I did write something about this before, from my own thinking: the “Gearing up” metaphor, and a follow-up article giving examples. But this article is about ideas I’ve liked from other people, on similar territory.

Here we have

Motivational surface tension

I already microblogged about The Procrastination Equation:

Not great fave, but liked evolution bits & metaphor of breaking “motivational surface tension”.

(In case anyone’s not familiar with the original thing that he’s drawing the metaphor from, here’s Wikipedia on the literal meaning of surface tension, i.e. about how liquids behave.)

In fact there’s more than one metaphor in the text – a little constellation of them, all about difficulty changing state & getting into the new thing:

… many find that the hard outer shell of a chore, the first few minutes, remains the initial obstacle. How many times have you put off a task only to realise it wasn’t so bad once you got started? Cleaning, exercising, and even writing are often difficult at first.

It is a bit like swimming in the lake by my in-laws’ cabin, just north-east of Winnipeg (the coldest city in the world with a population greater than 600,000). The water is deliciously invigorating but, for most, the initial temperature shock is an effective barrier against reapling the subsequent reward. By focusing solely on the initial jump off the dock, I can plunge in and, after a few intense seconds, enjoy myself.

An extremely short-term or mini-goal, then, is excellent for busting through such motivational surface tension. Ten-minute goals are an application of this technique, such as the ten-minute clean-up around the house.

Consequently, if you have trouble writing, just sit down and type a few words. If you don’t want to exercise, at least get your workout clothes on and drive to the gym. Once you have completed your mini-goal, re-evaluate how you feel and see if you are willing to immediately commit to a longer stretch.

Having broken through that motivational surface tension and immersed yourself in the project, you, like most, will opt to continue.

This is definitely relevant to me.

The Now Habit

And here’s my micro-blog summary of The Now Habit:

Good ideas. One to re-read. “I can take one small step.” “When can I start?” “I must take time to play.”

These were my three favourite angles from a set of five in “How to talk to yourself”, which is itself part of a whole system. I recommend the whole book! but wanted to share these little gems in particular, and keep them handy as a reminder to me.

Note: I’ve added some paragraph breaks into the book quotes, just to make them easier to read on screen.

When can I start?

Telling yourself “I must finish” keeps you focused on the completed product somewhere in the future, without ever telling you where to start. “Finishing” is in the vague distance, a long way from where you may be now in terms of skills, confidence, and perspective. This focus will make the task seem even more overwhelming, almost impossible. …

Replace “I must finish” with “When can I start?”

“When can I start?” … works like a feedback device that pushes any wavering focus back to the starting point of the project.

And when it is impossible to start now, “When is the next time I can start?” works to preprogram you for a directed and easy start-up in the near future, with a clear picture of when, where, and on what you will be starting.

I must take time to play

Replace “I don’t have time to play” with “I must take time to play.”

Actually, Neil F’s reasoning for this statement and my reasoning for it are different. Here are some extracts from his:

Statements such as “I’ve got to work all weekend,” “I’m sorry I can’t join you, I have to finish this project,” “I’m busy tonight, I’m working under a deadline” will make you feel the resentment toward your work that comes from long periods of deprivation and isolation. Repeating these statements creates the feeling of having a life of obligation and demands that cause you to miss the things other people enjoy in life. …

Insisting on your regular time for exercise, for dinners with friends, for frequent breaks throughout the day, and for frequent vacations throughout your year increases the feelings of inner worth and respect for yourself that are at the heart of unlearning the need for procrastination. Knowing that you have something to look forward to in the near future – a firm commitment to recreation and time with friends – lessens the dread of difficult work.

Well, most of my work, I don’t resent at all – I enjoy it once I get going! (And “deserving” isn’t a meme that I hang out with much at all.) If I fail to take breaks, it’s quite likely just to be a failure to switch states – as described by the surface tension metaphor – quite similar to my failures to get going on work.

But, for different reasons, I still completely agree that planning breaks from “work” is a good idea. For me, it’s about refreshment and variety.

If I take an hour out to go swimming, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll have some good ideas while I’m swimming, as well as feeling emotionally more contented afterwards. If I have a long chat with a friend, I’m very likely to come out of it feeling “unloaded”, and with a clearer picture of what’s going on in my life. Even going off to help a friend reorganise – which is often physically demanding – is a change of scene that can raise my energy.

Perhaps I should add a bit into Neil F’s catchphrase:

Replace “I don’t have time to play” and “I get stuck into something and I forget to take a break” with “I must take time to play.”

Havi

While discussing destuckification, it would be remiss of me not to refer you to the genius who is Havi Brooks! (And her duck Selma.)

Here are some of Havi’s wise thoughts right here right now, and you don’t even have to go to the library for them:

Doing just one thing.

Destuckification 101

Avoidance! Oh, and getting out of it.

Feel free to comment with your best unsticking tips :-)

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After coming up with the gears metaphor, I thought I’d sketch out what the gears might be for me. I imagined them something like this:

0 Not moving. I could have called this “neutral”, but somehow that seems like the wrong word. Stuck isn’t neutral. Exhaustion isn’t neutral. Moping around being mopey and miserable isn’t neutral.

On the other hand it could be a kind of relaxed resting peacefulness – but in that case, I’m probably not stuck, and some other metaphor would apply.

1 Minimal engagement. Playing computer games or just slightly pottering about e.g. tidying up. If this is the aftermath of some intensity, then I might be “processing” in the background. (Simple computer games can be a form of meditation, I think – they occupy the surface of your mind while things happen under the surface.) If pottering about, still feeling like each new thing is a re-start – not really any momentum from one task to the next.

2 Beginning to build momentum. Tidying could still be in here as long as it’s just putting things away that have an obvious home, or straightening up. Sewing or making badges as long as the process doesn’t really take any thought. Tinkering with writing (though not the process of deciding that something’s finished – I need to be more awake for that and it would be more like 4th gear).

3 Ordinary sized tasks. Returning emails, going to the library, sorting possessions, putting a wash in. Maybe some DIY that only requires repeating what I’ve already done, with no original thought.

4 Thought and organisation. Things that require more thought and a certain amount of awakeness. E.g. interesting DIY, planning. If I’ve had a day in 4th gear, I’ll almost certainly finish the day with a nice sense of satisfaction about what I’ve accomplished – which often involves some kind of tangible result in the 3d world.

5 Tricky interface stuff. Anything involving making arrangements with people I don’t know, especially if it involves some kind of time pressure and especially if I have to actually talk to them. I often have a sense of needing to “gear up” & “get my head in order” to do that kind of thing, but sometimes if I “get on a roll” it seems easy.

6 Immersion time. Song recording, coding, or any other complex task like accounts. This is often stuff that takes a while to reload into the brain, so that fitting it into “too small” chunks of time is very inefficient, and to me tends to feel intuitively like “there’s not even any point starting”. (And “too small” varies with the task – anything from half an hour to a day might feel that way.) Often, though not always, it’s the kind of thing I can “get lost in” so that time disappears.

This 6th level isn’t necessarily any harder than 5th gear; it’s the “chunk size” which distinguishes it. It needs to be preceded by ensuring that if I do give it that much time, nothing’s going to go wrong while I wasn’t paying attention to all the other stuff. Perhaps it’s more of a turbo button than another gear.

Writing

One thing which surprised me in a good way when I thought this through is the fact that tinkering with writing comes out so low-gear for me. I lucked into a good “effort-to-satisfaction ratio” there. The point is that despite being quite easy to do, it’s also quite satisfying to me, which helps me to move up through gears. I thought “Must remember that”.

This insight was definitely part of the source of the new era of “more than one blog post a month” :-) I realised that as a rule of thumb, “if in doubt, do some writing” had a lot going for it. And around Christmas and New Year I did have a successful gearing-up on the writing front.

Different cars

What was interesting, though, was that after a week or two of that, I realised that (slightly contrary to my expectations) my writing momentum hadn’t transferred onto the DIY. I was just doing more and more writing!

I found that to get going on the DIY, I had to give that a separate gearing-up all its own: starting with a bit of tidying, then assembling the tools and resources I’d want, and only then actually embarking on the work itself.

Not definitive

Of course everyone’s list of gears would be different – and the above isn’t the definitive list of gears even for me, just an approximate sketch. And there are different ways to apply the metaphor – including, as I’ve said there, considering each field of endeavour as its own separate gear system.

But the basic metaphor seems to be working well for me so far. Regardless of specifics, I can still tell myself: “Don’t bother trying to talk yourself into tackling big things. And don’t sit around waiting for the desire to tackle them to return. Instead, get stuck into the little things within easy reach. And trust that in a while, when you’re more rested and have some little accomplishments to be satisfied with, the desire to tackle big things will return of its own accord.”

Copyright © Jennifer Moore 2010. All rights reserved.

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Sometimes I get into a sort of negative feedback loop like: “not accomplishing much, hence feel frustrated and incapable, hence no momentum / energy, hence not accomplishing much”. And I mope about.

Typical thoughts I might have in this state include “I ought to be more productive”, and “Look at these important things that aren’t even moving at all – aargh!”

Then by way of reaction, I might get a slightly exasperated urge to “go for the main things right now and stop faffing about”. Which, if I were to heed it, would launch me straight into the hardest tasks.

But in fact, it seems from experience that this is usually unrealistic for me, and trying to do it only leads to more stuckness. If I’m feeling stuck and low-energy and maybe a bit hopeless, what I’ve found usually works in fact is to start with minor pottering about and build momentum.

So e.g. rather than telling myself “Must… do… accounts…”, it might work best to tidy a small area of a room, and then think “Yay! what next?”

Gears in a car

A while back, I was talking about this on a thinking session, and I came up with a new metaphor: it’s like gears in a car.

Suppose you’re driving a car, and you try to set off in 5th gear. What’s going to happen? Probably the car will jolt, and make a noise it’s not supposed to make, and stall. And probably what won’t happen is the car goes off zooming really fast.

It’s not designed to work like that; you’re supposed to start in first gear (or maybe second, depending on vehicle and circumstances), and work up.

Remembering

And I thought: I must remember this. It’s pointless trying to make myself get all majorly active straight from a mope, when it’s so much more workable and natural to build momentum gradually. I know this, but it seems to be one of those things which is easy to forget :-)

I have more to say about this topic! But that will do as a start.

Copyright © Jennifer Moore 2010. All rights reserved.

This post belongs to Jennifer's Uncharted Worlds blog. This message should only be visible in news aggregators. If you’re reading it on any other web site, it’s probably from a stolen RSS feed; in that case, please help by reporting it, giving the web address where you found it.

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