mitigations

by ur late 20s u should have a pretty clear understanding of the ways in which u suck. they should be obvious, they're the things uve been doing and patterns uve been repeating despite best efforts for like a decade. they're probably not gonna change, that's u. but once u stop fooling urself, u can still come up with *mitigations*.

once u come to terms with the fact that another pomodoro system is never gonna get u to stop procrastinating important shit, u can make sure u find other ways to handle it. date someone who doesn't procrastinate as much. tell ur boss that ur prone to this and have them schedule more check-ins. co-work on ur taxes with ur friends. stop hoping one day u will find some secret internal version of u that's just fundamentally totally different, and try to make ur external environment more conducive to who u really are.

if ur an alcoholic and u just keep getting too drunk and being incredibly mean to ur friends and fucking up ur relationships and ur life, quitting and relapsing and quitting and relapsing, by ur late 20s u gotta just realize that and make some tough decisions, stop going to bars, stop being friends with people who only socialize by drinking. that's not u, u can't handle that. find mitigations.

u can work thru personality issues to some degree in therapy but even there's not super likely ur gonna change ur innate emotional responses to things at this point. instead figure out how to trigger them less, or how to respond to the better.

and if ur in ur late 20s and u dont have a clear sense of the ways in which u suck.... try asking ur loved ones, im sure they do, even if they might not wanna tell u.

@demiurgently

curious if it's possible to undergo (voluntary, positive) sweeping personality changes in your late 20s

my sense is "yes, but almost no one tries"