Making it very easy to begin working

in #work2 years ago

For a very long time now I've been dealing with an internal problem, emotional, or mental, I'm not sure what kind to be honest, that keeps me from doing, from being active, from taking action and moving forward in different areas.

I often describe this problem, whatever it is, as a lack of energy. I have a deep desire to make progress and advance in my life, in my financial situation, education, and other fields, and yet whenever I wish to do something for that advancement to happen, I feel as if I lack the energy to even keep my eyes open.

This is not a recent obstacle. I've had this problem for several years now, and I never managed to figure out why. For a while I told myself that I am simply very lazy, which, to be honest, I kind of am, and I kept fighting against this laziness up until now, because the satisfaction I get from actually doing something, from working and moving forward, is much greater than the satisfaction I get from vegetating on my chair trying to move as little as possible while staring at my monitor.

I could also push the blame onto something else in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of having to face my unpleasant and lazy characteristics. I could talk about information and choice overload, how I'm getting distracted every minute by everything and how that takes away my motivation, or how the advertising of games and interesting shows by big companies makes me want to avoid work.

I have never been the type of person to spend too much time blaming things (regardless of how satisfying that is), and I instead always preferred to simply search for a solution. After all I find quite a lot of pleasure in spending my time trying to find ways to optimize my workflow and my daily activities and that equally applies to problems related to being productive.

I've read many books and watch many videos on YouTube about how to be more productive, how to be more motivated, how to have the energy required to do everything you need every day, and, to my disappointment, I never managed to find a solid and good solution that would fit my situation.

Find something you love doing? That can take a very long time, and the thing that you love doing can change from time to time. Think about the rewards? It works, but it is a temporary fix. Sleep well, and maintain yourself happy? That works too, but it's temporary as well. Happiness never lasts for ever.

I did, in the end, find something that entertained both my love for productivity, and my love for optimization, and the idea came to me after reading both "The Organized Mind", written by Daniel J. Levitin and "Deep Work" by Cal Newport.

I'm gonna try to be brief in order to not bore you too much. The first book focuses on a few subjects, mostly the ability to deal with the multitude of tasks that we have to work on daily, to deal with the huge amount of information that we are constantly being given from a myriad of sources, and how to create some order in your daily life among all this craziness. The second book focuses on what you can do to be more productive, and talks about things such as isolating yourself to avoid distractions, working for limited amounts of time to avoid burnout, avoiding social media, and so on.

By combining what I got from these books, plus what I got from self analysis and a bunch of videos on YouTube, I got to the simplest solution for my problem - simplify, as much as possible, the starting process.

I have noticed throughout these years that my problem doesn't involve working, but rather beginning to work. Most of the time I can keep my interest and my energy up while I'm working, but getting there is the biggest problem I'm facing. Whenever I have to start, I spend a lot of time switching between what I have to do and YouTube, or Facebook, trying to avoid the process as much as possible. I just hate it.

I hate it even more when beginning my work requires extra effort. If I have to open a bunch of software, to search for the file I need through several folders, or if I have to go somewhere and get something to get started, I get bored, tired, and willing to quit as soon as I stumble upon the first obstacle.

However, whenever I can start working smoothly, without any delays and without any tedious activities, I can start being productive quite quickly and I stay like that for a lot of time.

Once I noticed this, I always tried my best to make the start as easy as possible. If my aim is to read more, I make sure to have my books as close as possible to me, sometimes even on my desk at all times, so I can see the book I wish to read even when I'm doing something else. If my aim is to code, I can put the icon for the text editor that I use on my desktop right in the center, so I can see it every time I close an application. If my aim is to work in Blender on some 3D project, I make sure that the project is easy to open whenever I wish, that Blender is on my taskbar ready to open and that I have a folder full of images to inspire me at my disposal, so I don't waste too much time thinking about what I want to make.

The examples can keep going. I try my best to avoid having to do too many things before actually starting to work on the important parts. Instead of trying to get rid of distractions, I try to get rid of anything that can go wrong when starting to work. No errors, no having to search for a lost file, no having to go online and spending 30 minutes getting the things I need, or trying to find inspiration. I just want to be able to start working within seconds whenever I wish to.

This helps me defeat my laziness, as I call it, and it avoids the consumption of my energy. I don't have to spend any amount of time worrying about or delaying work, which means I don't get tired and / or bored of whatever it is I have to do. Not only that, but if I learn how to optimize my work really well beyond that, then the entire process becomes easier and easier, and I get to finish my tasks really fast, which results in having more time to do something I enjoy.

Obviously this is not a universal solution. Each person is facing different obstacles, and each person might need a different way to get past them. However, if you feel as if you're too tired to do anything, even if you enjoy those things, then finding a way to make the starting process as easy and effective as possible might be a possible solution.

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Whenever I have to start, I spend a lot of time switching between what I have to do and YouTube, or Facebook, trying to avoid the process as much as possible. I just hate it.

Maybe you are in the wrong job then. This does not happen, if you do something that you love.

Yes, and no. I have done several jobs and it's always like this. It's not necessarily that I lack an interest on the task that I do, I simply get distracted easily and lose my energy quickly if I don't feel satisfied with what I do. Creative work, physical work, intellectual work, it always happens.