Nobody tries to make the day harder—at least, not intentionally. Unfortunately, many of us fall into behaviors and thought patterns that hinder our ability to perform at our best. With a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, here are seven simple ways to make tasks harder.
Feed Your Dread
As you think about your day, call up all the reasons you don’t want to do what needs to be done. Dwell on all the reasons tackling your list is going to be difficult, painful, overwhelming, scary, and otherwise unpleasant.
Remind Yourself How Inept You Are
Before you begin your tasks, think about how likely you are to fail. Call to mind all the times you’ve tried and failed. Make a list of reasons why you personally cannot possibly succeed.
Compile a Hearty List of Excuses
Delay starting your tasks and instead compile a list of reasons you shouldn’t or can’t proceed. Good options include sleepiness, hunger, insufficient time, need to look something up on the internet, and urgent need to work on something else (anything else will suffice).
Focus on Your Misery
When you finally do initiate action, mindfully notice how miserable you feel. Check the clock often to track how long you’ve been suffering. Focus on things like your hunger, your lack of energy, the unpleasant climate, noise, how hard this is, and anything that is irritating or frustrating.
Look for Reasons to Quit
Constantly be on the lookout for any and every reason to give up and walk away. This can be the fact that the task is proving challenging or that your results don’t seem to be coming out perfectly. You can also blame other people for distracting you.
Compare Yourself to Others
As you try to get things done, look around to see how other people are doing. Be sure to compare your weakest areas with other people’s strengths. Spend time on social media. Brood about how easy things are for other people.
Minimize Your Accomplishments
No one achieves perfection all the time. Requiring this of yourself and/or of others is a setup for disappointment. Thoughtfully define ‘good enough’ in a way that maximizes performance quality without collateral personal damage.
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In all seriousness, life is hard enough. The world often seems ready and willing to do its best to knock us down. The last thing we want to do is help it along. Instead of…
Feeding your dread, focus on action. Think less, do more. Overthinking often backfires. Get moving before you have a chance to talk yourself out of starting.
Reminding yourself how inept you are, talk kindly to yourself. Your own voice is actually quite loud in your head, so talk as if you are full of confidence, excitement, commitment, and willingness to learn.
Compiling a hearty list of excuses, make a list of all the reasons to take action now. For example, conquering the task early will free up time in the evening. Doing what’s hard first thing will make the day get increasingly simpler and pleasurable as the day progresses.
Focusing on your misery, stay positive. Enumerate all the good things about your current task. This may be “I’m thankful I have a job,” or “I love these children who are requiring all this work on my part.” If there is nothing about the task itself that seems good, you can always fall back to, “I’m thankful that I am alive, healthy, loved, etc.”
Looking for reasons to quit, seek reasons to keep going. For instance, “I want to finally get this off my list,” or “I know I will feel so good when I have worked on this.” Another approach is to focus on how your tenacity will help and please others. “I know my family will be so thankful if I just keep working through this paperwork until the table is cleared.”
Comparing yourself to others, put on blinders and run your own race. Most likely any comparison you make will be apples to oranges, so why bother? Racers who look around are more likely to trip. Don’t waste time looking at others. Stay in your lane and be the best “you” that you can.
Minimizing your accomplishments, acknowledge and celebrate your effort. Make choices each day that you will look back and feel good about. Show up, on time, and work your list in order of priority. That’s enough.
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Getting things done is hard enough. Don’t make it harder than it has to be. Do you have any “bad habits” when it comes to making tasks harder?
These are powerful reframes. It’s so easy to focus on the difficulties and obstacles. However, it’s also possible to turn things around in a different direction- one that’s proactive, nurturing, and positive. It’s not always easy to identify how to do that, and you’ve offered a wonderful guide.
But noticing the messages that surface and the part you play in ruminating on those presents an opportunity for change. That’s a beautiful thing.
Reframing can be so hard, especially when you are beginning. But like anything, as we do it more and more, it gets easier. We can train ourselves to think differently and to our advantage, which I think is incredibly empowering!
Recently, I heard that our negative emotions are overrunning our skills snd knowledge. These difficulties allude to the power of how our emotions plays a big role in procrastination. Truly the saying, “whether you think you can” makes a difference.
Ouch! I can see that this is true. I feel as a society we are much more “in our heads” than we used to be. We need to push back hard on these negative emotions.
This post made me smile, Seana. I hear iterations of these statements from my clients and do my best to help them reframe these self-sabotaging thoughts. I love the way you offered options for reframing these obstacles. In paticular, I like the one about running. It’s true that when you look back to see someone else’s progress, you trip up. Doing your own thing, to the best of your ability is all any of us can do.
Comparison just rarely brings us to a better place, right Diane? Watching or studying another with the intent of learning a new skills is great, but comparing our progress is never a winning proposition.
Wow, there’s a lot of powerful messages in your humor! The first item on your list is so familiar to me that I cringed just reading it.
I could relate to all of them, so I’m trying to make myself giggle while moving forward1
Thanks for all the great examples of how we can reframe the thought patterns that keep us from moving forward. I have found that just getting started is one of the best ways to get unstuck. Once starting, a project just seems to gain momentum and the negative thoughts leave.
A great thought to keep in mind, Jonda. If I’m struggling, I just need to start and then momentum will carry me to the next step!
Great post, Seana! I have seen clients and family go through many of these obstacles that stop them from taking action. However, perfection is super hard to overcome for many people. To combat perfection, I get myself to about 80% of the planning process and begin. Trying to achieve perfection before even starting will create high expectations, resulting in frustration and self-doubt. I would rather go through and learn as I go; after all, nothing is perfect. It is ideal for that moment in time, and after that, it isn’t any longer. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
That’s a great rule of thumb, Sabrina. Aim for 80% ready and then go!
Were you looking over my shoulder? I have been dreading (#1) making a call because I thought “the answer” was going to be “no” when it turned out that the person had just lost all their paperwork and didn’t know how to find me. They’d had an additional reason to find my contact info and were berating themselves (#2); they were so excited that I reached out that we both did a little happy dance!
I love your infographic, because it reminds us of exactly what we shouldn’t be doing. Great use of reverse psychology! Reframing each of these will get the task approached, finished, and celebrated!
I love discovering that the other person was just waiting for you to recontact them! When something you have been dreading goes the exact opposite way, it really helps you realize that what’s going on in your head might be wrong. Instead of dreading all the things that can go wrong, consider what might possibly go right!
It’s been awhile since I did an infographic. They are fun. 🙂