Tyler Mercer

That's so true, Rick. Definitely seen that in my writing here. It's interesting to think about what leads to those changes—I think high obligation load is one thing, but there are other things too, like what kind of goals I set. I've found public goals to be especially unhelpful; they shift me into a avoidance mindset of "I want to avoid the shame of reneging on my goal" which sucks the aspirational life out of the thing I'm doing. (There are also studies that show that publicly visible goals trigger the same mental reward as actually accomplishing the thing, which probably contributes to this effect. Once the too-early emotional reward has faded, all I'm left with is the discomfort of the actual work.)

Thanks for reading! Glad you found it insightful

I figured it out! Thanks for your writeup about your setup; it was very helpful.

I'll write a follow up post to this one at some point, but if you'd like to know how I did it, you can check out the PR.