and pessimism/optimism in children, and the use of this hypothesis to predict educational, sporting and political results. The last third of the book is about how to learn to be optimistic (and when).

This book is very american-centric. I think it could also have been written in about half the verbiage, and occasionally his meaning is unclear. However, as pop-psychology books go, it is fairly concise, approachable, and rigorous in his treatment of his own hypothesis. He readily admits to changing his ideas in the face of new evidence as his hypothesis has developed over time, a precious thing in this kind of book. It was rather repetitive, but I've been told that I'm unusually sensitive to such things, and I suppose for an audience used to being bombarded every five minutes with mostly-repeated ads it wouldn't even be noticeable. Also, his treatment of conflict within marriage is laughable.

In the positive realm, I think that his hypothesis has something to it. I know that in my own life, I feel happiest when I feel that what I do makes a difference to how I feel - and that in the pits of darkest despair, the overwhelming characteristic was that I felt that there were no solutions, nothing I could do to fix myself, nothing I did was right, etc. I'm sure those feelings are familiar to many people. Seiglman postulates that it was my internal dialogue that was reinforcing these feelings and making my bad situation worse. Optimism here is not about denying that something sucks - it's about defining it as temporary, not about you, and limited in its impact. That is to say, this too will pass, it wasn't your fault, and it won't ruin your entire life.

He provides many examples of different internal (and external) dialogues involved. He suggests keeping a diary of adverse events, beliefs about these events, and consequent actions. Part of solving any problem is figuring out there is a problem. To break the constant negative self-talk, he suggests using distraction as a first aid measure, or disputation as a longer term curative. I do think his examples are somewhat shallow; I certainly put up more of a fight with myself than he seems to think should be the case. But then, I'm a champion at holding opinions, and I'm very good at argument. Most people aren't quite so strongly trained as I am.

Today, I think, his techniques have been expanded and incorporated into Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. After all, this book was written in 1990, and a lot has changed in the world since then. Overall, it's a good book for learning where modern techniques started, but it has significant gaps, and is definitely pop science. I found it interesting, but for dealing with my current issues would go for something significantly more recent and more thorough.