The procrastination cure you don’t want to hear

procrastination cure

The most common problem that people with procrastination cure that they don’t know what to do to dramatically move their life forward in a substantial way. You know exactly what you need to do right now. There’s probably something that you’ve been avoiding like the plague, but the problem is not that you don’t know what that is. The problem is that you just can’t bring yourself to do it.

And that’s the common theme every single day is that when you sit down to do this thing, you feel a feeling and it almost seems unfair how potent this feeling of resistance is because it’s usually only present when you think about doing things that are genuinely good for you. So it’s like, what’s the deal with that? Why does it seem like life is set up that way? Wouldn’t it be better if you just actually enjoyed doing difficult things? Wouldn’t it be better if you had the motivation to be creative to write a paper or to do your taxes?

You probably want nothing more than to be someone who genuinely enjoys and looks forward to doing the things that are good for you, doing the things that empower you.

The Procrastination Cure

Recently I’ve been thinking. There is one strategy that I have that works every single time. It always makes me do the things that I need to do. It’s not very flattering. It’s not very sexy. We don’t want to believe that this is the answer. And I feel like there’s so much self-improvement advice out there that kind of ignores this fundamental, not even tactic, it’s almost a fact of life. And when we ignore this fact, we’ll try to do little tips and tricks like, oh, set a timer for five minutes and just really try, try hard to do the work, or try to think more positive thoughts about your work.

But all those strategies, they’re kind of throw-away strategies. Yeah, they might work here or there, but they get old quickly. This strategy is unclear. So if you need to do one particular thing, then if you do this, you will do it. You will have no choice.

The solution is boredom.

Ironically that’s also the problem. The solution and the problem are the same thing. You don’t wanna do that work because it’s so boring to your brain, you want to gouge your eyes out. All of these distractions that you have around sound so much more entertaining than doing that thing. So you always have a backdoor.

Why in hell would you write an essay when you could be checking Instagram? When you could be watching YouTube videos like this one? But the key realization is that your brain doesn’t see objective entertainment values. It’s always relative.

The Power of Boredom

A good analogy for this is when you’re spending all day outside in the sun, it’s a super bright day, and then you walk into a dim room or a store, that indoor space feels super dark. You’re like, I can’t see anything. What is this? And then you see that weird fake sun in your periphery that starts to fade. Everything looks weird and purple. And in a very similar way, if you’ve been asleep for a couple of hours and you have to get up and go to the bathroom, you turn the lights on and it’s just blinding.

It’s not that that bathroom is any brighter than it was before you went to bed when you were brushing your teeth, it’s just that your brain interprets things using contrasts. It uses a comparison.

So the key is to utterly delete the back doors. The key is to strip away every single option, to sit in a blank room with nothing in it, no phone, nothing.

Eliminate your ability to do anything other than the thing that you need to do and you will do it. And now you might be thinking, oh, it’s not that simple. I can just do nothing. Well, you actually won’t do anything. And there are studies to prove it.

There is a really weird study published in Science in 2014. That was a mouthful, it’s not. What am I, a freaking Neanderthal? That’s not a mouthful. That was hard to say. So in this study, they got a bunch of undergraduate students to sit in an empty room by themselves with absolutely nothing to do and be alone with their thoughts.

But they had one other option. And that was to electrocute themselves with a shock button. And it turns out 67% of the men and 25% of the women decided that electrocution was better than boredom. And some of the students electrocuted themselves multiple times.

Even the ones that didn’t electrocute themselves either strongly considered it or at least lamented as to how miserable the quiet time was and how boring it was.

You might have heard about this study before, but I think it’s a great example of how much human beings dislike being bored. And so the reason why solitary confinement is considered one of the least humane forms of torture imaginable.

There’s this ancient torture method where they just throw somebody down a hole under the castle and forget about them for their entire lives. Number 15, the oubliette.

That sounds terrible because it’s so boring. If you were put in an empty room with nothing to do except one thing, unless that thing is like chop off your hand, you’re probably gonna do that thing.

The Cure for Procrastination
The Cure for Procrastination

Remove Distractions

And while you’re doing that thing, that thing will feel so much more entertaining than doing nothing. So you have to ask yourself, what are you constructing your life around? How are you structuring things? Are the things that you’re supposed to do entertaining in comparison to the things that you use as distractions?

Because the larger the disparity, the more agonizing that thing will be. You’ll find very quickly that if you delete distractions as an option, it works right away. It’s insane. This isn’t like some dopamine detox that you gotta do over weeks months and years, although that will help you get used to finding the entertainment value in difficult things. This is something that works right away because your brain needs to survive. It hates feeling bored.

So it will make whatever your only option is as entertaining as it needs to be. I even have personal evidence for this.

Personal Evidence

One of the most productive, social, and energetic times in my entire life was when I was living in a little 900-square-foot basement suite in the middle of suburbia with absolutely nothing to do except edit videos.

So there’s a perfect example of my environmental conditioning helping facilitate a mindset of creativity and attitude of productivity. It’s because I had very few other options.

In summary, if you have something you need to do right now, then eliminate all your back doors, turn off your phone, remove your gaming PC from your room, and remove your Xbox. Auto-hide the toolbar so when you’re thinking of the next word to write, you don’t look at Safari and automatically click on it.

And in living life this way and treating productivity this way, it’s not that you’re going to live a less entertaining life. You might find it far more entertaining fulfilling, and empowering than you ever knew possible.

What are some tips for eliminating distractions?

Turn off phone notifications, put your phone in a separate room, use website blockers, disable social media site shortcuts, hide internet browser toolbars, remove gaming consoles/computers from your workspace, play background sounds to muffle external noises, and create separate user accounts for work versus entertainment on your devices.

What was the study about people shocking themselves to relieve boredom?

A 2014 study found that 67% of men and 25% of women chose to painfully electrically shock themselves rather than sit alone quietly with their thoughts for an extended period. This demonstrates the intense desire humans have to avoid boredom.

How can boredom increase creativity?

When we’re bored, we’re motivated to find something interesting to occupy our minds. This can lead us to think more imaginatively and tap into our creativity. Removing distractions forces the brain to generate more internal entertainment.

What is the oubliette torture method?

The oubliette was a medieval torture method where someone would be thrown into an underground dungeon and forgotten, left to die of starvation or go mad from lack of human contact and activity.

Why is boredom both the problem and the solution?

Boredom is the problem because it’s what makes us procrastinate and seek distractions. But it’s also the solution because boredom forces us to make the task at hand more entertaining.

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