Sometimes you distract or fool yourself into starting, and then it’s not so bad after that. Like, you don’t want to write a paper, so you start a video on youtube, and while you’re distracted with that, tell yourself you’re just going to open MS Word, and then maybe write something or maybe not; then you tell yourself you’re just going to write 100 words, and so on. Do it a few times in a row, and the process becomes habit, and then you might not even have to lie to yourself about why you’re opening MS Word, because it’s not a conscious decision anymore.
You don’t have to be unhappier not doing the thing than you are doing it, necessarily. You just have to be unhappy enough not doing the thing to keep trying to try.
That works for you? For me, the best way is to plan, preferably a day in advance, that ‘I will write my essay on Friday night’ or something. There is definitely a part of myself that resents having another part of myself ‘trick’ it into anything, productive or not.
People are different, I guess. “Deciding” to do something on Friday night has little correlation with whether I will actually do it on Friday night, or at all. It mainly just makes me feel bad when I haven’t written the essay as of Saturday morning.
See, there’s a part of me that really doesn’t like writing essays—actually, not writing essays in particular, as I’ve mostly fixed that problem, but just being productive, doing effortful things. If I try to power through it, that part of me complains so loud that I’m very motivated to rationalize doing whatever it is later. Giving it advance warning just makes it complain louder, if anything. But it’s easily distracted.
I can’t identify with what you say about resenting being “tricked”. I actually feel pretty good when I successfully circumvent the part of me that doesn’t care what happens tomorrow. Now, ideally, I’d like to train the complaining part of me to just shut up when I do productive things, but that’s not easy, and I suspect I’ll need to experience many successes first so that I can associate trying with good things.
That’s a very interesting difference. I find that being psychologically prepared to do something productive makes it way easier. If I trick myself into going for a swim by telling the lazy part of myself that I’ll just go for 20 minutes, you can bet that if 20 minutes is up and I try to motivate myself to keep going, there will be several sub-components of my mind screaming ‘but you promised!’ This is even more true for things that aren’t habits for me. (Exercise is something I do pretty easily by pure habit.)
Sometimes you distract or fool yourself into starting, and then it’s not so bad after that. Like, you don’t want to write a paper, so you start a video on youtube, and while you’re distracted with that, tell yourself you’re just going to open MS Word, and then maybe write something or maybe not; then you tell yourself you’re just going to write 100 words, and so on. Do it a few times in a row, and the process becomes habit, and then you might not even have to lie to yourself about why you’re opening MS Word, because it’s not a conscious decision anymore.
You don’t have to be unhappier not doing the thing than you are doing it, necessarily. You just have to be unhappy enough not doing the thing to keep trying to try.
That works for you? For me, the best way is to plan, preferably a day in advance, that ‘I will write my essay on Friday night’ or something. There is definitely a part of myself that resents having another part of myself ‘trick’ it into anything, productive or not.
People are different, I guess. “Deciding” to do something on Friday night has little correlation with whether I will actually do it on Friday night, or at all. It mainly just makes me feel bad when I haven’t written the essay as of Saturday morning.
See, there’s a part of me that really doesn’t like writing essays—actually, not writing essays in particular, as I’ve mostly fixed that problem, but just being productive, doing effortful things. If I try to power through it, that part of me complains so loud that I’m very motivated to rationalize doing whatever it is later. Giving it advance warning just makes it complain louder, if anything. But it’s easily distracted.
I can’t identify with what you say about resenting being “tricked”. I actually feel pretty good when I successfully circumvent the part of me that doesn’t care what happens tomorrow. Now, ideally, I’d like to train the complaining part of me to just shut up when I do productive things, but that’s not easy, and I suspect I’ll need to experience many successes first so that I can associate trying with good things.
That’s a very interesting difference. I find that being psychologically prepared to do something productive makes it way easier. If I trick myself into going for a swim by telling the lazy part of myself that I’ll just go for 20 minutes, you can bet that if 20 minutes is up and I try to motivate myself to keep going, there will be several sub-components of my mind screaming ‘but you promised!’ This is even more true for things that aren’t habits for me. (Exercise is something I do pretty easily by pure habit.)