How to Train Yourself to Just Do It - Overcoming Fear & Resistance with Difficult or Creative Tasks

0:00 [Music] this has been a constant feature of my life and career where uh in my personal life find myself avoiding important things that I know I should do and then similarly in work life often times avoiding the harder thing whether it's writing that fresh document with a new proposal for something ambiguous or delaying that tough conversation with a colleague where I know it's not going to

0:30 go as well from their perspective as all my other conversations with them and perhaps they're going to get some bad news perhaps there's going to be some high degree of emotional turmoil there just so many situations at work where sometimes we take the easy path and we don't work on something that we know is essential and yet the only way out is just work through it it is a tough Challenge and in my observation the higher the creative bar the finer your

0:59 take taste the tougher it is for you to get through this to start or to finish but mainly to combat this fear I envy colleagues who just start a task I'm like wait this is a very important strategy thing yeah I just wrote it in 2 three hours for me I would have to sit on it for two to 3 weeks not even writing a word but just thinking about it exploring different angles of it maybe talking to a few people maybe be

1:26 doing some internet research or whatever I would find all sorts of Reon to procrastinate on writing this thing and you just sat down one day and blocked your calendar and wrote it in 2 3 hours that is super commendable I want to be you but then over time I realized I don't want to exactly swap positions with you because I find that there is a lot of value in letting something sit especially if it's something High

1:50 leverage and creative work the answer isn't going to come to you immediately the best answers of the best product insights I've got them as I let the problem and the possible solutions and all the inputs I got from colleagues and customers and Industry data and various other things sit with me for a few weeks sometimes a month plus sometimes your mind is processing and problem solving something very subconsciously that's why many people get their best insights you

2:21 know like the classic ones are while driving or in the shower or right after waking up and whatnot that's partly because of your mind processing what it knows is important for you what it knows is fun and interesting to you at some point the mind is just a channel for the universe to provide you a creative path forward we can call that our intuition in that sense intuition is the creative language of the universe now all that

2:51 said I do want to share some very specific thoughts on how to combat this resistance this creative lock if you find yourself procrastinating on something important it sometimes helps to a recognize that it is happening because of some latent fear B then forgive yourself for it C remind yourself that fear is a normal feature of life it's a feature not a bug fear is a normal feature of life for

3:23 99.999% of people in the world D try to get to the root of the fear without judging yourself e then instead of wishing the fear away tell yourself that you can still take the first step even though this fear exists so let the fear exist don't wait for some fantasy moment when the fear is gone and then I will start CU that may never arrive don't wish it away just tell yourself that you can still take

3:49 the first step and that could be just create the Google Doc literally go to Google Docs and say file new or docs. new you have a blank Google doc give it a title add some sections to it that's it start composing the email if it's some email you need to send out that's like very tough or send an invite for the contentious meeting whatever it is take that first step now that you've taken the first step then congratulate

4:15 yourself for taking this first step perhaps even rewarding yourself with something you love so for me it's usually like bobery or something so reward yourself with something you love even if that reward is disproportionately high wors is the time and effort you put into it the great thing is that you let the fear be and you took that first step so I don't want you to measure yourself against time or effort which is like I did something

4:41 only for 5 minutes because you need to recognize the the amount of willpower and the amount of Courage it took you to still take that first step in the presence of that fear is tremendous even if it took you just five minutes to do it so reward yourself disproportionately because your brain likes those rewards then either continue continue with the momentum of that task if you feel like going for many people they just feel like going because there's momentum or

5:06 at this point switch to another more comfortable task like answering some slack messages getting your quick dopamine hits whatever but now you have a feeling of strength from having taken that first step in the face of fear so that's the stepbystep recipe over time it will get slightly easier it never goes away it definitely hasn't for me but you do make progress with [Music]

5:40 practice