佚名/Anonymous
Remember the agitated, bleary late-night looks on your friends' faces in college as they attempted to cram a semester of learning into the night before a final? Perhaps you were one of those crammers. Then you probably resented righteous—looking people like me who appeared to spend a pleasant bit of time each day on reading and class note taking before sailing through tests.
You'll be happy to know that people like me all get our comeuppance in other situations. How? Because everybody gets mind blocks to doing some kinds of tasks. Mind blocks have nothing to do with mental acuity. They're very much a part of the human experience, albeit an irritating part for which most of us emotionally flagellate ourselves about, as we continue to avoid the task, thus incurring double damage. We all have them.
We just have different kinds of places where we get stuck on different kinds of tasks. My blocks, for example, are with big or boring talks. I can easily slide into writing a brief article or going on a half hour morning run along the hills above my seaside village. Give me a larger task, however, such as writing a book or going into the gym for an hour work-out or a boring "time-waste" task like getting to the dry cleaners or gas station and I can become diabolically clever at deceiving myself into all the reasons why I can't start, right now anyway, but will sometime soon. Sound familiar?
Here are some tricks to getting yourself into a kind of task you often find yourself avoiding and even finding ways to feel righteous as you savor completion.
Vividly Specific Contrasting Scenarios
Picture the worst and the best case situations—in all their emotional details—for not starting an important task now. How bad could the consequences be if you don't get it done or done right? How exciting could it be if you did it on time and superbly? What if you intend to start it later today? How many things "beyond your control" can prevent you from getting started? If you did, in fact, start it right now, when is the soonest you might be done if you get clear and focused, and allow no other interruptions until you get to a crucial state of completion or actually finish it?