Many of the newly vaccinated among us are starting to emerge from hibernation. In doing so, it isn’t surprising that our thoughts are going something like this: How have we changed in the past year? Did we hunker down and use the time to achieve a long sought-after goal, did we just barely get by, or did we land somewhere in-between? Regardless of our answer, the worst thing we can do is beat ourselves up for what we did or didn’t do. And yet, there’s a part of our brain that relishes in just that.
Coach Wendy Hart teaches in her Procrastination Cure that the tasks we never get around to do are not because we are lacking motivation. Rather, the culprit is our brains themselves. When we put things off, we do so because our caveman brains associate danger with it.
When our caveman brain associates danger to a task, a cascade of chemicals race through our bodies that make it near impossible to complete the task. This doesn’t make sense to our conscious brain, but sense-making is not a part of the caveman brain. Rather, sense-making belongs to our top brain, the prefrontal cortex.
Our brains have three parts, the lower brain, or brain stem, that experiences “fight or flight,” the middle brain that regulates the emotions of pain and pleasure, and the top brain, or prefrontal cortex, that is the thinking brain.
The seemingly simple tasks that we put off, like the pile of laundry we never get around to fold, trigger approximately 1400 chemical responses in our caveman brain that make them loom as large as climbing Mt. Everest, while our top brain blames and shames us for not getting them done.
Garnering enough willpower may get the laundry folded, but it’s not a long-term solution. Working against our caveman brain is like Sisyphus forever rolling a boulder uphill. There’s only so much energy we can muster. Luckily, there is an easier way.
Instead of increasing motivation, Hart teaches that we need to remove the resistance. Once the resistance to a task is removed, the task is completed with ease. In other words, remove the hill and just let the boulder roll along. Or better yet, let it roll downhill.
There are several steps Hart teaches to overcome procrastination, which involve doing things in such a way that the caveman brain never gets triggered. One such method is to counteract the chemistry of dread with the chemistry of silliness.
When you fold two socks out of your laundry basket, rather than reach into the basket to find the next pair of socks, celebrate. Do a little dance, say a mantra like “You rock!,” or press the easy button. Hart recommends placing Easy Buttons around the house like the ones at Staples so you can celebrate your tiny wins easily and often.
The same is true with your business. If you’ve been putting off your website makeover, pick a tiny task in that project that wouldn’t trigger the caveman brain, like login to the control panel. Then, celebrate. Hit the easy button. “That was easy.
The key is, in order for this to work, the task has to be so small as to be unnoticeable to the caveman brain. If you’re putting off washing the dishes, perhaps your easy task is to lift the sponge. That’s all you do. And then you press the easy button and celebrate. “That was easy.” You may find that washing the dishes is the natural next step. Or, you may put down the sponge and do nothing else. Either way, you’ve acted under the caveman brain’s tripwire.
Perhaps you didn’t write the Great American Novel during Covid-19. Perhaps you didn’t do that massive website overhaul. No need to remain under the covers. Pick the tiniest piece of the task that doesn’t alert the caveman brain, and do just that.
If it’s writing an email, just open up your email browser and celebrate. If it’s a phone call you’ve been putting off, just pick up the phone and celebrate. Do that every day, or multiple times a day, and celebrate each and every time.
Hart describes a women whose doctor told her that she needed to exercise. She purchased a treadmill but never used it. Her doctor, being wise in the ways of the caveman brain, advised her to continue doing her usual morning routine of reading the paper over a cup of coffee, but with one adjustment - do it while standing on the treadmill — not walking, just standing. She was to do this every morning. And she did. And a week or so later, she actually walked a little on the treadmill too. And over time, she developed the habit of walking on her treadmill each morning.
She didn’t develop a walking habit by improving her willpower. Rather, she removed her resistance to it by associating the treadmill with something enjoyable — reading the paper and drinking her coffee. The walking habit naturally evolved from that.
By changing the way we relate to tasks we avoid, by making them too small to matter, we are changing our entire chemistry, and getting ourselves unstuck in the process.
And, even if you didn’t accomplish all you wanted during quarantine, you can still start today. Start small, each and every day. Keep it under the radar of the caveman brain. And watch the larger things take care of themselves. And soon you’ll be saying, “That was easy,” too.
