56. The F*ck It Effect
The work I do is all about helping people create more of what they want at work (and at home, too).
But when we’re working towards creating more of what we want, it’s helpful to figure out how much of that work we can do at once without pushing ourselves too hard.
My coach, Maggie Reyes, likes to ask “what’s a stretch but not a snap?” To create change, we need to stretch ourselves to a point, but not so far that we snap. Stretching ourselves to our snapping point sets us back instead of moving us forward.
Think about a rubber band. We can stretch a rubber band to fit it around something. But if we stretch it so far that it breaks, then we need a new rubber band. Or we have to tie the broken one in a knot and then it’s smaller and less able to stretch.
The same is true for the work we do on ourselves. When we stretch ourselves too far, it doesn’t actually help us in the long run. It often slows us down and sets us back instead.
But because we live in a culture that encourages us to go fast, fast, fast, I see people stretch past their limits quite often.
They want to grow at light speed, so they stretch too far, and something snaps. They reach a breaking point and then they shift into something that I call ‘The F*ck It Effect.’
The F*ck It Effect is when, for whatever reason, we stop trying to do the thing we’ve been trying to do, and we say “f*ck it” instead, generally followed by either giving up or doing a bunch of other shit we were trying not to do or both.
In this episode, I’ll teach you why The F*ck It Effect happens, how to wind up there less often, and how to handle this pattern when you do wind up there. After listening, you’ll know how to spend less time in The F*ck It Effect and more time in your increasingly delicious life.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What will land you in The F*ck It Effect and keep you stuck there.
The reason we feel guilt and shame when we make a mistake or do something that doesn’t meet our standards.
Some of the various ways we end up in The F*ck it Effect.
The reason we experience The F*ck It Effect.
Why making mistakes is all part of being human.
How to step out of The F*ck It Effect.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
If you’re enjoying the show, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!
Feel free to ask me any questions over on Instagram!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we are talking about the fuck it effect.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all, happy Wednesday. I've got a great topic to discuss with you today. I'm super excited. Before we jump in, I want to tell you something that one of my coaches told me and I found it to be super valuable. And so I wanted to pass it along to you.
So she has this teaching about when we're doing things, like when we're doing growth stuff, when we're trying on new thoughts, when we're kind of like pushing ourselves for personal growth. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time articulating this.
The metaphor she uses is what's a stretch, but not a snap? So if you think about a rubber band, rubber bands are meant to stretch. That's what their job is, they stretch. And then you put them on something, and they contract, and they hold the thing there, whatever the thing is.
So with the work that we're doing in coaching, with the work that you're doing on yourself when you listen to the podcasts, and you try out the stuff I'm telling you about. What we want to go for is what's a stretch, but not a snap.
So if we stretch the rubber band so far that it breaks, then the rubber band is no longer useful to us. And when we stretch ourselves that way, it doesn't actually help us in the long run.
But I see people do this a lot where they want to grow super-fast. They want to get to the result, the outcome, whatever the thing is, so they try to stretch too far, and something snaps. Something cracks, something breaks, right, and then they have to fix it or wait for it to heal, or recover from what they've done before they can go back to stretching.
So sometimes in life, shit will break, that's part of life. It's not my favorite part. But it has been true so far for me. So that is something that may come up, but let's not aim for that on purpose.
So when you're incorporating the ideas I'm teaching into your life when you're trying them on, a framework you can use to decide how much of that you're doing is to ask yourself what's a stretch, but not a snap? And that is actually the perfect lead in for what we're talking about today. Because we're talking about fuck it effect.
So what is fuck it effect? fuck it effect is when, for whatever reason, we decide to stop trying to do what we were trying to do, and we say fuck it and do usually a bunch of other shit that like we were trying not to do.
So a quintessential example is if we're working really hard and working really hard and working really hard, and then we have a fuck it moment. And we're like, “Fuck it. Fuck all this work, fuck all this shit.” And if you're at the workday this might look like fuck it, I'm just going to get on Facebook, or get on Instagram, or go get a coffee, or talk to my colleague instead of doing my work.
Fuck it effect shows up in a lot of areas of life, though. So let's say you're having a conflict conversation with a loved one. And you're trying, and you're trying, and you're trying. And you get to the fuck it moment and you're like, “Fuck it, I'm not going to try to do this mindful anymore. I'm not going to try to use all the tools I know. I'm just going to say all this shit that my brain wants to say. Burn the shit down, right?”
One of the places people see fuck it effect most often is in eating. Where people are trying really hard to eat in one manner and to not eat in a different manner. And they try, and they try, and they try, and then they have the fuck it moment. And then they're like, “I'm just going to eat this entire bag of Oreos, and that tray of brownies, and drink this whole bottle of wine.
So I want to just say, this isn't about moralizing the fuck it effect and thinking it's bad. I don't think that's useful. I mean, you're certainly allowed to if you want to, but I don't think it's useful. What I want to talk about is, why does this happen? And how can we work around this pattern so that when we do wind up in fuck it effect, we know how to handle ourselves there? And also can we keep ourselves from winding up in fuck it effect.
And so to go back to the metaphor of the rubber band, I think the rubber band snapping is like one of the ways we get into the fuck it effect. And there are a couple of different ways that I see people get to this place. One of them is perfectionism.
So when we're trying super hard to do something and be perfect at it, there's always a moment when we're not perfect at it because we're humans and we don't do things perfectly. So we're trying to do some kind of work task perfectly and then something goes imperfectly. Like we make a mistake, or some other thing happens.
If we're trying to do it perfectly, we might go all the way from like, “Okay, I was trying really hard to do it perfectly. Oh, no, I made this mistake. Okay, fuck it. I'm not even going to work on this project. I don't even care if it gets done. I not even going to try and meet that deadline. I'm not even going to communicate this to my boss. I'm just going to shut my laptop and go in the bathroom watch TikToks for 45 minutes.”
Not that there's anything wrong with going in the bathroom and watching TikToks for 45 minutes. I've been known to do it myself. But what I want you to see is that a lot of us think that it's like the part where we're not able to do it perfectly creates the fuck it effect. But that's not what's happening.
If we don't expect ourselves to be perfect, and then something doesn't go perfectly, that doesn't necessarily launch us into a fuck it effect moment. So fuck it effect doesn't happen because we fuck shit up.
That's so important to notice because guess what, my love's, we're all going to fuck some shit up in our lives, all of us. That's what we are going to do. Not on purpose, maybe sometimes on purpose. Mostly not on purpose. But that's part of what being a human means.
Even if all we ever do in our life is a bunch of easy shit that we could do with our eyes closed, sometimes we're going to fuck that up too. So it's not like we can even just be like, “Well, I won't try so hard.” Listen, I've tried that path, it doesn't work. We'll still fuck some shit up. So we need to be able to tolerate that and to let that be part of our process if we want to be able to do shit without winding up in fuck it effect.
Okay, what are the other ways we wind up in fuck it effect? I think another way we wind up there often is trying to do things too quickly. Now, I love doing things quickly as much as anyone else. Like I can be really impulsive and impatient. And I often set goals that I want to achieve immediately. So if you are like that too, I get it.
But rushing often slows us down, as I've talked about before. And trying to go really fast can kick us into this fuck it thing. So let's say we're trying to go really, really fast, or we're trying to take big steps. Which I think is just another version of trying to go really fast. And then we, just like in the perfectionism example, we stumble a little or we are going really fast but not quite as fast as we think we should.
I actually see this all the time where people will be like, “I want to do this at like the speed of 20.” I'm just making these speeds up. And then they're doing it at like the speed of 18.5. And their brain is like, “That's not fast enough.” And then they go into fuck it effect, right?
It's so interesting because you could be doing something faster than literally any other person on the planet. But if it's not as fast as your brain thinks it should be, you might just wind up in this fuck it effect. So fuck it effect is like a version of giving up. And sometimes it does just look like giving up.
But what I see often, is we don't just give up and lay on the floor. Although I have also been known to do that many times since starting my business. But often when we give up with fuck it effect, we actually do things that go directly in the opposite direction of where we're trying to go.
So not only will we give up, it's like we turn the car around and we start driving full speed in the opposite direction. We're like, “Fuck it, I'm not getting there at the speed of 20. I don't want to do 18.5 I'm going to go the speed of negative 20 and I’ll go as far away from my goal as I can as fast as I can.”
And I'm like laughing and making light of this. But I do it and I'm betting y’all do it and it can really kind of be undelightful. To say it another way, it can really fuck our shut up, it can really fuck our goals up, it can fuck our careers up.
Not that anything is ever fucked up beyond recognition or fucked up beyond fixing. I'm a big believer that we can bounce back from things and even if we did 20 years in fuck it effect, we can come back and put pieces back together. And probably there was even some beautiful shit we learned in the fuck it effect that we can bring in to help us have more of the life we want.
I'm a big believer in redemption, really, and our ability to push it back together. But I also think it's useful to think about how to not wind up in those places. If we wind up in them, we can love ourselves through it. We can take what's valuable and build something beautiful. But also, what if we just don't have to wind up in those places? Sometimes we probably still will anyways, but I think we can go there a lot less often.
So what are other ways we can wind up in fuck it effect? There's tons of ways people can wind up there, and listening to this podcast you're probably going to think of like 5 or 10 off the top of your head that I'm not even going to talk about. But I want to give you some examples so that you have an idea of what I'm talking about.
So we already talked about the first two, perfectionism and trying to go too fast or too big. And then another way that people wind up there is they'll do a tiny action in the direction they don't want to go. And then they'll be like, “Well, I've already messed up this day so fuck it.”
This particular kind, I've actually heard talked about in willpower books. They call it what the hell effect. Like, what the hell, I already had this corner of a brownie, I may as well have the whole brownie. And after that brownie, I may as well have the whole pan of brownies. That kind of thing.
I prefer the term fuck it effect because in my experience, what I'm thinking in my brain is like, “Fuck it,” versus like, “What the hell?” But, I mean, call it either one. There's not a right answer. I also just like, why would I use hell, when I could use the word fuck? I think fuck is just more fun. So that's a little tidbit about me.
Going back to this version. So this version is a little bit like the perfectionism version, but I think it's different because I think in the perfectionism version we're trying to be perfect, and then we have an error. And then it's our reaction to that error that spins us out. And then we wind up in fuck it effect. And I think with perfectionism, we're trying not to have the error.
Whereas with this one, I think we do something on purpose. We're like, “Oh, I'll just like do this thing.” But then we beat ourselves up about the thing. So actually, maybe it doesn't matter whether we're doing the thing on purpose or not, but we beat ourselves up about it.
So sometimes, like in example one, we're beating ourselves up from a place of perfectionism, I should be able to do this perfectly. Sometimes we're beating ourselves up for other reasons. We're like, “Oh, I did this, and it means this about me.” Like, “I did this and that means I'm a bad person.”
Whatever it is, we have this negative feeling. And then when we have a negative feeling, we want to be comforted, most of us. We want to feel better. And one of the fastest ways that most of us know to feel better, is to do things that are usually the exact things we're trying not to do.
So to use our, let's just call them coping mechanisms that we're trying to maybe do less of. So that kind of fuck it effect is like comfort seeking. So I think fuck it effect can be just throwing our hands up in the air, like, “Who gives a shit? I may as well do whatever I want.”
Or it can be like, “Oh, I feel super bad. Now I want something to make me feel better. And the thing that I think is going to make me feel better, ironically, is also the same thing that I'm having the thoughts about that made me feel bad to begin with.” Sometimes it's kind of like that, burn it down. Like, I just don't care anymore.
There's lots of different ways this can look, there's lots of different ways we can get there. And I know we talked a few weeks ago about self-sabotage. And I think in some ways, this is a little bit similar to that. But it's a very specific effect so I wanted to give it its own podcast.
So now that we know about fuck it effect, what do we do about that shit? How do we set ourselves up so that we spend less time hanging out with fuck it effect and that when it does pop up for us, we can navigate it and get ourselves back out of it?
A lot of people, when they have a fuck it effect moment, they get stuck there and it's like this vicious cycle of fuck it effect. Because they're trying so hard and then something happens, and then they go into the fuck it effect. And then usually they judge themselves for being in the fuck it effect, which keeps them in the fuck it effect longer.
So I think the antidote to this is learning how to engage with ourselves differently when we're frustrated. Especially if we're frustrated with ourselves, or if things haven't gone to plan, or if our expectations, especially our expectations for ourselves and our own capacity haven't been met.
So for a lot of us, we learned to feel guilt and shame when we didn't meet our own standards, or when we make a mistake, or when our behavior doesn't live up to our values. And the problem with that is that for most of us guilt and shame feel terrible. And a lot of people aren't very well versed in how to actually allow and process those feelings.
So instead, they want to get away from those feelings. And the way they get away from those feelings is often by going into a fuck it effect by switching their brain from trying so hard to just being like, “Well, I'll just indulge instead” or “I'll just do this stuff that goes directly against my goals because the goals aren't working anyways.”
So I think being able to have that moment of this is not working the way I want it to, and that's okay. And I don't have to respond to that by burning everything down.
Now, there's ways we can set ourselves up for this ahead of time. If we're working on a goal, or we're going to do something that we think will be difficult, we can set ourselves up ahead of time by talking to ourselves about like, “Okay, if I try to do this perfectly and then I hit a setback, then that might backfire.
So how can I set myself up that I don't have to be perfect to do this well and to be successful? How do I set myself up to expect to have a full human experience on this versus expecting myself to be perfect at every turn and get things done on this insane timeline?” Blah, blah, blah, things like that.
How do I decide the speed at which I'm going to complete this task or how big of steps I'm going to do on this task so that I set myself up well, so that I don't become so frustrated I get into a fuck it effect? How do I forgive myself for being a human who will make judgment calls sometimes that the future version of me won't prefer I've made? How do I navigate that with myself so that I don't then have to like launch into this fuck it effect that’s actually only going to make things worse for me probably.
And then once we're in fuck it effect, I think it's a question of how do we get ourselves back out of that? And a lot of us, what we're going to try and do is judge the shit out of ourselves, like, “Oh, I'm out of control. This is terrible.” That's going to keep you in fuck it effect and probably push you further in.
So instead, being able to pause and go like, “Oh, look, I'm in fuck it effect. This is not where I'd probably prefer to be, but I'm not uniquely fucked. Lots of people wind up here. Lots of smart, intelligent, caring people wind up here. So it doesn't mean something's super wrong with me. It's just a pattern. How do I step out of the pattern?”
Now, this may sound a little silly. You're like, “Okay, so I'm in fuck it effect, and I'm supposed to talk nicely to myself?” It sounds like it wouldn't work. But it actually is really helpful.
Now, other things you can do once you realize you’re in fuck it effect, you can listen to the podcast episode about how to complete a stress response. Because I think part of fuck it effect is a physiological experience. And I do think it's often stress or stress related.
So going into your body and completing that stress response on a physical level, I think can help you get back to a place of even keel where then you can decide how to move forward. There are a lot of resources that are available to you once you realize you're in that space if you also don't judge yourself for being there.
If what I want is to be able to step out of this fuck it effect, is judging myself the doorway to being able to do that? Or does it push me further into this thing that I know isn't useful for me?
Okay, so let's review. Fuck it effect is something that shows up for a lot of people, in a lot of areas of life, when we have perfectionist standards, or we try to go too fast or too big of steps at once, or when we make a little mistake and then judge ourselves super intensely about it.
And to go back to the rubber band metaphor, I see fuck it effect happen a lot when we snap instead of stretching. And so there are lots of things we can do to set ourselves up ahead of time to be in the stretch versus in the snap. But also, sometimes in life the snap is probably going to happen. So figuring out what's going to work for us personally to navigate through that versus just like being on the fuck it effect roller coaster until it ends.
And this is the kind of stuff I work with my clients on all the time. So if this is a pattern that you're seeing in your own life and you want some extra support to help walk you through it and help get a better handle on it so you can have a better experience of that, that's 100% what I'm here for.
So come on over to my website and sign up for a consult call and let's talk about what we could do together to help you have a better experience and spend less time in fuck it effect and more time living your delicious life and having an amazing career.
All right, thanks y'all. Have a great week. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey, y'all, happy Wednesday. I've got a great topic to discuss with you today. I'm super excited. Before we jump in, I want to tell you something that one of my coaches told me and I found it to be super valuable. And so I wanted to pass it along to you.
So she has this teaching about when we're doing things, like when we're doing growth stuff, when we're trying on new thoughts, when we're kind of like pushing ourselves for personal growth. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time articulating this.
The metaphor she uses is what's a stretch, but not a snap? So if you think about a rubber band, rubber bands are meant to stretch. That's what their job is, they stretch. And then you put them on something, and they contract, and they hold the thing there, whatever the thing is.
So with the work that we're doing in coaching, with the work that you're doing on yourself when you listen to the podcasts, and you try out the stuff I'm telling you about. What we want to go for is what's a stretch, but not a snap.
So if we stretch the rubber band so far that it breaks, then the rubber band is no longer useful to us. And when we stretch ourselves that way, it doesn't actually help us in the long run.
But I see people do this a lot where they want to grow super-fast. They want to get to the result, the outcome, whatever the thing is, so they try to stretch too far, and something snaps. Something cracks, something breaks, right, and then they have to fix it or wait for it to heal, or recover from what they've done before they can go back to stretching.
So sometimes in life, shit will break, that's part of life. It's not my favorite part. But it has been true so far for me. So that is something that may come up, but let's not aim for that on purpose.
So when you're incorporating the ideas I'm teaching into your life when you're trying them on, a framework you can use to decide how much of that you're doing is to ask yourself what's a stretch, but not a snap? And that is actually the perfect lead in for what we're talking about today. Because we're talking about fuck it effect.
So what is fuck it effect? fuck it effect is when, for whatever reason, we decide to stop trying to do what we were trying to do, and we say fuck it and do usually a bunch of other shit that like we were trying not to do.
So a quintessential example is if we're working really hard and working really hard and working really hard, and then we have a fuck it moment. And we're like, “Fuck it. Fuck all this work, fuck all this shit.” And if you're at the workday this might look like fuck it, I'm just going to get on Facebook, or get on Instagram, or go get a coffee, or talk to my colleague instead of doing my work.
Fuck it effect shows up in a lot of areas of life, though. So let's say you're having a conflict conversation with a loved one. And you're trying, and you're trying, and you're trying. And you get to the fuck it moment and you're like, “Fuck it, I'm not going to try to do this mindful anymore. I'm not going to try to use all the tools I know. I'm just going to say all this shit that my brain wants to say. Burn the shit down, right?”
One of the places people see fuck it effect most often is in eating. Where people are trying really hard to eat in one manner and to not eat in a different manner. And they try, and they try, and they try, and then they have the fuck it moment. And then they're like, “I'm just going to eat this entire bag of Oreos, and that tray of brownies, and drink this whole bottle of wine.
So I want to just say, this isn't about moralizing the fuck it effect and thinking it's bad. I don't think that's useful. I mean, you're certainly allowed to if you want to, but I don't think it's useful. What I want to talk about is, why does this happen? And how can we work around this pattern so that when we do wind up in fuck it effect, we know how to handle ourselves there? And also can we keep ourselves from winding up in fuck it effect.
And so to go back to the metaphor of the rubber band, I think the rubber band snapping is like one of the ways we get into the fuck it effect. And there are a couple of different ways that I see people get to this place. One of them is perfectionism.
So when we're trying super hard to do something and be perfect at it, there's always a moment when we're not perfect at it because we're humans and we don't do things perfectly. So we're trying to do some kind of work task perfectly and then something goes imperfectly. Like we make a mistake, or some other thing happens.
If we're trying to do it perfectly, we might go all the way from like, “Okay, I was trying really hard to do it perfectly. Oh, no, I made this mistake. Okay, fuck it. I'm not even going to work on this project. I don't even care if it gets done. I not even going to try and meet that deadline. I'm not even going to communicate this to my boss. I'm just going to shut my laptop and go in the bathroom watch TikToks for 45 minutes.”
Not that there's anything wrong with going in the bathroom and watching TikToks for 45 minutes. I've been known to do it myself. But what I want you to see is that a lot of us think that it's like the part where we're not able to do it perfectly creates the fuck it effect. But that's not what's happening.
If we don't expect ourselves to be perfect, and then something doesn't go perfectly, that doesn't necessarily launch us into a fuck it effect moment. So fuck it effect doesn't happen because we fuck shit up.
That's so important to notice because guess what, my love's, we're all going to fuck some shit up in our lives, all of us. That's what we are going to do. Not on purpose, maybe sometimes on purpose. Mostly not on purpose. But that's part of what being a human means.
Even if all we ever do in our life is a bunch of easy shit that we could do with our eyes closed, sometimes we're going to fuck that up too. So it's not like we can even just be like, “Well, I won't try so hard.” Listen, I've tried that path, it doesn't work. We'll still fuck some shit up. So we need to be able to tolerate that and to let that be part of our process if we want to be able to do shit without winding up in fuck it effect.
Okay, what are the other ways we wind up in fuck it effect? I think another way we wind up there often is trying to do things too quickly. Now, I love doing things quickly as much as anyone else. Like I can be really impulsive and impatient. And I often set goals that I want to achieve immediately. So if you are like that too, I get it.
But rushing often slows us down, as I've talked about before. And trying to go really fast can kick us into this fuck it thing. So let's say we're trying to go really, really fast, or we're trying to take big steps. Which I think is just another version of trying to go really fast. And then we, just like in the perfectionism example, we stumble a little or we are going really fast but not quite as fast as we think we should.
I actually see this all the time where people will be like, “I want to do this at like the speed of 20.” I'm just making these speeds up. And then they're doing it at like the speed of 18.5. And their brain is like, “That's not fast enough.” And then they go into fuck it effect, right?
It's so interesting because you could be doing something faster than literally any other person on the planet. But if it's not as fast as your brain thinks it should be, you might just wind up in this fuck it effect. So fuck it effect is like a version of giving up. And sometimes it does just look like giving up.
But what I see often, is we don't just give up and lay on the floor. Although I have also been known to do that many times since starting my business. But often when we give up with fuck it effect, we actually do things that go directly in the opposite direction of where we're trying to go.
So not only will we give up, it's like we turn the car around and we start driving full speed in the opposite direction. We're like, “Fuck it, I'm not getting there at the speed of 20. I don't want to do 18.5 I'm going to go the speed of negative 20 and I’ll go as far away from my goal as I can as fast as I can.”
And I'm like laughing and making light of this. But I do it and I'm betting y’all do it and it can really kind of be undelightful. To say it another way, it can really fuck our shut up, it can really fuck our goals up, it can fuck our careers up.
Not that anything is ever fucked up beyond recognition or fucked up beyond fixing. I'm a big believer that we can bounce back from things and even if we did 20 years in fuck it effect, we can come back and put pieces back together. And probably there was even some beautiful shit we learned in the fuck it effect that we can bring in to help us have more of the life we want.
I'm a big believer in redemption, really, and our ability to push it back together. But I also think it's useful to think about how to not wind up in those places. If we wind up in them, we can love ourselves through it. We can take what's valuable and build something beautiful. But also, what if we just don't have to wind up in those places? Sometimes we probably still will anyways, but I think we can go there a lot less often.
So what are other ways we can wind up in fuck it effect? There's tons of ways people can wind up there, and listening to this podcast you're probably going to think of like 5 or 10 off the top of your head that I'm not even going to talk about. But I want to give you some examples so that you have an idea of what I'm talking about.
So we already talked about the first two, perfectionism and trying to go too fast or too big. And then another way that people wind up there is they'll do a tiny action in the direction they don't want to go. And then they'll be like, “Well, I've already messed up this day so fuck it.”
This particular kind, I've actually heard talked about in willpower books. They call it what the hell effect. Like, what the hell, I already had this corner of a brownie, I may as well have the whole brownie. And after that brownie, I may as well have the whole pan of brownies. That kind of thing.
I prefer the term fuck it effect because in my experience, what I'm thinking in my brain is like, “Fuck it,” versus like, “What the hell?” But, I mean, call it either one. There's not a right answer. I also just like, why would I use hell, when I could use the word fuck? I think fuck is just more fun. So that's a little tidbit about me.
Going back to this version. So this version is a little bit like the perfectionism version, but I think it's different because I think in the perfectionism version we're trying to be perfect, and then we have an error. And then it's our reaction to that error that spins us out. And then we wind up in fuck it effect. And I think with perfectionism, we're trying not to have the error.
Whereas with this one, I think we do something on purpose. We're like, “Oh, I'll just like do this thing.” But then we beat ourselves up about the thing. So actually, maybe it doesn't matter whether we're doing the thing on purpose or not, but we beat ourselves up about it.
So sometimes, like in example one, we're beating ourselves up from a place of perfectionism, I should be able to do this perfectly. Sometimes we're beating ourselves up for other reasons. We're like, “Oh, I did this, and it means this about me.” Like, “I did this and that means I'm a bad person.”
Whatever it is, we have this negative feeling. And then when we have a negative feeling, we want to be comforted, most of us. We want to feel better. And one of the fastest ways that most of us know to feel better, is to do things that are usually the exact things we're trying not to do.
So to use our, let's just call them coping mechanisms that we're trying to maybe do less of. So that kind of fuck it effect is like comfort seeking. So I think fuck it effect can be just throwing our hands up in the air, like, “Who gives a shit? I may as well do whatever I want.”
Or it can be like, “Oh, I feel super bad. Now I want something to make me feel better. And the thing that I think is going to make me feel better, ironically, is also the same thing that I'm having the thoughts about that made me feel bad to begin with.” Sometimes it's kind of like that, burn it down. Like, I just don't care anymore.
There's lots of different ways this can look, there's lots of different ways we can get there. And I know we talked a few weeks ago about self-sabotage. And I think in some ways, this is a little bit similar to that. But it's a very specific effect so I wanted to give it its own podcast.
So now that we know about fuck it effect, what do we do about that shit? How do we set ourselves up so that we spend less time hanging out with fuck it effect and that when it does pop up for us, we can navigate it and get ourselves back out of it?
A lot of people, when they have a fuck it effect moment, they get stuck there and it's like this vicious cycle of fuck it effect. Because they're trying so hard and then something happens, and then they go into the fuck it effect. And then usually they judge themselves for being in the fuck it effect, which keeps them in the fuck it effect longer.
So I think the antidote to this is learning how to engage with ourselves differently when we're frustrated. Especially if we're frustrated with ourselves, or if things haven't gone to plan, or if our expectations, especially our expectations for ourselves and our own capacity haven't been met.
So for a lot of us, we learned to feel guilt and shame when we didn't meet our own standards, or when we make a mistake, or when our behavior doesn't live up to our values. And the problem with that is that for most of us guilt and shame feel terrible. And a lot of people aren't very well versed in how to actually allow and process those feelings.
So instead, they want to get away from those feelings. And the way they get away from those feelings is often by going into a fuck it effect by switching their brain from trying so hard to just being like, “Well, I'll just indulge instead” or “I'll just do this stuff that goes directly against my goals because the goals aren't working anyways.”
So I think being able to have that moment of this is not working the way I want it to, and that's okay. And I don't have to respond to that by burning everything down.
Now, there's ways we can set ourselves up for this ahead of time. If we're working on a goal, or we're going to do something that we think will be difficult, we can set ourselves up ahead of time by talking to ourselves about like, “Okay, if I try to do this perfectly and then I hit a setback, then that might backfire.
So how can I set myself up that I don't have to be perfect to do this well and to be successful? How do I set myself up to expect to have a full human experience on this versus expecting myself to be perfect at every turn and get things done on this insane timeline?” Blah, blah, blah, things like that.
How do I decide the speed at which I'm going to complete this task or how big of steps I'm going to do on this task so that I set myself up well, so that I don't become so frustrated I get into a fuck it effect? How do I forgive myself for being a human who will make judgment calls sometimes that the future version of me won't prefer I've made? How do I navigate that with myself so that I don't then have to like launch into this fuck it effect that’s actually only going to make things worse for me probably.
And then once we're in fuck it effect, I think it's a question of how do we get ourselves back out of that? And a lot of us, what we're going to try and do is judge the shit out of ourselves, like, “Oh, I'm out of control. This is terrible.” That's going to keep you in fuck it effect and probably push you further in.
So instead, being able to pause and go like, “Oh, look, I'm in fuck it effect. This is not where I'd probably prefer to be, but I'm not uniquely fucked. Lots of people wind up here. Lots of smart, intelligent, caring people wind up here. So it doesn't mean something's super wrong with me. It's just a pattern. How do I step out of the pattern?”
Now, this may sound a little silly. You're like, “Okay, so I'm in fuck it effect, and I'm supposed to talk nicely to myself?” It sounds like it wouldn't work. But it actually is really helpful.
Now, other things you can do once you realize you’re in fuck it effect, you can listen to the podcast episode about how to complete a stress response. Because I think part of fuck it effect is a physiological experience. And I do think it's often stress or stress related.
So going into your body and completing that stress response on a physical level, I think can help you get back to a place of even keel where then you can decide how to move forward. There are a lot of resources that are available to you once you realize you're in that space if you also don't judge yourself for being there.
If what I want is to be able to step out of this fuck it effect, is judging myself the doorway to being able to do that? Or does it push me further into this thing that I know isn't useful for me?
Okay, so let's review. Fuck it effect is something that shows up for a lot of people, in a lot of areas of life, when we have perfectionist standards, or we try to go too fast or too big of steps at once, or when we make a little mistake and then judge ourselves super intensely about it.
And to go back to the rubber band metaphor, I see fuck it effect happen a lot when we snap instead of stretching. And so there are lots of things we can do to set ourselves up ahead of time to be in the stretch versus in the snap. But also, sometimes in life the snap is probably going to happen. So figuring out what's going to work for us personally to navigate through that versus just like being on the fuck it effect roller coaster until it ends.
And this is the kind of stuff I work with my clients on all the time. So if this is a pattern that you're seeing in your own life and you want some extra support to help walk you through it and help get a better handle on it so you can have a better experience of that, that's 100% what I'm here for.
So come on over to my website and sign up for a consult call and let's talk about what we could do together to help you have a better experience and spend less time in fuck it effect and more time living your delicious life and having an amazing career.
All right, thanks y'all. Have a great week. Bye bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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