I think everyone has that. For what it's worth it seems like the path to _not_ doing that involves being fine with doing it. Somehow the 'wanting to have done something this year' causes a sort of anxiety that makes one not do things. I find that when I can release the feeling that I ought to be doing something, or that I'm failing or doing the wrong thing, I... start to desire to do things again and end up happier with the result.
This backwards logic underlies all of 'depression', in my experience. If you have a neurotic need to be something or have done something, that neurotic need can only manifest in 'symbolic action' -- like visibly starting work (only to give up shortly thereafter), or performatively talking about how you're doing something or planning to do it. But neurotic motivation isn't _actual_ motivation. It's only purpose, I think, biologically must be to get you 'near' what you feel like you should be doing, in hopes that that causes it to happen somehow.
When you have a neurotic motivation that's at odds with who you are, or that you don't know how to immediately act on, it causes you to sort of .. shut down. Because you can't immediately become who you 'wish you were', you just do ... nothing, operating in the lowest-energy state, chasing immediate rewards like eating, doing things that are suggested to you, and binging the highest-dopamine rewards like video games or netflix.
When I've realized this about particular 'needs' in the past, I've been able to see the need dissipate, and I suddenly feel much free-r to actually be myself and do things I want to do, which confusingly is more effective at getting to whoever you actually wanted to be anyway. The key is not _needing_ to be that person. If you feel bad about not being something, it just, like, breaks everything in your brain. In the case of TFA: if you feel like you need to be a writer, you sit down and think about writing, but your creativity is broken because you're just operating neurotically. So quit it; don't try to write until you _want_ to.
Related: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob... which is the article that initially got me thinking in ways that got rid of some of the 'neurotic needs' that were making it hard to be freely motivated. Although it feels like I keep finding new problems of this sort, I've definitely fixed a few of them in the past, and somehow once fixed they seem to _stay_ fixed.
I think your advice is good and matches with other advice I've received in the past, but my disconnect is where does the impetus come from to release the neurotic motivations?
A large fraction of the people I have known were able to do so because of a major wake-up call such as: flunking out of school, being fired from a job (or multiple jobs in a row), or hitting "rock bottom" with substance abuse.
My neurotic motivations kept me at "On academic probation for 7 out of 11 semesters" instead of "flunked out." If I went back in time and gave this advice to my younger self, I would not have taken it because when you are afraid of drowning, you won't let go of the driftwood to swim towards the yacht.
Yeah, hard to say. For me it was a long process of inching closer and closer to the problem. Which meant it happened years later than it should have.
I suspect therapy can get you there a lot faster. For some people, getting high or tripping can help.
The first step is looking for it though. If you find yourself saying "I want to do X but I keep not doing it", that's a sign something's messed up. I imagine that meditating on that feeling can target the neurotic drive directly.
This backwards logic underlies all of 'depression', in my experience. If you have a neurotic need to be something or have done something, that neurotic need can only manifest in 'symbolic action' -- like visibly starting work (only to give up shortly thereafter), or performatively talking about how you're doing something or planning to do it. But neurotic motivation isn't _actual_ motivation. It's only purpose, I think, biologically must be to get you 'near' what you feel like you should be doing, in hopes that that causes it to happen somehow.
When you have a neurotic motivation that's at odds with who you are, or that you don't know how to immediately act on, it causes you to sort of .. shut down. Because you can't immediately become who you 'wish you were', you just do ... nothing, operating in the lowest-energy state, chasing immediate rewards like eating, doing things that are suggested to you, and binging the highest-dopamine rewards like video games or netflix.
When I've realized this about particular 'needs' in the past, I've been able to see the need dissipate, and I suddenly feel much free-r to actually be myself and do things I want to do, which confusingly is more effective at getting to whoever you actually wanted to be anyway. The key is not _needing_ to be that person. If you feel bad about not being something, it just, like, breaks everything in your brain. In the case of TFA: if you feel like you need to be a writer, you sit down and think about writing, but your creativity is broken because you're just operating neurotically. So quit it; don't try to write until you _want_ to.
Related: https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob... which is the article that initially got me thinking in ways that got rid of some of the 'neurotic needs' that were making it hard to be freely motivated. Although it feels like I keep finding new problems of this sort, I've definitely fixed a few of them in the past, and somehow once fixed they seem to _stay_ fixed.