This seems to be a serious problem. What do you do when you have enough vague procrastinatory ugh-fields that just reading good advice about procrastination makes you deeply afraid that you’re going to have to think about one of them, so you wind up afraid to read/process it?
The most reliable basic strategy for flattening out “ugh-fields” I know of is to decide on a single thing I want to un-ughify, and set up a schedule of reinforcement for myself for that thing.
If I wanted to un-ughify myself around reading advice articles about procrastination, for example, I would treat myself every time I read such an article for a while, then switch to an intermittent reinforcement schedule (e.g., treat myself for every third article), or still better a differential reinforcement schedule (e.g., treat myself for the 30% best articles I read each week).
That said, it’s unlikely that reading advice articles about procrastination is a particularly high-value activity in the first place. Indeed, many people procrastinate that way.
This seems to be a serious problem. What do you do when you have enough vague procrastinatory ugh-fields that just reading good advice about procrastination makes you deeply afraid that you’re going to have to think about one of them, so you wind up afraid to read/process it?
The most reliable basic strategy for flattening out “ugh-fields” I know of is to decide on a single thing I want to un-ughify, and set up a schedule of reinforcement for myself for that thing.
If I wanted to un-ughify myself around reading advice articles about procrastination, for example, I would treat myself every time I read such an article for a while, then switch to an intermittent reinforcement schedule (e.g., treat myself for every third article), or still better a differential reinforcement schedule (e.g., treat myself for the 30% best articles I read each week).
That said, it’s unlikely that reading advice articles about procrastination is a particularly high-value activity in the first place. Indeed, many people procrastinate that way.