Writer’s block – why I push my brain

Affirmative action, Energy, Fear, Human Brain, Risks

I have been writing a lot about why the human brain pushes us into states of anxiety, fear etc. Fundamentally as Steven Kotler says, the brain consumes more than 25% of all the body’s energy requirements and is designed to protect you, so tries to save energy for the day when it will be needed.

If you have noticed, over the last few months I’ve tried to ensure that I write a post everyday. One is because I realized a truth in what Joe Polish says that prolific makes proficient.

Each day however when I have to write, I keep coming up with all kinds of reasons why I should not write. You would have noticed I don’t have a huge vocabulary, as a matter of fact I only use the simplest of words. Most of the times I don’t have any fundamental research data. My posts are short which goes against the grain that blog posts need to be long to be considered “read” worthy. But I still write.

I have now realized that this resistance the brain throws up, that we call a Writer’s block is another way for the brain to conserve energy. By giving this resistance, or fear about the quality of the blog post, or the lack of enough data points, the brain is trying to dissuade me from writing. If I don’t write and give up, it will feel relaxed, because it now does not need to spend energy.

By not spending energy, its meeting its primary objective of saving my life, if the need arises. So now when I have to write my post, I don’t plan in advance, because then I find all kinds of reasons why my post will be useless. I rather sit down with my tablet or computer. Scan through my brain on what I had found interesting through the events of the day and then just type.

As I start taking affirmative action and get into flow, my brain also starts sending me data to incorporate into the post and before long, I have finished the post.

If you acknowledge the fear or resistance and just start doing things, it slowly melts away. Once the brain notices that there’s no threat, it also kind of starts supporting you in the endeavor and at the end of the activity you get a feeling of achievement like I do after write a blog post.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritising 80/20 and ferocity together

Affirmative action, prioritizing, problem solving

This is the latest brain wave which I have had. I had written a post on ferocity which was a word I learned from Steven Kotler in his book “The Art of Impossible…”. His thesis is that if you go out at problems with a ferocity, take affirmative action and the more problems you solve, the better you become at solving problems which helps you become even better to achieve your impossible dreams.

I have been working on the 80/20 principle as suggested by Richard Koch on prioritising my day and then also use the Prioritisation Matrix to work further and plan my day based on impact of what I do and where I want to go.

Now comes the brain wave portion. 80/20 and the prioritisation matrix are all about doing less work but more focussed work. While the ferocity logic is about gaining proficiency by solving more. So there’s a slight dichotomy in my opinion.

Except if you can create enough focussed problems and then try to solve them at a go. so instead of planning a prioritisation matrix for a day everyday, we were to build it for a week in advance. Then we try to achieve the most critical parts of these in a day rather than a week.

I don’t know how practical this would be, how much time will I have and whether I will be able to delegate enough, but I will figure out and let you know how effective it was.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Prioritising your day

Affirmative action, Focus, prioritizing

I have written earlier about doing an 80/20 of your activities in your day. While I use the concept along with the Prioritisation Matrix suggested by B.J.Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, I used it primarily to save time so that I don’t end up finishing tasks that don’t have too much return on invested time. A lot of times I used to feel exhausted at the end of the day, but when I would look at the achievement , there was nothing to show for it.

It was like I was always walking on a treadmill, burning calories but getting nowhere. That’s where Richard Koch’s 80/20 rule and in a different way the Prioritisation Matrix have helped me considerably. Now everyday in the morning I look at my To-Do list which I keep updating on my phone. Then I put down on this matrix each of the tasks that need to be done in terms of their scale of impact and my ability to influence the outcome.

The benefit of this is that even if I do only the tasks which have a high impact and my ability to influence is high then at the end of the day I would have still achieved considerably more.

Why am I explaining all this to you. Well today was one such day. It was supposed to have started early and I would have done all my meditation and focused sitting before starting office work. But as I got up my wife complained of fever. So I had t replan my day completely while keeping my customer and internal meetings intact. There was quite a bit of overwhelm through the day. I did not achieve a lot of the items on my To-Do list for today. But I still achieved 90% of my highest priority tasks which ensured that I was considerably effective inspite of the challenges I had all day.

If you also have a lot of tasks on your daily To-Do list and you get overwhelmed, seeing your life pass by while you seem to be not getting anywhere, try the 80/20 rule. Once you focus and take affirmative action with a clear indication on what will have the most impact for you, it will definitely change a lot of things for you. Let me know in the comments below if this practice helps you.ichard

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Feeling of achievement

Affirmative action, execution, Flow, Focus

When you get into the “flow” of getting things done, it sets off a cascade set of events. One you don’t feel tired even after having done so much work and in addition you are also in the mood to achieve more. Something that Steven Kotler points out in his book “The Art of Impossible….”.

For more than a month I had to close some legal documentation with respect to our relationship with one of the largest OEMs. It was all to be done online via one of the online sourcing portals. Now my problem with technology platforms has always been that whenever I try to make it work, it throws up challenges at me.

These documents had come to me more than a month back, but first my passwords didn’t work, then when I got that in order , one of the trainings that they wanted me to take, didn’t work and finally there was some technical documentation which I had to then get my legal guy to first fill and then give me.

Finally yesterday I got the documentation but when I tried logging-in again, the passwords again didn’t work. so today after I had had enough sleep, I sat down to work on this with a fresh mind. (This is another thing that Steven talks about…..you need to get enough sleep for your mind to work well and get into flow). I read through the password guidelines again, finally logged-in but couldn’t get to the page of the OEM.

To cut the long story short, because I had started fresh, I completed the complete set of activities in about 90 minutes and I had not realised so much time had passed and I finished without even feeling tired.

Also since I have started using the prioritisation matrix suggested by B.J.Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, I also ensured that I was working on those activities first which would have the highest impact for me. So in a state of flow in two sessions I completed so much without feeling exhausted. That’s the advantage of being in flow.

However I still need to make, getting into “flow” state a habit. Haven’t still been able to achieve that.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!