How? Identify what’s hard!

I came across a wonderful pearl of wisdom several years ago that continues to be exceptionally helpful. I was watching an interview of an ADHD expert about how parents can help their kids overcome procrastination obstacles. The expert’s key point was that to get unstuck and beat procrastination, you have to identify what’s hard. Once you know what’s hard, you can work to eliminate the roadblocks that are keeping you from doing the thing.

Woah! Where had this been my entire life?

Asking the simple question of “What is hard?” has been a game-changer for me! Instead of being frustrated by my inaction about doing the thing, I can problem-solve how to eliminate the roadblocks that make doing the thing difficult! Whenever I get stuck, I take a step back and ask myself what is hard. I can then pivot based on my answer. Here are some of my common answers and pivots:

This is overwhelming — Break up the thing into smaller steps and write them down. Scratching each one off the list as it gets done is very motivating. The next thing I know, I have momentum and am making progress on the thing!

I’m distracted by my surroundings — If the thing is work-related, the first thing I do is put on my awesome noise-canceling headphones and listen to music. This is such a big help! I can tune out much of my surroundings, and the ooh, squirrel! part of my brain can listen to music while the rest of my brain can work on the thing.

My hands are fidgety — If my hands get bored, they get fidgety and I get distracted. I need to give them something to do and then they will be happy and let me do the thing. Sometimes it’s as simple as holding a pencil or pen with an interesting texture, but I grab a koosh ball if I can. I have used koosh balls as fidgets long before fidgets were a thing!

This is boring — If all else fails, and I’m still struggling to work on the thing I take a study break. Study breaks are quick diversions to get me physically or mentally away from the boring task for just a bit. If I’m taking too many study breaks, then I use the pomodoro technique to give me some structure with the promise of a break soon enough. A simple explanation is that a pomodoro is a structured cycle of focus with a promised break. Say a 20-minute cycle with 15 minutes of focus and 5 minutes of break that is repeated as necessary. When I need to use the pomodoro technique, I use app and web-based tool, but that’s for another post.

I’m focused on other things — Ugh, when am I not? My mind is always working on about a dozen things at once. It can be annoying, but it’s the only way I know so whatevs. If something in particular is in the way of doing the thing and now really isn’t the time, then I write. If it’s something that I need to process, I may write a stream of consciousness for a few minutes until I feel ready to set that aside for a bit. If it’s tasks for later, then I add them to my to-do tracker (that I will totally write about later because it’s impact on my life is tremendous).

So here is how I applied this recently

This blog means a lot to me. I really want this to be a successful outlet for me and maybe even help or entertain someone else along the way. Unfortunately, I don’t work on this as often as I would like.

Sometimes I have time to write when I want to write, but the family laptop is otherwise occupied. I won’t use my work laptop outside of work hours (because boundaries), and typing all of this out on my phone ain’t happenin’. So if the planets weren’t aligned, I didn’t write. This roadblock was causing the antsy frustration that comes when I feel like I’m being held back. My word for this feeling is “stuck”, and did I ever feel stuck!

What was hard is that I didn’t have the tool that I needed when I needed it. I did some problem-solving and decided that I wanted to get a nice tablet with a keyboard that I could use whenever I wanted. Luckily I recently happened upon some extra jingle that made for a painless exchange.

I now have a shiny new laptop-like tablet and no excuses! Here’s to more frequent posts!