If I don't do it today

My brain is tired. I’ve been making a lot of decisions and had many writing responsibilities last week. My twenty watts of brain power feels especially dim right now. I feel I should skip a week, for this post, but if I don’t do it this week, I can do it next week. Rinse and repeat. Our brains play all kinds of tricks on us to keep us from working it too hard.

Frank Bunker Gilbreth was a pioneer efficiency expert at the turn of the 20th century. He used to ask plant managers to take him to their laziest worker. Gilbreth had made the observation that smart, lazy workers would have found the most efficient way to do things. In this case, our brain in operation is the smart, lazy worker; and our metacognition is the plant manager responsible for continuous quality improvement.

Our operational brain wants to operate on lazy mode. It wants to do what’s most obvious using the least energy possible

If you’re reading this, you’re applying metacognition. Metacognition is our brain’s plant manager. At a time when my brain is already tired, I want metacognition to help me do my best. However, metacognition isn’t efficient; and therefore, more energy draining.

Should I write this post?

No. It’s already Monday. I have a fully committed week including some impromptu work travel that will munch up a lot of time, attention, and energy, I already feel is depleted. Further, since this would arrive later in the day, I’ll be imposing on my colleagues whose job is to edit, provide an illustration, and publish this for you to receive on Tuesday morning. It tweaks my identity of being a conscientious person. Further, I'm already carrying some shame that I’m not producing posts in advance so there’s additional pressure that comes from working at the last minute. Skip it and get a week ahead.

Yes, I’ve already done a significant amount of thinking on this, along with a couple of false starts. What if I reveal my own struggle with my lazy worker and my quality-control manager.

The lazy worker says, I’ve done all this metacognitive work in the trying to come to a conclusion. Just reveal that to your readers. The quality-control manager says fine with me, you’ve got fifteen minutes. It will be okay if it’s a little short this time. However, your assignment is to write two more before next Tuesday.

As further accountability, I’ll tell you next Tuesday if I succeeded in getting ahead.