When I’m having trouble on getting started with something unpleasant, this is the technique I use: simply count down 3, 2, 1, and then do the thing. There’s also a specific feeling just before the countdown, but it’s hard to describe.
This works every single time. Why? Because a tool like this is too useful to lose over some minor everyday issue. This means I don’t attempt to use it when it might not work. It’s a way to split an unpleasant task into two parts: committing to doing it, and then actually doing it.
It’s a limited tool. It doesn’t work for long tasks, or at least I haven’t dared to try. If the task description is ambigious enough I might be able to worm my way out of it. If the task can fail, an honest attempt suffices to dispel the pledge.
My go-to method for this is to slice off the smallest possible partial 1% sub-task of the project and convince myself to start with that. Then I can usually keep working until I either finish the project or at least take a good bite out of it.
Interesting how you reinvented Willpower Hax #487 but with a different theory behind it—the theory there is that it takes willpower to deviate from the default trajectory, so if mentally the default action is executing at the count of 5, you’ll end up doing it.
My 5 year old and I have a special thing we call “energy boosts” where the other person rubs their hands together and then presses both hands into the other person (“zapping” the energy into them). After being zapped, you must use your new found energy to accomplish whatever you needed to accomplish (e.g., cleaning, getting ready for bed, changing clothes).
He uses it on me sometimes and it always works because the world in which it doesn’t work is a worse world. It is too useful not to work.
When I’m having trouble on getting started with something unpleasant, this is the technique I use: simply count down 3, 2, 1, and then do the thing. There’s also a specific feeling just before the countdown, but it’s hard to describe.
This works every single time. Why? Because a tool like this is too useful to lose over some minor everyday issue. This means I don’t attempt to use it when it might not work. It’s a way to split an unpleasant task into two parts: committing to doing it, and then actually doing it.
It’s a limited tool. It doesn’t work for long tasks, or at least I haven’t dared to try. If the task description is ambigious enough I might be able to worm my way out of it. If the task can fail, an honest attempt suffices to dispel the pledge.
But most of the time it just works.
My go-to method for this is to slice off the smallest possible partial 1% sub-task of the project and convince myself to start with that. Then I can usually keep working until I either finish the project or at least take a good bite out of it.
Interesting how you reinvented Willpower Hax #487 but with a different theory behind it—the theory there is that it takes willpower to deviate from the default trajectory, so if mentally the default action is executing at the count of 5, you’ll end up doing it.
But then you can procrastinate on starting the count! Solution: metacount, count IV, III, II, I and then start the base level count. But then, …
My 5 year old and I have a special thing we call “energy boosts” where the other person rubs their hands together and then presses both hands into the other person (“zapping” the energy into them). After being zapped, you must use your new found energy to accomplish whatever you needed to accomplish (e.g., cleaning, getting ready for bed, changing clothes).
He uses it on me sometimes and it always works because the world in which it doesn’t work is a worse world. It is too useful not to work.