#042 Why your brain loves to procrastinate and three ways you can overcome it
Worthwhile things are hard. But hard things are not always worthwhile. Difficulty is necessary but not sufficient. Tolstoy knew this, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
"How's the paper coming along?" The question casually came from my boss during the ward round.
"Ah yes. The paper."
I had completely forgotten about it. Well, that's not entirely true. I hadn't forgotten about it.
Rather, every time I reminded myself of it I had found other, much more important things to do.
Like clearing my emails, tidying my desk or "doing more research".
In the end, faced with a looming deadline, my boss and I wrote half of the paper each. This left me with a sour taste in my mouth for two reasons.
One, I don't like letting people down. Two, I do what I say. And when I don't, I'm not being the type of person I want to be.
What did I owe this double dose of sour mouth to?
Procrastination.
The most common struggle of readers of this newsletter is that they deliberately procrastinate.
(Thanks to all of you who filled out the 2-minute sign-up survey. If haven't completed the form and want to help me help you, you can go here).
So let's look at why we procrastinate and what we can do about it.