The decadence-guilt cycle

The unhealthy pattern of how I work

My entire life and how I lead it can be summarized by what I call the decadence - guilt cycle. 

Apparently, when I was 5 years old, I used to come back from school in the afternoon for lunch and then just not go in the afternoon. Over the years, this has transformed into various forms of ‘escaping’ the institution. Sick days at school. Keeping the mandatory minimum attendance bar at undergrad and during MBA. I still dread the feeling of having exhausted all my allowed non-attendance quota in IIMB and still having several weeks worth of 8 am classes that I just can’t afford to miss. 

At work I have a similar vice. I haven’t ever been an intense worker for a long periods of time - putting in 60 hour weeks even (except maybe for brief periods in consulting). I take more than my fair share of holidays sometimes even for 3 three weeks at a stretch vacationing. I’ll tell you something - three week vacations are dangerous. The last time I did one, I came back and quit my job. 

Anyway, the point I have (and I do have one) here is not that I am lazy. It’s not to say that had I put in more work I might have done better and gone further. In fact, I am not sure if that would even be true. I used to make such a lazy observations earlier before I could spot my own patterns. 

Instead, all of my forward momentum operates within the delicate balance of the decadence-guilt cycle.

Let me explain. 

The art of decadence

I define decadence in a very weird way. Here’s an incomplete list:

• Taking a midday nap

• Watching Netflix in the middle of a Wednesday (or cartoon network in the middle of a school day after claiming sickness - oh, sweet times)

• Sitting and reading a fun novel on a Monday morning in a cafe as caffeine powered people scramble to go to work

• Deciding to take the day off from work and spend an entire day indulging in the need to write a new short story

• Leaving on a whim to do a photo tour of the city

As you can see, it’s not always about the lazing. Decadence, to me, is indulging at the wrong times. And indulgence is doing something that’s just fun, fun, fun. Here’s a little chart to explain.

Wrong / right time has been defined and drilled into the head by literally the entire world. Vacations are decadence too for it means escape from the cycle of chores and regular commitments. 

In any case, I pursue decadence like a junkie. Some may want to change the world and others may want to be billionaires but all I want is several decadent (as defined by me) decades and having enough money to do that.   

But what makes it all the more decadent is the fact that this is limited and feels wrong.

Anxiety as jet fuel of productivity

Naturally, as the decadence phase ends, the guilt phase begins. My guilt phase is ugly. It starts with a severe debilitating anxiety driven by the fear that I am going to spectacularly fail at whatever it is I am doing - school, college, work, etc. I have visions of being called out for being the impostor that I am and being marched me between rows of people chanting “Shame!” 

This is where, perhaps not healthily, I start to become the most productive. The guilt phase has an anxiety phase and a productive phase. Once I get back into the “non fun” but “important” things I need to be doing, they become “mildly fun” for a brief period. And in this period, propelled by the rocket fuel of anxiety, I roll through my to-do list. Sometimes, this phase also coincides with flow states and nearly all my ideas and execution happens in this time. 

I get on top of things. Things happen. I get super-productive (2x or 3x the usual amount). I might even put in long days at a stretch close things rapidly. I get a high. I get cocky. And complacent. And the anxiety scrambles away and then begins my next decadence cycle. 

There’s a whole new third dimension I have not introduced here - Inertia. But that’s for another day really.

And also, as I always say…

Could be worse,

Tyag

They say that the first rule of newsletters is you announce a schedule and stick to it, come what may. As the above post makes it amply clear, I, unfortunately, don’t operate that way. So when you subscribe to this newsletter, you are living the dangerous, uncertain life of receiving anywhere from one to five emails a month on arbitrary days. But if you liked reading the above post, go on then, try living a little dangerously.