Quoting Mike:

I’m 34 years old. About the age where you can no longer hide behind the fact that you have plenty of time to grow up and become the person you want to be. It’s also not so far into middle age that your efforts in changing can’t take root and produce fruit. At least, that’s the hope that drives me.

I now think of myself as an underachiever. After dozens and, more likely, hundreds of attempts at changing my path, I feel stuck. I’ve lost confidence in myself and feel more restless than ever. A change must happen soon, or I worry my personality will be warped permanently by frustration.

I had been making plans all this time, but was I trying to change, or was I waiting for a lucky break or pacifying myself? The answer is clear. I was barely trying.

I could accept reality and come to peace with my trajectory. That would be easier than my constant dissatisfaction from failed expectations. And it would spare me the struggle of trying and failing repeatedly.

My frustration is not the result of physical suffering, material want, or any big mistakes I’ve made. It’s the deep ache of not having enough agency to shape your life in your desired direction. It’s having an active mind with big dreams but pulled in a hundred directions and left standing right where you started. It’s promises to yourself that you don’t keep and a will to act that doesn’t match your ambitions.

I’m easily overwhelmed or discouraged.

• Looking at an extensive task list gives me a feeling of dread.

• I’m easily frustrated with myself if something takes longer than I think it should.

I’m more motivated to remove destructive emotions than to accomplish things.

• I wait until a sense of impending doom drives me to action.

• When the pain is relieved, I leave my foot off the gas again.

I’m afraid of trying and failing.

• The pain of wasting time trying is more acute than avoiding it.

• It’s more about the fear of wasted effort than of being wrong.

I’m awful at delaying gratification.

• I’m sure I would have failed the marshmallow test as a child

• I’ve gravitated towards activities with quicker payoffs and away from anything that takes a while to be rewarding.

I’m indecisive and overly introspective.

• Instead of thinking and weighing options, I let them stew vaguely in my mind.

• I have difficulty committing to an idea because I assume I don’t know enough.

I’ve grown too cynical for sustained action.

• I talk myself out of so many ideas because "they’ll never work," even though I can point to many people doing them already.

• There’s always some excuse: I’m too late, what they’re doing could be more impressive, I need to gain the skills, it would take too long, etc.

The result is that I’m 34 years old and struggling with the same things I struggled with at age 18. I coasted and floundered through a crucial decade and a half of my life and now have very little to show for my time. It was easy to fool myself into believing that reading about ambitious people would spur me to action and that my distraction was just unchanneled passion waiting for a muse. The truth is that I became lazy, emotionally immature, and complacent. What feels like a complex emotional life is embarrassingly simple: I dream a big game, but I’m unwilling to follow through.

Introspection only gets you so far. If meta-level thinking about my lack of motivation helped, I would be cured. I’m in the 99th percentile of time spent.

More than willpower is needed. The days are too long, and so are the weeks if all I’m doing is grinding it out. I will come to resent my efforts and rebel.

Progress is the best motivation. The key to success is compounding. If I can get myself in a positive feedback loop and stay there, great things can happen.

• Find a way to enjoy the journey. Related to the point above. I need to find a way to make life into a game that I enjoy playing and feel progress.

• I need to keep promises to myself. This is the foundation of personal agency. Knowing that you’ll do what you say you’ll do. I’ll need to start small and rebuild trust with myself.

I need positive peer pressure. Right now I feel like a man on an island. What I need is the camaraderie and energy of wanting to impress others.

I pride myself on being a pretty smart guy, but my thinking has become lazy and shallow. I want to apply some intentionality to this area of my life to build a better foundation and someday contribute as a thinker/writer. The last part is essential to me but, as of yet, undefined.

Have fun again. Over the past decade, my malaise has caused me to lose enjoyment of things I once enjoyed. Having an outlet for fun that has no utility is healthy for me.

The most vivid storyline of my inner life has been a struggle with low agency, low energy, and complacency. I’ve spun my wheels for years trying to find a path out. But now, at the age of 34, I feel a massive sense of urgency to change. I have an idea of myself that I feel compelled to live up to, and the excuses have run out.