How to do things that are hard

Harnessing motivation, preventing procrastination and building good habits

One of the things people most commonly say to authors - or, I assume, others who make their living on their own, without a boss or colleagues and with self-driven goals - is “You must be very self-disciplined”. Well, maybe some are but I’m not!

I get a lot done and never miss a deadline for a few reasons that are not self-discipline:

• I am very determined and very very much want to achieve things. I am certainly afraid of the idea of not managing to do what I’ve said I’m going to do. So, I guess I’m goal-oriented?

• I recognise my obstacles and temptations: the things that might stop me from doing the necessary work.

• I’m very interested in - and know a bit about - psychology and how our brains behave.

• And I have developed some strategies that help me use that psychology.

So, when I need to, I can Get The Job Done.

Sometimes it’s harder than at others. At the moment, it’s extremely hard because my current task is completely self-generated and self-driven. I am writing a series of picture books which has no contract, no deadline and nothing apart from my own desire to drive me on.

Let me share my four principles which are going to get me through this.

But these four principles can be used to motivate you towards anything that’s hard but beneficial: exercising more, eating better, reading more for pleasure, spending time on a hobby, behaving differently in any way you want. You can use these principles to motivate others, too, whether your children, students, friends or whoever.

The four principles of motivation and application

1. HARNESS THE LIMBIC SYSTEM

You have two relevant systems* in your brain, which operate together and in opposition for every single action or choice you make, big or small. First (chronologically) the Limbic system, a set of areas responsible for things like emotion, reaction, instinct. Second, the Prefrontal cortex (PFC), responsible for stepping in to moderate, resist, control, analyse, decide. The Limbic system is about NOW or very soon and the PFC is able to look ahead. The Limbic system acts because of what it wants/needs/feels NOW and the PFC says, “Hang on, perhaps it would be better to do something else, for a longer-term benefit.” Sometimes the PFC wins. But the Limbic system is very powerful and we find it hard to over-ride it. Do not underestimate the power of your Limbic system.

We find it harder at certain times: when we are tired or hungry; when we are distressed, stressed or worried; when we have already resisted temptation recently; when we have other things to concentrate on; when we are young; when we are angry or irritated; when we don’t believe there’s a point; when we are under pressure; when we have not practised using our PFC and making good decisions.

But the thing to realise is that, typically, our Limbic system is stronger than our PFC and is hard to overcome.

(*If you’ve read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, these two systems roughly correspond to his System One and System Two thinking.)

Here are two slides from a talk I do on motivation:

This is not a negative. And once you accept it, you can use it beneficially. Essentially, if you want to create or change a behaviour, focus most on the immediate or quick benefits, over and above the future or long-term ones (though those are important, too.)

… if you want to create or change a behaviour, focus most on the immediate or quick benefits, over and above the future or long-term ones …

Relevant immediate or short-term benefits to my having a great writing session might be:

• I will enjoy the feeling of “flow”, which I crave. (Flow is a powerful force and there’s no one who doesn’t love that feeling of being carried away in a task, whether for work or pleasure.)

• I will feel proud of myself - I did it; I moved towards my goal

• I can go and do something else afterwards, feeling that I deserve the break

• And during the break I will most likely process the writing I did and perhaps have a new idea

• It is quite likely to have a positive effect on my sleep

• And it will be easier to do again tomorrow

I call this the strawberry over spinach effect:

Both strawberries and spinach are beneficial but when we eat a strawberry we tend to do so because it tastes nice (Limbic system) rather than because it’s good for our future health (PFC); whereas when we eat spinach we tend to do so because it’s good for us more than for its taste. (Obviously, if you dislike strawberries, substitute something you love to make this analogy work!)

BONUS TIP:

Make sure you actually acknowledge the benefits when they occur. There’s something I talk about which I call “expectation and actualisation” - predicting and expecting the benefit (“I am doing this because I will feel a sense of achievement”) and then acknowledging when it actually happens (“Look - I feel a sense of achievement!”) This makes it more likely to happen again.

2. SET THE GOALS

How will I know I have succeeded? Is it about the time spent at my desk; the number or words I write; whether I achieve “flow” for at least 30 minutes; whether I reach the end of a chapter or a page or whatever?

Each day is likely to have a different goal but we do need to know what it is. It needs to be measurable, achievable and satisfying.

BONUS TIP:

Time spent planning and thinking is part of the task. My goal might be “Go for a long walk and spend most of it creatively thinking through the plot”. That can be just as useful and satisfying as sitting at my desk and writing a certain number of words. I know if I’ve succeeded because I know it when I see it; and I certainly know if I’ve instead been distracted by other thoughts.

3. REMOVE THE OBSTACLES

What gets in the way of doing the thing that’s hard? In my example, we’re talking about getting some writing done but you can apply it equally to anything. For example, what might get in the way of you drinking less alcohol is the presence of delicious wine in your fridge - so, give it away or hide it!

The two big obstacles to my getting some writing done are:

1. Notifications from email or social media

The solution:- turn these off. I need to remove my phone from sight and/or put it on “focus mode”. I can also set my Freedom app to prevent me from going onto any social website or access my emails for a certain time.

There may be reasons why I need to check messages occasionally. But, honestly, do I really have to be contactable all the time by everybody? I can tell my husband my phone is off till x o’clock and I can make an agreement with myself only to check my other messages at a certain time. (And write the agreement down. See the 4th principle below.)

2. Tasks that are easier and therefore more attractive, so they waylay me. I can lose the whole morning to such tasks. I might kid myself that they are useful because I do have to do them but I do not have to do them NOW.

The solution:- I have a couple of psychologically-grounded strategies here.

• Make a decision (write it down…!) to do the “proper” work FIRST. If this is a decision you could conceivably keep, I think it’s a good one. But I think my habits are so bad right now and my thoughts and commitments so fractured and varied that I’d find it hard to keep. It’s something I aspire to one day!

• I really favour the “Getting Things Done” approach and it’s how I organise all aspects of my working life and some of my personal tasks. It basically involves not relying on daunting lists of “to do” tasks but instead allocating each task to a time slot in your diary. So your diary tells you that this morning (or one hour slot or whatever you choose) is for this task and this time slot is for that task. One of which might be “writing”. If you’ve allocated one hour for “answering emails” or “planning Christmas meals” and you get to the end of the hour, you stop and move to whatever your diary says. You can use alarms to remind you.

  • I use the Todoist App for this but you don’t need an App. And certainly do NOT spend so much time playing with your shiny new App that you Get Nothing Done! But I love it and can say that it has revolutionised how I work. You can either use it simply for all the tasks you have, allocating each to an appropriate space of time (which you can, of course, alter as circumstances change) or you can create “projects” with sub-tasks. For example, a project for me might be a books and sub-tasks might be a few sessions of thinking, a planning and layout session, possibly research, and then each section in a chapter might also be a sub-task. It’s relatively easy to predict how much time each bit might take and how long to allocate for it. And your calendar shows you days when for some reason you can’t work.

  • Instead of using the App, you can simply make a time-table for each day in the coming week. Block off bits where you’ve got something else happening and bits where you’ll do emails or domestic chores or whatever else you have to do; and then write in the “proper” work tasks you’ll do in the rest of the space. You can set alerts and reminders.

4. STIMULATE THE HABITS

The brain makes habits all the time. It does this so that things become automatic, freeing up brain bandwidth for new things or big demands. Some of our habits are bad and some are good. To break a bad habit, the key is to remove the cues that trigger the habit. To create good habits, the key is to create things that trigger the good habit.

For me, the desired good habit in this case is: “When I sit at my desk and intend to do some writing, I do some writing.”

To create the habit is technically simple: “Just do it, woman! Apply your butt to your seat (or, in my case, feet to office treadmill) and your fingers to your keyboard and off you go!”

But there’s a nifty bit of psychology called “stimulus generalisation.” I’ve written about it before though not on this blog. See here and scroll down to point 4 for an explanation in the context of exam revision.

Basically, our habitual behaviours are reinforced the the repetition of stimuli which we might not even notice having an effect. So we can maximise that effect by controlling and boosting the stimuli. The more repeated things we insert into the siutation, the greater the effect.

Here are some ideas about how I can create and enhance the desired habit, “When I sit at my desk and intend to do some writing, I do some writing.” I need to do these every time I enter my office with the intention of writing, not answering emails.

1. Write my goal down - make my contract with myself. Could be on a post-it stuck to my screen.

2. Start my Freedom app. Or just set an alarm.

3. Put music on - ideally only for this sort of work, not if I were writing emails.

4. Light a candle or oil-burner. The oil blend I have is called “focus” and no, I don’t for a moment believe there’s anything especially focussy about it. It’s a psychological trick. It’s called priming.

BONUS TIP:

Another priming trick - to prime my brain to be more likely to think creatively - is to have a photo or screensaver of a wide open space. Big skies and spaces may encourage creative and lateral thinking (while closed spaces encourage detailed factual work).This is known as the Cathedral Effect.

This is the one I’ve chosen:

There are other things you might do, such as wearing particular clothes (pyjamas?!) or using a particular mug. Really, it’s about doing anything and everything possible to make this set-up for this task.

But maybe you need none of this? In which case, a) what’s your secret? And b) I’m jealous!

FINAL BONUS TIP:

Do it with someone else or at least tell someone else you’re doing it. That’s what the group of writers I’m involved with are doing. We have a Facebook group and, starting from Monday 14th, we will check in and encourage or commiserate as we push and drag ourselves towards whatever our targets are.

It’s along the lines of November’s Nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month. But not November and longer than a month. We’ve been doing it for just over ten years now and during that time many books have been published and many manuscripts shoved away in drawers; many tears of frustration and dissatisfaction have been shed and many glasses of fizz drunk; and many millions of words conjured up and set down and fiddled with and often deleted.

But none of those things could happen if we didn’t actually apply butt to seat and fingers to keyboard, or whatever bits of our bodies we use to channel the ideas from our brains.

Wish us luck!