Buzz
Next time you face a challenging, lengthy, or monotonous task, avoid saying you'll do it later. Instead, acknowledge that it will be tough, time-consuming, and dull. Accept that you’ll despise every moment of it. Once you accept how unpleasant it will be, you might find yourself more motivated to get it done sooner rather than later.
A study by David J. Hardisty and Elke U. Weber, from the University of British Columbia and Princeton, respectively, shows that people tend to rush through positive experiences while delaying negative ones. This is an obvious pattern, but the study adds an interesting twist. Let me directly quote from Hardisty and Weber’s work 'Impatience and Savoring Vs. Dread':
While the anticipation of positive experiences creates pleasant feelings of savoring,
it also brings negative feelings due to the wait. On the other hand, anticipating negative events results in unpleasant feelings of dread
as well as negative emotions related to the delay.
To put it another way: The period between now and a positive event is filled with both pleasant and unpleasant emotions. The period between now and a negative event, on the other hand, is dominated by negative emotions. For instance, every time you look at that pile of paperwork on your kitchen counter, you experience a mix of dread and the nagging frustration of knowing you're still putting off that difficult, time-consuming, and boring task.
This brings us to the concept of 'harnessing the suck.' Here's how Fast Company explains it:
To get tasks off your to-do list, you need to tap into the psychological discomfort of dread, which is inherently negative and unpleasant—and naturally a feeling most people want to avoid.
This idea builds upon Hardisty and Weber’s research, but adds a twist. Rather than dealing with the slow buildup of negative emotions, like the drip of a bathroom faucet you’ve yet to fix, you can face the overwhelming flood of negative feelings all at once: frustration, boredom, confusion, and the specific realization that a task you thought would take just ten minutes might drag on all afternoon. By accepting that the task will be dreadful—and recognizing that you’ve been experiencing that dread every time you think about it—you might finally feel motivated to check it off your list.
Fast Company also points out that this approach works for difficult conversations. In my personal experience (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), the torment of running through potential arguments in my mind is always worse than the actual conversation. Hard conversations are tough, but having them often turns out to be easier than imagining all the ways they could go wrong.
Next time you walk past that mountain of paperwork, scrub your hands under a leaking faucet, or stress over a conversation you wish you could avoid forever, remind yourself that you're not going to procrastinate any longer. You'll face the task, it may be unpleasant, but once it's done, you can stop dreading it.
If tackling the task isn't possible right now, schedule it for the near future. That way, you can look forward to the relief and satisfaction that will come once it's completed and out of the way.
