You failed just now, so why would someone take your opinion about this seriously? (If this bothers you, then try reading it again in a cheerier tone. Oh! That didn’t help? Strange.)

I don’t think extra politeness is going to help you much here. If you don’t do what they ask you to do and they don’t understand why, they’ll probably assume you’re being rude, no matter which words or tone you choose.

You don’t need to explain yourself. Others need to learn to respect your choices about yourself. Yes, it’s tiring. It’s their fault, but partly your problem.

Your responsibility ends with “Thank you, but no.” Unfortunately, some people will feel hurt by this, no matter how cheerily you say it, because they simply don’t expect it. They will tell themselves that you are not being genuine by trying to both remain friendly and deny their request. You can’t change this; only they can choose to interpret your response differently. And most people never try this. Instead they merely expect you to be agreeable and do what they want you to do.

If you want to establish your boundaries, then you need to practise letting them feel hurt and not feeling responsible for it. This is one reason I meditate.

Peace.

2010

A group of people who are tired of your unjust bullshit, who are not going to let you shrug it off or get away with it, and who are not going to stop confronting you with it.

Yes. I find it helpful.

Space Invaders.

• Todoist for projects and tasks
• Standard Notes or Obsidian for notes or temporary lists

I prefer to have one authoritative database of tasks (Todoist) and then I use whatever plain text or Markdown tools are available to me in the moment for short term lists. I have settled on Standard Notes for longer term/reference notes, but I could just as easily use anything with plain text files.

You’ll almost certainly need both paper and electronic solutions, because you’ll remember stuff when you don’t have paper handy. If you can get ideas out of your head quickly, that tends to help more than having the right medium available.

I like using paper for scribbling things down while working on a task, but then my phone and computer for almost everything else. And if I have something on paper that I haven’t finished, I either move it into Todoist or throw it away.

I’m an old index card person, so I love ripping up completed task lists. It feels very therapeutic to me.

“till och från” is a new one for me, so thank you. I would have used “här och där”.

The last formulation makes perfect sense to me. I like to think I could even have written it.

Tusentack för att du tog tid för att förklara lite.

Thank you. What little I can speak or write is very firmly 1980s textbook German.

Unsurprising. I’m still well in the stage where I’m formulating thoughts in English, then translating into Swedish. Very occasionally something pops out spontaneously, fully-formed, and in Swedish.

I’m mostly thrilled to have got “i” right there, because I haven’t quite memorized i/på with time expressions. It will come.

How well does your formulation convey the nuance that I’ve been learning (off and on, often passively), but often not actively studying? The verbs “att studera”/“att plugga” feel more to me like actively working, but of course, my feelings in this regard are more about English “study” than those Swedish words.

Mostly self study from a variety of sources. I lived part time in Stockholm for four years, but it was far easier than I’d expected to speak only English, so although my reading and writing improved, my speaking and listening didn’t. Every time I tried, they switched to English on me. I don’t blame them.

Now I’m a bit stuck: I can’t find much to listen to that’s at my level. I’m past the beginner stuff but can’t keep up with Swedish spoken at full speed.

• I have spoken English since birth.
• Je parle français depuis l’âge de 7 ans, parce que je l’apprenais à l’école.
• Estudiaba el español en la escuela secundaria.
• Jag lär mig svenska i fler än tio år.
• Ich kann etwas Deutsch lesen und verstehen.

And thanks to my Swedish, I can read a surprising amount of Danish and Norwegian.

I would call myself proficient in French, passable in Spanish, barely functional in Swedish, and I can get by in German in a very banal emergency. 😉

I believe that if you faced the judgment and self-hatred, the rest might fall into place. I have two general strategies to suggest, which you could use together.

1. Practise looking at the thoughts like “I’m lazy” and “I hate myself of for being so lazy” and seeing them for the empty things they are. They’re just thoughts. They’re not even yours. They mean nothing. They consist of nothing.
2. Look into the reasons for judging yourself lazy and hating yourself for it. Is there a voice you hear in your head saying these things? Whose voice is it? (Is it a person from your past or a part of yourself you can identify?) Maybe you’re reacting to something you were told or taught very young, which was helpful at the time, but not helpful any more.

Your body wants to conserve energy or it’s afraid of overinvesting energy in practising the piano. If you saw that more clearly, you might more easily identify what to do next.

I stopped studying piano when I realized that I wasn’t prepared to put in the practice needed to develop the raw finger strength and dexterity to play even medium difficulty Bach fugues. I saw what it took and the effort didn’t interest me enough to stick with it. I have invested that practice energy into something else instead and I feel much happier for it. I have a facility for music, but I’m just not that into it as a technician. I have enough to appreciate virtuosity in others and that’s enough for me. Maybe you can find something similar.

Peace.

“Delightful”.

I use copyq for this purpose. It doesn’t do exactly what you’ve asked for, but it solves a very similar underlying problem.

Not always. Sometimes one feels miserable, fears the reactions of others, and still doesn’t do the task. Sometimes we call this “depression”. Not recommended.

In your shoes, I’d want to understand more about what makes me miserable about not finishing things. In fact, I was in those shoes a decade or so ago. I take a much more measured view of that now. If I genuinely want to finish it or need to finish it, I’ll finish it. The rest is noise.

Everyone gets there in their own time. Meantime, you’re welcome, good luck, and peace.

Aha, so that’s something in the way: it might be more work than it’s worth to you. Either the uncertainty interferes with you or the certainty that it demands much more effort than it’s worth interferes with you. Does one of these hit you more than the other?

I’m certainly familiar with both feelings with regards to different projects.

So… Let me address each of those, just in case.

• Can you just do some of it and then stop and be satisfied with the part you’ve done?
• Can you start, figure out that it’s more trouble than it’s worth, then undo and go back to where you were before?

I don’t merely mean “Are you able to?” but also “How would you feel about those outcomes?”

Peace.

Is there also something you don’t want to happen that seems likely to happen if you try?

For example, I work with many folks who struggle to leave projects unfinished, so they resist starting for reasons they don’t quite understand.