The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks

I have a similar trick. When I need to write something (code, email, etc.) that I don't know how to start, I tell myself that right now I'm only writing a draft. It might turn out to be a final revision later, but right now it's just a draft. This reduces the stress and allows me to experiment. The problem is that it doesn't work for things that I can only do once, like talking to someone about a difficult topic.

Same here.

Another point is that many things are "anxious" because we are doing it for the first time. Like something you used to fear about few years ago, now turns out easy because you have done it tons of time.

Something we can do better is speed up this process intentionally, by deliberate practicing.

While fear-setting can help you get started on "anxious" tasks when you have to do, dedicate some time to exercise the same thing everyday will make "anxious" thing less anxious to you in the long run.

Ben Franklin method: https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-benjamin-franklin-met...

I would add take care of some low-hanging fruit to your "just trying" item.

Get the menial, "paperwork tasks" out of the way before you to get to the hard, problem-solving stuff.

Also, know when to walk away and think about things away from sitting in front of a monitor and keyboard. Showers are great for thinking. I also like to swim laps to do hard work - thinking work.

I read your link but couldn't find the 3-column table. Can you elaborate what you do with it?

The problem occurs with fear setting when you have naturally pessimistic of cynical tendencies, because then you're just contemplating the severity of various bad outcomes. It sounds completely bonkers like some sort of backwards trick, but I've found (lessons from anxiety medication) that you shouldn't even consider bad outcomes a possibility; if a bad outcome occurs, then you deal with it. However, contemplating what bad thing may happen so you can 'be prepared' is really just wasted effort and self imposed resistance. You need to adopt a mindset of 'dumb optimism'. Granted, the meds made that much easier for me, and life was great during those periods. being off them I see my old thought patterns returning, namely dwelling on imaginary 'bad' scenarios. Its counter intuitive, but it works.

I came to comment the same. I think there could be a business for "dread task buddy on demand".

On second thought this sounds like a life coach

It's true that it works. And the other person usually doesn't dread the task themselves because it's about helping someone do it.

I've long said that I could probably pay someone to stand behind me with a whip, and make more than enough from the productivity improvement to cover their wage.

By the way "The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks" is a really good name.

Also, in that 25 minutes, you can discover the actual blocker to doing the task. Oftentimes, I find that my dread about a task is because of some ambiguity. By committing to a certain chunk of time working on it, it becomes obvious what that ambiguity is.

Of course, then I have to push through the discomfort of resolving that ambiguity. But that is easier now that I'm an adult and:

1) Know how to frame questions in a way that sets the answerer up for success.

2) Can ask "why are we doing this?" (better phrased "what is our goal in doing this?") and get an actual answer this rather than "because I said so".

3) Have the backbone & confidence to push back when someone says "stop procrastinating, just write the damn essay." and press until I get the question answered or decide that I'm not going to do the task.

Yep, it is so hard to actually START doing something. Sometimes I "prepare" myself for multiple minutes, then get too overwhelmed in my head about it and end up procrastinating.

But once I'm into it it's not that bad. It's crazy how aware I am of this behavior, and yet always fall back in it. I've tried every single advice I could find on the internet, but none of them worked because in the end, the only way for me to do something is to start doing it. It sounds easy, but it is so, so, soooo hard.

And the worst thing is that people sometimes associate it with lazyness. I don't think I am lazy. This honestly feels more like something is broken in my brain, and I don't have much control over it.

I'm not giving up tho, still try to fight it daily. Sometimes I spend a whole day with a foggy head, trying to start do get things done, but I just can't...

There is this crazy swimmer here - he swam down 50 miles of the ganges river in some iron man contests - and he constantly swims between islands.

The way he visualizes is splitting down the goals to smaller portions. "I only think about the next 15 minutes, if I would think about the whole thing I would go crazy.".

When I have days like this, I try to work on bugs. That way I don't have start anything, it's already been written. I just have to fix it. For me it's pretty easy to get motivated to fix a bug because I can just step lazily through the debugger until my momentum catches up.

If I don't have bugs, I'll usually work on a Kata for 15 min or so. Something I've written hundreds of times and can do from memory. This helps my momentum get caught up, too.

I prefer working on bugs, though. I feel more productive.

Not really a "task" in the sense that it only takes 5-10 minutes but I hate that in 2018 when I visit many medical offices I have to fill out lots of forms, even when it's an office I have a history with and none of my data has changed. Ideally they'd show me a screen and say "has anything changed?" the end. If a screen is too expensive they'd print out a piece of paper will all my data and just have me sign that it hasn't changed. When I've asked though I'm told "it's the law" and that it has to be handwritten. Maybe Estonia is better at this?

Exactly!

>Don’t “do your taxes”. Just change the label to “gather finance documents”

Finance documents? What finance documents? Which ones? How would I know without having started on my taxes? Wherever did I put them? They're all over the place. This is hopeless. Maybe tomorrow.

I get what you're saying, but ultimately I think the onus is on the individual to filter all their own information. I'd go so far as to say information filtering is one of the most important skills for modern humans in a digital culture.

The reason I say this is because clinical studies have a limit. Both in the sense that as an individual you may be an outlier, but also in the amount of attention you can get from trained clinicians. By all means, if you are suffering, seek professional help, but sometimes you still have to figure out a way to help yourself even if there's not a double-blind study to back it up.

Most people just wouldn't do a bikini wax given the options above. So maybe not the best advice for getting dreaded things done.

Haha, seconded. Taxes are just like executing a program. Boring, sure, but fundamentally easy.

Beyond the laugh, though, I find that a very strange rewording suggestion. Usually the advice (and I've found this good) is to make the to-do more specific and concrete. An open-ended project-sized item like "organize my finances" is a foolproof candidate for procrastination. "Do my taxes" is better, but might still be too big depending on the complexity.

A real to-do for either would be something like "Collect tax forms and order by date (note: there may be one under the couch?)" -- it's reasonably scoped and has a very clear "I'm done" criterion.

(EDIT: Looking at the article, it seems that "breaking it down" is indeed the suggestion. The specific wording chosen is still strange; it seems the author means something close to "gather documents" by "organize my finances".)

Also, this is a unique US problem, no?

My philosophy is if I hate it and it's not worth my time, I pay someone to do it.

Thing is, watch a 'professional' work in the field you dread, and you will quickly pick on tricks of the trade and workflows that really change it to something quite easy (if you find the right person). Then the dreaded task becomes emulating that person, which is a lot easier the subsequent years. (e.g. have spreadsheets set up like them, follow the same steps, etc.)

The article's example was "gather finance documents". Like W-2, 1099, etc.

Oh, looks like it was edited. :-)

Besides having decent source control habits so you know you can go back if you mess up, I usually have a "playground" project that is pretty similar to the app I'm working on.

I can do what I like in there, experiment, break things, doesn't matter. That way if I have a problem I can't seem to even get started with in my main app, I go in my playground app and start there instead. It's like my cosy developer "safe zone".

I've had very similar feelings before, and in my experience that fear of "fixing" is telling me something, that i'm not in a good position to be fixing whatever it is.

You mention that "refactoring" doesn't give you the same dread? Could it be because you know the problem better if you are tackling a refactoring but you don't when you are bugfixing? I've found that that dread wasn't from bugfixing, but was from a lack of confidence about the part of the codebase i'm working on.

Personally, I've found good results with tricking my brain into thinking i'm "refactoring" while really "bugfixing". Schedule the time to review the codebase that i'll be bugfixing, talk to the author if possible (and it's not you). If I want to indulge myself I'll sometimes "mock refactor" it, I'll open a new tab in my editor and almost pseudocode rewrite the component or module that needs fixing/debugging. Then once I feel I understand it enough, I can actually dive in and fix the bugs in the original code. And by that time i'm familiar enough with that section that i'm not fearing every letter typed as I know what will happen, I understand the intent behind the code.

I also struggle with the fear of "wasting time" a lot with this kind of stuff. I have this incorrect feeling that if I was able to develop these 300 lines of code in 6 hours, that I can't possibly devote 6 more hours to fixing a few lines. But the reality is that often the small 1-2 line bugfixes are the largest timesinks of all, and that I can't be afraid to schedule those 6 hours to look into that bug. Once I get over that hump that I'm somehow "cheating" the system by allocating so much time to what ends up being so little change, I feel a LOT better about actually doing it.

Can of worms scenario.

When something is in a degraded or broken state, it's just that: broken or degraded, but for unspecified reasons.

Once you start messing with it, you're likely to discover numerous unpleasant truths. These are small revelations or griefs:

The damage is worse than you thought.

There is other damage, previously unrealised.

You lack the tools, equipment, or parts to diagnose, repair, or replace broken equipment.

You're in over your depth.

Others around you don't respect or trust in your skills.

You need to dedicate space over time to the repair, contested with other uses or people.

If a repair is in a domain I have experience, skill, tools, trust (or full independence), then it's little problem.

Large or novel projects, or social interference (co-workers, management, vendors, clients, household members, neighbours, politicians) make the prospect far less appealing.

I think exercise can be like this for a lot of people. If you do figure out the solution, let us know, would you?

Fear of change and temporary discomfort. Homeostasis/equilibrium is comfortable when you're in it.

Please could you explain a little how that helped you?

This has to be the most disappointing book I've read this decade, I came away with nothing actionable. It was like reading the advice "just eat less" as a way to loose weight.

I read the same author's other book ("Do The Work") and I did find it interesting. I'll look into this one.

I don't think whenever someone says "psychology" they're going to have extensive knowledge on the subject. Sounds like he's speaking from his own experience. What would you call it? He's talking about the brain isn't he? Or are these terms reserved only for those who've gotten their PhD?

What job do you do where you can be productive while interrupting yourself every 3 minutes to update a text file? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Interesting. What I like about this is that if you're subconsciously procrastinating by avoiding doing the thing you need to do (by say, justifying something else less dreadful to do), this is immediate feedback that will snap you back to reality to focus on the one thing.

I don't like to get difficult things done at all, that's the problem. I will take any advantage I can get. Sometimes caffeine helps, and in those cases I'm not gonna leave it on the table.

50mg of coffee. If it were pure caffeine it wouldn't be very much caffeine.

>Are there any folks out there who like to get difficult things done without caffeine?

Who would like that?

I generally enjoy using paper for this reason as well, but I struggle with organizing the paper. Or, sticking to some form of organization.

I've tried setting up bullet journals, but paper discourages me for a few reasons.

- What if I need to edit or add extra content? I generally write in pen so that what I write down sticks around.

- I prefer to write in a stream of thoughts. To organize the paper, I try to think ahead and categorize my nebulous thoughts. This extra effort discourages me from writing and eventually, from using any organization system with paper.

I like Evernote because I can throw it in there and search will eventually help me find it.

> This is where working with the right therapist might help.

What exactly would a therapist do? Saying consult a therapist seems a bit like a trope. It isn't within itself an answer.

Simply talking through the mental block as if it is a rational decision isn't particularly helpful, a lot of the bad roadblocks are something deeper than your conscious mind or inner monologue.

For example, there are many people who have read the books, followed the steps, and still struggle daily with these kind of dread task problem that seemingly get worse the longer you avoid them.

Now you’ve gone and ruined the placebo for the rest of us.

That is very obviously not how I begin a large, dreaded task when I am forcing myself to just start. Sounds to me like our brains work differently.

Here's some real advice: find out what is blocking you and slowly move to remove it from your path. First; It is not a "mental block". It is a tangible, existing stopper, you are just not focused enough to figure out what it is. It may be an academic topic you need to study, allocation of time, reading a guide, getting a permission or something as simple as getting feedback. If feedback is not available, try to find existing precedents to inspire you.

Comments like this make me realize there's an entire universe of people who don't have the problems I have, and I wonder what it's like to be like them, and have learned the things that are so obvious to you.

For example: Is it obvious to you that faced with a task you're dreading and procrastinating on, it helps to replace it in your mind with something smaller? It was not obvious to me, and was learned after years of misery, and even now I have to consciously remember to do it, and whenever I do do it, I find it helps immensely. (For example, when there's an email I'm dreading replying to, and have been procrastinating for weeks—it hanging on my mind every day of course—it helps when I replace “reply to Ram's email” with “just write a reply to Ram's email” or (if that doesn't work) even “write a garbage outline of a reply…” or even “reread Ram's email”. For another example, I had to apply for a travel visa and was procrastinating for months, and what finally helped was mentally replacing “finish the rest of application process” with “create a travel history document” with (when that didn't work) “collect all travel history”… along with the “talk to people” trick.)

And yes, the idea is indeed to “trick your brain“ into doing the dreaded thing. At least, I have found it to help.

The matter-of-fact way in which you say “You don't just gulp down an entire task without planning ahead or thinking about steps” is really inspirational, because that's not my mental model of doing things, and I have to consciously practice it. I wish I learned these things in school, instead of just coasting by and now struggling with getting anything done at all.

Congratulations, you do not need this particular advice!

However, the rest of us still exist.

Most browsers these days offer a "reader mode" - great for reducing those distractions. (Also for dealing with sites with awful fonts or layouts.)