Many people are good at visualizing, developing creative concepts, and thinking beyond existing human experience. Their ideas can bring success, fame and money, but only if they add some effort. Unfortunately, this is where most creators fail. They are able to come up with, design, plan and even start the process of implementing this or that idea, but they do not have enough strength to complete what they started.
This story is well known not only in a career environment, but also in simple everyday life. Sometimes we plan to read a book, clean the apartment, study foreign languages, but we always stop somewhere halfway or even postpone our plans until better times.
- Money and career How to force yourself to do what you don’t want: 9 ways to combat laziness Keep a useful guide.
In fact, the inability to take action and begin to act productively simply prevents us from living. This is a characteristic feature of an inveterate procrastinator who is able to invent and even plan, but is not ready to act.
If you realize that you cannot finish what you started, just admit it to yourself, and we will try to work on solving your problem right here and now.
Why don't we get things done?
There can be a lot of reasons not to succeed and give up on implementing your idea. Sometimes it’s all about incorrectly set priorities or a lack of desire to work on a particular project.
Some reasons lie on the surface and are quite easy to discover, but for others you will have to dig deeper and pull them out through painful awareness and recognition of your weaknesses.
Here are a few possible reasons that may be preventing you from bringing things to a successful conclusion.
Give yourself a deadline and a reward.
Tim Urban, author of a blog about procrastination, suggested in his acclaimed TED talk that there are two types of procrastination. The first one is turned on during work projects that have a clear deadline. We can put things off for a long time, but at the last moment we still get down to work and complete it - if only because we are afraid of losing money or respect.
The second type concerns mainly personal projects that do not have a deadline. Get a second degree, change jobs, learn a language, lose weight - we just can’t get our hands on these and other wonderful goals. This type of procrastination is more insidious because without a deadline, fear does not kick in and finishing what we started (and sometimes even just starting) can be very difficult.
Therefore, if you are working on a personal project and you are not motivated by the promise of income or the fear of losing your job, be sure to set yourself a deadline.
According to INTEGRATING THEORIES OF MOTIVATION of temporal motivation by psychologist Piers Steele, deadlines are one of the four pillars that help us stay motivated (the other three are confidence in success, reward and deadline sensitivity).
Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and economics, once conducted an experiment on Procrastination, deadlines and performance. He divided the students into groups and asked them to proofread an essay. The first group was given a week to complete this task, the second group was given three weeks, and the students from the third set their own deadline. Participants from the second group coped with the task worse than others and did not meet the deadlines, although they had enough time. But the third group showed good results and submitted their work ahead of schedule.
Anastasia Ivanova, an English teacher, in her book “How to Stop Learning a Foreign Language and Start Living in It,” advises to be sure to set deadlines for yourself and formulate goals correctly. For example: “In two months, I want to expand my vocabulary to 5,000 words and for this I will read two articles a week, write down new words and make sentences with them.” The same principle can be used with any other activity.
You've probably read a lot about dopamine: Dopamine: not just a neurotransmitter and how it makes us give up important and difficult things in favor of momentary joys. To trick the dopamine system, you need to trick your brain into believing that work, school, sports, or creativity bring you as much joy as cat videos.
And to do this, you need to assign yourself a reward for each completed stage of the project. It could be just a tick in your diary, an episode of your favorite TV series, a chocolate bar, or a small pleasant purchase. In addition, you can keep a success diary and tell yourself how great you are.
Emotional burnout
In its initial stages, an idea can dazzle, excite, inspire and give hope. However, very soon her presence in your life becomes something familiar and does not give such vivid emotions as at the moment of her appearance.
That is why a person simply burns out on his idea and no longer feels a strong desire to implement it. The emotion is gone, and there is a long road to realization ahead. For some, this becomes unnecessary, boring and too energy-consuming.
Get rid of time wasters and take breaks
By scattering attention and being distracted, we spend much more time and energy than if we worked concentratedly. In the Even Small Distractions Derail Productivity experiment, students were divided into two groups and asked to write an essay. Participants from the first group were constantly distracted, and as a result, they coped with the task much worse than the subjects from the second group, who worked quietly. Scientists have found in This Is Nuts: It Takes Nearly 30 Minutes to Refocus After You Get Distracted that it takes the average person 23 minutes to concentrate on work after being distracted or interrupted.
Therefore, it is important from the very beginning to identify the triggers that take away your attention: social networks, games, endless smoke breaks or tea parties.
Use services that block distracting apps or websites. And to concentrate, set a timer and promise yourself not to stop working until it rings.
There are several techniques that help you focus on tasks. For example, the Pomodoro method: 25 minutes of work alternated with five minutes of rest. Or the 90/30 method: 30 minutes of rest after 90 minutes of work.
Taking regular breaks allows you to How Do Work Breaks Help Your Brain? 5 Surprising Answers to Avoid Burnout. increase motivation and productivity. But during vacation it’s better to do without smartphones and social networks - because of them you get even more tired.
Fear of success
It would seem, how can one be afraid of success? However, for many people, the fear of becoming successful is one of the main barriers to realizing their dreams.
First, success is a change for which a person may not be psychologically prepared. Secondly, this is a responsibility that not everyone is able to accept. That is why some remain seated in their place, eliminating the possibility of sudden fluctuations in their lives.
Find inspiration and go on creative dates
Motivation and desire to work need to be fueled. One way is to completely immerse yourself in an inspiring atmosphere, surrounding yourself with films, books and ideas that stimulate your imagination, excite you and create a burning desire to get to work immediately.
If you are thinking over a plan to promote a product or service, watch how competitors do it, read books about advertising, study successful cases. If you're writing a fantasy novel, look for books and movies with similar settings. If you are learning a foreign language, read blogs of other students, be inspired by positive examples, join language chats and groups.
Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way” advises going on so-called creative dates. This is the time that you devote to yourself: doing what fills you with strength, inspiration, ideas. This could be a trip to a museum, clay modeling or embroidery, or a trip to nature.
Facing reality
Another reason for the termination of projects is a collision with reality. The fact is that often at the initial stages the idea does not seem so complicated. The main focus is on the dividends it can bring.
However, in the process of its implementation, you can unexpectedly encounter a harsh reality, from which some never recover. For example, understand that you need to work three times more, there won’t be money for a long time, and there are too many bureaucratic barriers.
Non-compulsoryness as a consequence of psychotrauma
From the point of view of psychoanalysis, chronic lack of commitment and inability to perform is a sign of unprocessed psychotrauma. This is how the subconscious mind protects you from repeated negative experiences. This is a conflict between the conscious and unconscious parts of the personality.
For example, you constantly miss the deadline for a project at work or, having prepared an excellent report, refuse to speak. What makes you do this: fear of failure and criticism, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, internal attitude toward self-punishment and failure. In a person with an internal conflict or unprocessed trauma, the connections between cause and effect are disrupted.
Until the job is finished, you feel in control of the situation. Even if at the same time you do nothing to complete what you started, and it hangs over you like a black cloud. It doesn't matter as long as it's yours. If you finish the job, then from a raw product and process it will turn into a finished product, the result of your efforts, a reflection of your skills and abilities. Next to this is public assessment. You are no longer in control of the situation, you are no longer responsible for people's reactions.
Why is quitting halfway bad?
In fact, the answer to this question is far from being as simple as it seems at first glance. Unfinished projects are not only lost profit, but also garbage for your mental space (let's call it that).
If you constantly throw unfinished ideas into it, they will accumulate and increase your dissatisfaction with yourself and the world around you. The feeling of incompleteness on many projects at once will eat you up and lead to unhealthy reflection.
Because of this, a person may encounter mental problems that will subsequently have to be thoroughly dealt with.
- FAQs What is procrastination and how to deal with it: 12 main rules
Reasons for stopping, their solution
A worthwhile task does not come easily or quickly. Difficulties are the main reason for all unfinished business. Some people give up at the first obstacle, while others gradually lose motivation and strength to fight. “But this can’t apply to all matters?” - you ask. Maybe if it's your mindset.
Some people are completely unprepared for difficulties, and in addition, they themselves are looking for them. There is a concept of internal sabotage - preventing a person from achieving a goal. The reason for the attitude is criticism from parents, punishment, repetition of the phrase “you won’t succeed.” If this is your problem, then you need to change your life scenario. Read about this in the article “Life script: what is it in psychology, its structure and types. The theory of life script according to E. Berne. How to change your life scenario."
But this is not the only possible reason. Other factors include:
- Features of temperament: extroverts and choleric people by nature are prone to superficial hobbies, working for quantity rather than quality. Their arousal reaction is fast, but they fade away just as quickly.
- Awareness of the discrepancy between the matter and your nature. You try it for yourself, look for it - it’s great. You may have to try dozens of hobbies and interests before you find yours. But you can’t write off any abandoned business as a search for yourself.
- You take on too many responsibilities and don’t understand where your responsibilities end and other people’s responsibilities begin. If you take on several things at once, you run the risk of failing in each and giving up on them all. Review your activity. Maybe it’s better to first understand one thing and then start a new one?
- There is no clear goal and visible result. You can't get things done if you don't have a clear goal. I want to lose weight - this is not a goal. I want to lose 10 kg in 2 months - that’s my goal.
- Weak self-organization and self-control skills. One goal, albeit a clear one, is not enough. We need an equally definite plan with tasks, subtasks and methods for solving them. How I will lose weight: strength training three times a week, cardio every day and proper nutrition. What is included in proper nutrition, what will the menu be like? Write out the menu for every day. And so on. The more specifics, the easier it is for you to move, which means the chance of completing the job you started increases.
- Excessive demands, excessive self-criticism, unrealistic goals. I want to lose 10 kg in a week - an unrealistic goal, which obviously sets me up for failure. This may be possible with extreme weight loss, but you need healthy methods and lasting results.
- There is no personal interest in the outcome of the case. Even if you need to do something unpleasant, try to find personal meaning and benefit in it. Passion, enthusiasm and creativity will quickly disappear if you don’t answer the question “why am I doing this.” The problem is rarely a lack of willpower, but more often a lack of motivation.
But these are not all possible options. Let's look at the problem of unfinished business from the perspective of psychoanalysis.
Prioritizing tasks
In the Jedi empty inbox technique, prioritization is simplified to two priorities: “must do” and “don’t do.” Thus, we move away from pushing in the unshoveable. Instead of endlessly postponing doing something that we can’t get around to, we recognize the fact that it won’t be done at all much earlier, and begin to adjust our actions based on this.
If you are left alone with a complex task, having removed simpler tasks, then fast thinking teases slow thinking and asks it where to start completing this task. But fast thinking does not like to be bothered by slow thinking, and therefore, if there are other things to do, it is better to finish them first and start a complex task when there are fewer distractions, for example, the morning of the next day.
Involve other people in the project
Sometimes the best way to do something is to make yourself accountable to another person.
According to a study by the American Society for Training and Development, people who promise something to another person have a 65% chance of achieving their goals. This figure increases to 95% when you agree to a special meeting with a progress report. Our brains are wired to not let other people down. When someone invests in you by agreeing to help you achieve a goal, you are fueled by the desire to deliver on what they promise. This can be done in several ways:
- Set deadlines for certain aspects of the project with the manager, and discuss regular reports on the project's status.
- Ask for help with any part of the project. With the help of another person to reduce your workload, you can complete other parts of the project. Set up a time to meet with the person helping you to combine the results.
- Set up regular meetings with a colleague to collaborate. Let's say if the two of you have been assigned some difficult tests that you'd rather put off, set up a time to meet and finish them.
- Embrace the Scrum part of Agile and discuss work with your colleagues on a daily basis.
Delegating work can be especially useful when you have a really large project on your hands. Sometimes the scale of a project is so overwhelming that it is difficult to start. If you can get your team to help with part of it, you can focus on more manageable work.
Talk about it
It will be much easier to deal with the problem by putting it into concrete form.
Things can be greatly exaggerated in our imagination, especially if we are overwhelmed by them. There are countless times when I started telling someone how much pressure a project was putting on me—for example, that I had no ideas for an article, or that the problem was so complex that I had no idea how to solve it—and then By the end of the conversation, I was already fully inspired. Other times I'm so afraid that something will go wrong (or that something is already going wrong) that I become overwhelmed with these feelings.
Scientific research has shown that talking about feelings out loud reduces stress and discomfort. Brain imaging conducted at UCLA found that when a person is shown an image of an angry face, their amygdala becomes more active. This is the part of the brain responsible for activating the brain's alarm system - it lets you know there is something to be afraid of and triggers a response in the body to deal with the threat.
However, when subjects could name what they saw, simply putting their feelings into words reduced amygdala activity. Moreover, in this case, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was activated. Other studies have shown that this area of the brain is associated with processing emotions and finding words for emotional experiences.
So simply talking about your big project can help you get started. Also, if you talk to smart friends or mentors, they may have suggestions on how to start a project or relevant experience with similar projects. You can relax and become wiser at the same time.
The principle of natural planning: how to move from problem to action
The natural planning method is a model of turning a vision of a result into the first physical action of implementing it, which can be done with half the brain.
The method alternately uses the logical and creative hemispheres.
- Motivator: “Why do we need this?” Boolean.
- Vision of the result: “What will we get in the end?” Creative.
- Brainstorm. Boolean.
- Organization. Creative.
- Next step. Boolean.
For an example of use, see the screencast from 1:50 minutes.
