Writer’s block – how I push the resistance

Deadlines, Energy, Fear, Focus, Human Brain

Yesterday I wrote about how I get the Writer’s block everyday and some of the tactics I use to trick my brain into supporting me to write my articles. As I have mentioned multiple times earlier, the brain tries to conserve energy because it assumes its main responsibility is to ensure survival and it feels more comfortable with the idea of having energy rather than spending it on writing a new blog post.

One more tactic that I have found useful to get my brain into supporting me in my writing is the use of time pressure or deadlines. Generally I write my blog towards the end of my working day. Which means that quite often I have pressure to go for dinner or there’s a favorite program that I need to watch.

When the brain realizes that there’s a deadline to be met, it generally gets into action. You would have noticed this in all walks of life. Till there’s no pressure of a deadline, any project, any activity will be nowhere near closure. Suddenly when the deadline is due, people will put everything aside and only focus on this one activity. The combined focus and action miraculously gets the “project” shipped / delivered in record time.

Similarly when I have a deadline , but I know that I have to write the blog as part of the commitment I have made to myself, suddenly things fall in place.

All the resistance that the brain showed earlier, falls by the wayside and it supports me in getting the blog written and “shipped” or published.

Truthfully I don’t know the science behind this, it’s just a tactic that I have found useful so I am sharing with you. In addition to writing a blog, I have used the same tactic to also improve to a certain extent on hitting my daily tasks. By giving my myself a deadline and putting an alarm for the deadline, I have realized that my brain wanders less. If there’s no deadline, it tends to get into day dreaming and ruminating over things which happened or got messed up.

I would even suggest you also try and let me know if you got any benefits. In addition let me also know if you know of other ways to ensure that our brain does not create resistance or fear when you have to do a new task.

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!!!

Novelties

Energy, Flow, Focus, Happiness, Human Brain, travel

I love wide open spaces, I love man-made unique architectures and I love to watch scenic places with wild life.

So going to Interlaken in Switzerland and watching the snow clad mountains or going to the Niagara falls and watch the water fall while drinking hot coffee from Tim Hortons or taking a cruise on the Seine River or watching the aeroplanes land and take off from Delhi Airport, are things which fascinate me and make me feel happy and enlightened. After a visit to these kind of places I feel rejuvenated and more in flow with life and better focused.

Some of these kind of sights I have not had an opportunity to go and see for myself , especially since the last 18 months. So I watch videos on YouTube. I still get a similar pleasure.

So why should you bother about it.

I used to think that the pleasure of seeing these kind of sights is my personal taste.

However it seems the brain has a special network which is tuned to pick up novelty and unpredictable situations. Its called the salience network. While the definition of novelty could vary between person to person, the fact that this network exists -as per Steven Kotler- and is the cause of the rush of dopamine, is good news. If you read his book The Art of Impossible, you will realize dopamine is one of the most potent neuro chemicals.

It means that when you are feeling low or the whole world seems to be sitting on your shoulders, you can change your mood by looking for things which are novel to you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!