Have you heard of procrasti-pain? (DW#565)
Barbara Oakley shares some fascinating research about procrastination in her book A mind for Numbers.
She claims that you can take people who hate doing math and scan their brains and actually SEE their pain centers light up as they contemplate having to do math! In other words, when they think about math, they feel physical pain. Weird right?
But it gets very interesting. When her research subjects actually start doing the math (rather than thinking about it) those pain centers turn themselves off!!
In other words, the anticipation of doing a task which they thought was unpleasant caused the pain. But the pain went away when they actually started doing the task.
This point is worth reading again and again and memorizing:
PROCRASTIPAIN IS THE ANTICIPATION of doing something unpleasant. And the cure for procrastipain is to start doing the task.
So here is the prescription to get rid of procrastipain: get in motion and start taking action on what you have been procrastinating on.
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