Human Soup

Hard things to do? No motivation? The way I see it, you have three options.

Option one: Do it.

Option two: Think about doing it until it gets worse and worse.

Option three: Decide not to do it.

Let’s start with option one. Just do it right now.

Ok. You didn’t do it.

Let’s try option two. You can do what I do, which is think about doing it. And each moment you think about it, it gets bigger and worse and harder. That email you didn’t respond to — that person is getting more upset. The room you didn’t clean — getting dirtier every moment. That appointment you didn’t make — you have fewer options than you did a minute ago.

Which leads us back to option one. Do it. Or option three. Decide not to do it.

Now, if you’re like me, option three is impossible. You might decide not to do it for a minute, but then it creeps back into your mind, and you’re back to two. Which leads us to option one. Do it. Now.

No, really. Do it now. Put the phone down and do it now.

Did you do it? Yes? Skip to the end, where I’ll praise you.

Didn’t do it? Ok. You want some strategies while you think about doing it? Fine.

1. Hope it goes away. The good news is you can do this forever. Or until external forces create a situation in which you’ll be forced to do it.
2. Set a calendar reminder so you can do it later. Then don’t do it. Snooze the reminder so it pops up giving you anxiety every 12 hours, until you eventually either do the thing (option one) or turn off the reminder (option two). Works for snoozing emails too.
3. Sit still and imagine the worst-case scenario of not doing it. It’s possible this will scare you into doing it, but it’s more likely to cause fear paralysis and keep you from doing anything at all.
4. Create an intricate 12- to 15-step plan for how you will do it when you eventually do. Or, as I like to do, try to develop an AI program that will do it for you, so that you don’t have to do it — which takes about 100 times longer than it would have taken to just do it.
5. Break it into multiple complicated steps. This will allow you to painfully stretch something you could have done in a few hours over many months, and never let you enjoy the feeling of completing anything.

Remember, at any point you can hit escape and return to option one or option three.

For those of you stuck in option two, I hope some of these strategies helped.

For the person who did it: You did the thing! Yay! Great job! Don’t think about all the other things you have to do. For at least five minutes. Then return to option one.

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Thank you to Darius, whose title I stole but whose article I didn’t read until I finished mine. He has 312,000 followers, and I have a coffee maker that bites. Any similarities are purely coincidental. Read his article here.