Here are 3 Tips To Make Sure Your Inner Voice Doesn’t Become Your Most Annoying Enemy

Recently, I’ve been embarking on a journey to try and optimize – cleanse myself of negative elements brought about by a social life which was less than ideal for what I was trying to achieve.

Six months in — progress has definitely been made, but with a surprising amount of new obstacles rearing their distracting heads along the way.

My own brain, turns out, is one of the worst offenders.

Although at times your inner voice can keep you clear, focused, and able to quickly prioritize as only the human brain can, at other times it can have different priorities.

While there have been countless numbers of memes and GIFs exploring the distractions your inner voice throws at you for no apparent reason, diving into that is a whole other beast entirely.

It’s the other part of that beast that I’m here to help fight.

This takes well thought out plans and throws in unrelated hypotheticals that always hold some kind of delicious appeal that make it hard to stay on track.

You could be writing, but you know what would be REALLY fun….

You could be coding, but you could use some more wins in Fortnite….

You could probably do this project due in 24 hours faster with a margarita in hand…..

All fun distractions, but annoying when it came to the long-term strategy of optimizing my time. It was time to take an audit of my own brain — why were these distractions happening at such a higher rate than before?

To try and generalize as to why this was happening was a sure-fire way for me to make a mistake. If I could not identify the problem while it was in the background, lurking, why would I be able to figure it out now that it was upon me?

I looked back at what had changed the past few months and, ironically, found that my own self-improvement methods had created a brand new problem.

See, as I started eliminating distractions and giving myself more time to work on my writing, my health, and my software development skills, there was a lot of time that was…. empty.

Empty — as in isolated. Time spent in solitude without having to deal with another human soul for more than a short conversation to check in.

The natural reaction was…

I’m screwed.

This is still an ongoing problem. However, after falling back on my defaults (Googling and inspirational Instagram pages) I’ve managed to not quiet, but heavily mitigate, the risk posed by the rampaging bear that is my subconscious. Here are the game-changers:

1. Lean Into the Emptiness of Productivity

This was the big one. If it is impossible to change the basic characteristics that cause your mind to run rampant, why not double down?

Harness that random chaotic energy and make it, forcefully, work towards what you were actually trying to accomplish.

The issue that arises with dedicated productivity is that it creates a vacuum at your peripheral vision. The brain is not designed to be focused on just one task for such a long period of time without the option of switching away.

But, luckily for myself, I had previously stumbled on the solution.

Habit formation is by far the most effective tool I have had in my arsenal for dealing with external stimuli, and it proved to be just as helpful, with a few tweaks, in dealing with this internal issue.

Say I was coding, and I get the urge to switch to Netflix – previously, Netflix and another episode of Luke Cage would win a disturbing amount of the time.

The solution? Have a list of my most pressing tasks, outside of coding, sitting on my desk, my lap, wherever. Remind myself that there are a multitude of different things that I enjoy that could take my attention, while also allowing myself to stay productive.

“Ok, Brain, I get coding is getting a bit stale for you… but let’s bang out a few hundred words on our newest Medium article instead of vegetating in bed, shall we?”

By giving myself off-ramps into other areas I could work on, I derailed my brain’s own distracted thought process for my own benefit.

2. Do NOT Lean Into the Burn-Out

Optimize, but not to the point of wanting to kill yourself. The longer I worked, the harder it became to stop my psyche from going rogue.

Mental balancing isn’t a struggle. It is, as it’s name implies, a balancing act between yourself and your worse self. The part that wants to create, and that part that wants to destroy (mostly yourself).

The beautiful thing about having the capacity for such creation and destruction in the same human vessel is where you can catch a break.

If you destroy yourself, your mind will destroy itself in short order. If you manage the process of your own success, keep the energy level at a point that a total collapse isn’t always on the horizon… that’s where the true capacity to shine lies.

This is a crucial point — I’m not pretending to be arrogant here and say that I achieved perfectly balanced Chi and I am the Master of My Own Mental Destiny. That is simply not a thing.

So get sleep as needed, exercise regularly, and reserve just the weekends for destroying your bank account and waistline through UberEats McDonalds orders.

3. Do Not Let Mediocrity Poison You

This was my last realization. The external and internal are linked entities in every respect, and not completely optimizing my external surroundings proved to be a prime way to cause a mental riot.

Clearing my surroundings of noise I didn’t want was just the first step. The noise addressed the underlying structure of my life, but not completely — there were still those key factors in the day that produced negative outcomes.

Mediocrity, being so subjective, is an impossible concept to generalize, so I can only provide you a tale of my situation as a frame of reference for your own self-examination.

As I did previously, I self-audited to see what I needed to change externally. Not for my external goal-setting, but to bring the most peace to my mind.

What I found was tough to bear.

I had known for a while that the job I was working in, for a top tier tech startup in downtown Toronto, was well-paying and provided a ton of mobility going forward.

We had just gotten a huge new round of funding, and everything looked to be bright and sunny for my career prospects if I just stayed put.

But as time went on, and the strings of my off-hours projects began to pull at my mind harder and harder, I realized that just because you’re in a “good” situation, doesn’t mean you are in an optimal situation for yourself.

I want to say I came up with this idea myself, but it never really hit home until I read Alice Vuong’s piece, The Experience Will Look Good On Your Resume. Her point regarding living your life for your passions, rather than exclusively for more money, shattered the mirror on a problem I couldn’t bring myself to accept.

That being said, I must say my story has yet to end with me “quitting my job and pursuing my dreams” as so many on Medium do. I still have financial obligations that need to be met, but damn if I’m not trying my hardest in the moonlit hours to make that optimal situation happen.

Call to Action

Next time your doing an important task and your brain starts running wild, take that energy and use it to self-audit. What is working in your life? Not in a good way, but in the way that is optimal for your own mental comfort, general happiness, and financial situation.

So remember:

Create habits to give your brain alternatives to isolation

Make sure to avoid anything that makes you feel like your stuck in mediocrity

Always take care of yourself — physically and mentally.

The answers may be hard to find at first, but once you have them, you have the steps necessary to make that one big change.