In this article, I argue that having internal conversations about doing or not doing some work makes you unproductive and less motivated; and that you should be starting to do the work before this internal discussion kicks in inside your mind if you want to get things done using the least amount of will power.
Think of a day when you’ve continous important deadlines (or maybe the day before final exam) on the calendar. You wake up, you remember that you have a lot to do and can’t afford skipping, you get right into the task. On other days, you may spend more time thinking if you really wanna do the work (atleast that’s how it is for me). The key difference here is that on former, you don’t spend anytime thinking about doing the work, you get right into it.
The more you think about doing the work and asking questions like: is it worth spending so much effort on this,
You can have a few hours each week to introspecting on these questions and planning the week. During the week, spend no time questioning the projects; just get right into them like a zombie with absolutely no thoughts. Trust that you made the right choices in the planning session and go with it. Trust the process and get right onto doing the task. Have no thoughts about what will happen after you complete it, what if you don’t, which other things you wanna work on after this, etc. Just spend all your energy working on just this one task. If you have any distracting thoughts in between, note them all down on a piece of paper so that you can spend time later in the day thinking through them.
This is the same thing that happens during final exams. Most people are much more productive as they go closer towards the exam (in general) because they don’t question too much; they get right into the tasks focusing on learning as much as they can, as best they can.
This is the reason why people like Elon Musk get much more done than people trying to work through the same working in isolation. Elon has a lot of deadlines on his calendar and he doesn’t have time to think if the work he’s doing is important ahead of each task, he gets right into it everyday; day after day. It would be much harder to stay motivated and make progress if you’re continually questioning.
Questioning leads to procrastination. If you’re thinking about doing or not doing something, just know that it is a losing battle. It’s already too late. The key is not to have these internal conversations and just do the task.
Additionally, if you’re working on something and you also have your favourite sports team playing the game; the key to avoid it is not think about it. If you think about it, and then use your will power to not go and watch the match; it’s making things unnecessarily complicated. If you’re thinking about the game too often, it’s just a matter of time before you give in. The key is to focus on something else and get this out of your mind completely (or maybe use a skill like meditation each time you feel the desire to keep yourself from giving in). You could internally keep tracking of how many times the thought pop up in your mind as a measure of how distracted you are. If you’re in the state of flow, you feel as one with the process and none of these thoughs pop in. I think this is a technique that people suffering from addiction or depression could use too– keeping themselves busy without something else.
If you’re sitting and lazy to go get water. Just do it right away. If you’re having an internal debate about doing it or not, that’s just a losing battle. Don’t think too much, just go ahead with what you need to do.
