Speaking about my own experience, but I predict it generalizes to many others:
I definitely frequently have the experience you’re describing, of building up an aversion to a task I’m procrastinating and then finding it to be a lot less unpleasant than I expected when I actually get around to it.
But I have a more gears-level model of why this happens: it’s when I have major open questions about how to approach the task in the first place.
I haven’t done the drill you’re describing intentionally, but I have definitely noticed that if I do several of these kinds of things in quick succession (e.g. when I decide today is the day to catch up on my backlog of stuff I’ve been putting off), even if each individual one doesn’t feel so bad, I end up mentally exhausted and resistant to demands.
So I think the cognitive load of figuring out how to even go about a task is genuinely costly to my brain, and it correctly feels averse to doing too much of it.
it’s when I have major open questions about how to approach the task in the first place.
I just want to add, this is my experience too. I find that when I’m not being productive, one of the principle reasons is that I have a goal or a niggling guilty sense that I should do something (and very logical reasons too for doing that) but lack the fine-grain specifics or a plan how to do it. Other times the reason I’m unproductive is that while I do have a plan, but it seems so cockamamie and doomed to fail I procrastinate because the risk/reward ratio feels too low.
When my open questions about execution and approach are answered (often from serendipitous conversations or during procrastinating on other tasks), the hesitation and procrastination tends to melt away. I may even become excited to do the task.
Speaking about my own experience, but I predict it generalizes to many others:
I definitely frequently have the experience you’re describing, of building up an aversion to a task I’m procrastinating and then finding it to be a lot less unpleasant than I expected when I actually get around to it.
But I have a more gears-level model of why this happens: it’s when I have major open questions about how to approach the task in the first place.
I haven’t done the drill you’re describing intentionally, but I have definitely noticed that if I do several of these kinds of things in quick succession (e.g. when I decide today is the day to catch up on my backlog of stuff I’ve been putting off), even if each individual one doesn’t feel so bad, I end up mentally exhausted and resistant to demands.
So I think the cognitive load of figuring out how to even go about a task is genuinely costly to my brain, and it correctly feels averse to doing too much of it.
I just want to add, this is my experience too. I find that when I’m not being productive, one of the principle reasons is that I have a goal or a niggling guilty sense that I should do something (and very logical reasons too for doing that) but lack the fine-grain specifics or a plan how to do it.
Other times the reason I’m unproductive is that while I do have a plan, but it seems so cockamamie and doomed to fail I procrastinate because the risk/reward ratio feels too low.
When my open questions about execution and approach are answered (often from serendipitous conversations or during procrastinating on other tasks), the hesitation and procrastination tends to melt away. I may even become excited to do the task.