Rethinking your goals….small consistent steps

compounding, ego, Energy, Goals, Human Brain

In my post of 10th Sept this year I had written about how big goals actually get me scared and I don’t move forward. I would rather think in terms of small incremental but consistent goals, keeping myself focussed on taking one step at a time. I had also written about the research and data from Steven Kotler’s book “The Art of Impossible…” where he has shown evidence that a 4% incremental is something that the brain does not show resistance to.

Exactly a month later, I will talk about a book by the famous author Seth Godin- Linchpin. While he’s not only talking about the resistance that the brain offers on very large goals, he is indicating in the same direction. His take is more broader that if you take on massive goals because you have to silence the critics or because you want to change people’s minds, chances are that you won’t be able to hit it.

After you have accepted the huge goal, your brain will throw up all the reasons, why you should not and cannot achieve the goal. And because our brain has pre-dominantly negative bias on things, it will provide you with evidence of all the negative things that can happen, how all the people will laugh at you ,if you decide to go in for the massive goal and don’t achieve it.

Since the brain does not want to put in the hard work , to conserve its energy, it will put up all the resistance and if you decide to give up, it will be the happiest.

I have faced this many times in my career, because my bosses wanted to “shore-up” their numbers and my ego was bloated, I would take a very high target, then not be able to achieve and then feel miserable. But I now realise the challenges which my brain throws up and am trying to become wiser. Ego is something which can be manipulated easily and I have become more and more conscious of it as I have grown older.

So now I try to look for shorter term, smaller targets to hit. Achieve those and then move forward. As Steven mentions, if you can keep at a consistent increment of just around 4%, for the long term, you will actually be able to achieve massively because the law of compounding will come into play

On the other hand if you are a BIG THINKER and DOER, Good for You. Then you should be actually looking out for doing some dramatic things.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Make life simpler – switch off notifications

Distractions, Human Brain, Notification, Time

I get distracted extremely quickly. A song playing in the distance or a specific sound or smell….just about anything can get me distracted. Once I get distracted then my brain goes for a wild ride, mostly into the past.

Getting distracted was one of the primary reasons that I specifically took a room in a corner in the office, so that at least the chance of me seeing something and getting distracted was minimized.

Another thing which distracts me terribly are the notifications on the phone. The challenge is that each time you load a new “app” it starts sending you notifications. Now some of these are helpful especially the ones from say your bank, but most of the time I here one ding after another from a pizza chain, then from a food delivery app, 5gen a grocery app and so on.

I don’t know about you but I like to concentrate and finish the job that I am doing. In that state I finish most of my jobs in no time.

But each time I hear a “ding” my mind wanders and to get it back to the same level of concentration takes another 10-15 minutes. So today I made it a point to sit with my son so that I figure out a simple way to block the notifications while I keep the apps. He showed me how I can do it and within a matter of 3 minutes I had switched off all notifications. For the last 25 minutes I have not had a single “ding” disturb me.

With no one consistently disturbing me, I don’t have unnecessary pressure for time, because now I am not looking at my phone from and getting distracted.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

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!!!

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!!!