Why doing less for a prolonged period of time is unsustainable, and would inevitably lead to failure, even if that is your definition of focus.

When you’re on your way out of rock-bottom, you might think that the shortest pathway of extracting yourself out of there is that of elimination. You begin to do less. You begin to deprive yourself. You begin to stop doing anything that has nothing to do with getting you out of the horrible situation you’re currently trapped in. Even if this thing is a basic necessity. Even if this thing is one of your nonnegotiable needs. Even if you can’t live without this thing. Even if this thing will help make you better in the long-term. Even if this thing is essential for your improvement, success, happiness, mental health, sanity, or well-being. Even if you cannot survive without those type of things. You do so, because you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You do so, because you think this would help you get there faster. By deeming everything else a distraction, you eliminate everything that is not directly involved in the attainment of your goals from your to-do lists, until further notice. Or until you get there, wherever there is, with disregard to how long that might take you, that is, with total disregard to how much you intend to starve yourself and remain in such deprivation.

The problem is that this ensures the impossibility of reaching your goals even further.

By doing nothing during the time where you can consider yourself still stuck under unlivable conditions, or circumstances, or a horrible situation, except what is absolutely necessary or essential for you to save yourself or make your escape plan work, you are only making it incredibly harder for yourself to ever make it. You are lowering your chances of ever making it out of there. It won’t be an exaggeration to claim that the single most reason you might fail to ever get yourself out of this mess could be following a strategy of elimination, where you remove any item that does not directly lead to the success of your escape plan from your plans. The plans that are supposed to get you out of this mess for good. By doing less here, you will never get there faster. You will just ensure you will never make it out of there alive.

For a simple reason. Reward. You need reward. Without any reward, you will not be able to function, much less stay motivated, and in control of yourself and your thoughts. I know this might sound controversial, but, the pathway to extraordinary results almost always involves doing more than the bare minimum you think you need to do, accomplish, or get through, in order to hit those seemingly impossible to reach goals. And not everything that needs to be part of your plan has to lead to the attainment of such goals in a straightforward manner. Sometimes it is just physical exercise, to stay in shape, and have more energy and enthusiasm, to work on those goals. Even if exercise alone, will never get you closer to your goals. But you can’t hit those goals if you’re someone who’s sedentary, who never exercises, or never gets enough exercise on the daily.

You will not get there because of those other things that do not lead to the attainment of your goals in a straightforward manner, but you will never get there, and you will never make it out of your horrible situation, or escape the unlivable circumstances, conditions, or environment you’re currently stuck or trapped in, unless you add those seemingly unrelated things to your escape plan, that the very existence of them alone without anything else will never move you forward or closer to your goals, or towards making your escape plan work, unless they’re added to the essential stuff that your plan can’t exist without, that is, the straightforward steps that are necessary to make you get out of this mess, because only together, only when applied together, will your escape plan finally work.

You can’t have an escape plan without the essential straightforward stuff that will make you get out of this hell hole you’re trapped in. But those essential straightforward steps alone are not enough to make the plan succeed. You still need to add to such plan all what you think is unnecessary or non-essential to the success of your plan, because without such things, your escape plan will never work. And you can consider anything that has any helpful or beneficial effects on you to fall under this category. The category of things that alone they will never get you closer to your goals or the success of your escape plan, at least not in a straightforward manner, because they are still essential, considering that the success of the whole escape plan is contingent upon their existence, and without any of these things, your escape plan is bound to fail, and can never work. Anything that can be helpful and can make you more able to succeed and get through anything can fall under this aforementioned complimentary to the main steps of your escape plan category. Even though your escape plan contains all the essential stuff that if you did, you’re supposed to make it out of this horrible situation. But this is only true theoretically speaking. In practice, you need to take care of your state, and do all the other stuff, however seemingly unrelated to the attainment of any of your goals that are an integral part of your escape plan, that without which, you don’t have an escape plan in the first place, if you ever hope to make it out of this disaster someday.

You can’t get there without reward. You cannot make it anywhere without enough reward in your system or your body.

Anything that decreases it, for any reason, is always a cause for failure, especially in the long-term.

Aside from doing multiple things all at once to maximize pleasure, multitasking is not the go to strategy to maximize performance or productivity.

The main reason people might feel a proclivity towards multitasking is the fact that they might be under extreme time pressure, where they feel they will definitely fall far behind at some point in the future, no matter what they do, or at least if they kept going at the same pace as everybody else who is not under the same or a greater amount of stress or time pressure than theirs, or if they tried to handle things one task or thing at a time. It’s not that they think that they’ll get more things done if they multitask. But rather, they multitask, because they think or feel that they can’t get anything done, no matter what they do. At least not on time. They can finish everything on their plate if they went about it normally, one thing at a time, but they will finish everything way after they have to or want to. No matter what they do, they feel they will be too late. It’s a stress response, something that comes from being under too much time pressure, not a strategy they pick, because they believe it will help them get things done more or better, or get more done in less time. 

Also many people use multitasking as a mechanism for shielding themselves from outside intrusion or attacks, if they are stuck with people who have no respect for boundaries or other people’s feelings. If you are doing a lot of stuff simultaneously, you can easily deflect any attacks on you by simply saying that you’re busy. Can’t you see I’m busy? It was so obvious, you really didn’t need to verbally clarify that. That will save you a lot of effort, because defending yourself from such attacks when you don’t look so occupied will be almost always impossible. Instead of not responding for example because you don’t want to, you simply have to look busy, where the explanation for why you’re not responding is supposed to be obvious for anyone who’s judging the situation from outside, even if the real reason behind you not responding is the fact that you don’t want to at this moment, you’re not in the right mood or state to give a response that is not offensive or will drain your energy or make you feel worse afterwards, even if there’s nothing wrong with the person who wants to speak with you at the moment, or with what they have to say, or you’re simply under huge stress or too tired and can’t handle anything else at the moment, or because you’re simply under attack by a toxic or abusive person, and you don’t want to ever respond or engage with such person, or you don’t want to be interrupted at the moment for any reason and you need to hyper focus. Because after all, if it were somebody else who you really have no problem with responding to them, you’d happily respond and then go back to whatever you’re doing without experiencing any pain in the process.

People who can’t get space to do what they really want unchecked and uninterrupted all they want usually resort to multitasking as a last ditch effort to still get some space despite not being able to get actual physical space all for themselves away from people, to do or be what they want, all they want the way they want it, for as long as they want it. In other words, they’re stuck, and they currently still have no way out. They don’t do it because they’re in love with multitasking. They need space, and they’re still not able to get that space.

Stop telling people that they should stop trying to multitask because the human brain can’t do multiple things at once simultaneously with full focus. They know that. They just don’t have the opportunity, the luxury, or the right environment, circumstances, or living conditions, that can enable them to no longer have a reason to or no option but to multitask. Either give them that, or shut up.

How self-loathing might keep piling up and accumulating behind your back despite you doing everything right, and despite you doing everything in your power to win and make things better.

Sometimes self loathing occurs not because you’re being so hard on yourself, but because you’re attacking yourself the same way that you anticipate others will do once you get more exposure to criticism from other people. To you that will happen after you hit success. That’s why the more you put yourself out there, the more you work, the more you might feel the self loathing increasing. It’s not coming from you because you’re a fraud. You’re not an imposter, you’re not fake, and you’re not worthy of that criticism, or too bad to try to be out there, necessarily. It’s not that you don’t belong there, you are not worthy of success, or that there’s something wrong with you that means you should or are right to hate yourself. This is what they think. This is what they think of you, and you are just anticipating that in advance since you know how they think and how they usually criticize others. According to them, these things they criticize you by saying are true. But that doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t even make it your own opinion. You are just foreseeing what they will think of you. You are just aware of what they will think of you in advance, and you are panicking because of that prematurely. And because of that, you are hating yourself in advance, increasingly, the more you post. The more you put yourself out there. The more work you publish, and the more you show up. Not because what you’re doing is wrong or because you shouldn’t do it, but because of how others will judge you or think of you. Because of the criticism. That guilt you might be feeling, it’s not true. It is not to be believed, because it is arising, even though you haven’t done anything wrong at all. What’s new about that is that instead of being fully aware of the fact that you’re just afraid of other people’s negative thoughts or beliefs about you, and that’s why you become afraid of public speaking or putting out videos, you don’t think of other people as the origin of your self loathing thoughts. You, in this case, might feel only the self loathing piling up, the more you post, and think it’s coming from yourself, and your own negative thinking or bad mindset. The more you expose yourself to the possibility of getting more feedback from others at scale, the more the self loathing and imposter syndrome symptoms tend to increase. And it comes with emergency type fear that makes you feel guilty for not having moved away to safety. Like you’re engaging in self sabotaging behavior the more you put out content. Realize that this is not your opinion of yourself. It doesn’t mean you still need to work on your self love issues, necessarily. This is what you are afraid others might think of you or say about you someday, once you become more successful and significant enough to get any real deal criticism or significant judgment or feedback. This is coming from getting ready for hate comments, before they even show up. Don’t quit because of that. This is just the warm-up session.


The self loathing might also come from the fact that you’re posting consistently but you are not seeing any results yet. You’re not getting there, no matter how hard you try or how long you’ve been trying. Despite doing everything right, and putting in all this effort. Which makes you look like the problem here and your body thinks that there’s something wrong with you, to discourage you from wasting all this time and energy for nothing, and from trying hard all those years and then ending up nowhere. So your body tries to stop you from even trying, by telling you there must be something wrong with you, to discourage you from going in that direction any further only to get no results. Also because of you, your body thinks, we are failing. And so your body starts to hate you for not being competent or good enough to not take all that long to get there, when everybody else seems to get there in no time. And hence, the self loathing, for feeling or thinking that you’re never good enough. That you don’t have what it takes. And the evidence you have for that is the fact that you still haven’t made it yet. If you were good enough, you would’ve made it by now. You would’ve succeeded long ago, like the others. This is how your self-loathing works.