The Short Term Promise // How to start a new habbit
Today I want to talk about starting a habbit and a technique I use daily!
Most of us fail to do stuff because we immediatley imagine all the difficulties that we'll come across to do it.
For instance, you want to write a noval and you are really struggling to set yourself to do it. Everytime you think about doing the task you can only see everything that sucks about doing it. You imagine yourself having to walk to the computer, start it up, open microsoft words, start thinking what to write, do research, then write for hours and eventually a do spelling check. Then you have to repeat this for weeks or even months!
Our brain is evolutionary wired to seek the activity of least resistance. We are naturally made to procrastinate and relax when we are not hungry, in danger or trying to procreate. Especially when we imagine ourselves to have to do lots of stuff without any real tangible reward, our primal brain tells us not to do it, it wants to chill! We know rationally that we should do it, but we just don't feel like it.
The short term promise
We can hack the primal brain by promising it that we are only going to write (or any other task) one random word. How easy is that! Now the task seems a lot more comprehensible. The resistance to perform it is a lot smaller. We only have to walk to the computer, start it up, open microsoft words and type one random word.
We now happen to be behind the computer. So why not start with the essay? Maby not the whole essay, but lets start with an introduction and that'll be enough for now. Each time we extend the horizon a little bit. You've finished the introduction. You told you primal brain that that was it. But you're behind the pc anyway now so why not do some further research? You basically lie to yourselvesand at the same time you're cutting the task in small overseeable chunks.
Let me know about your own struggles and/or successes with habits and beating procreastination in the comments!
THINK, REFLECT and above all LOVE life!
Jerimiah
