<story><title>The Now Habit</title><url>https://www.2uo.de/the-now-habit/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>eitland</author><text>One of my favorite books.&lt;p&gt;Particularly the example with a person who should walk on a beam between two skyskrapers.&lt;p&gt;IIRC it goes like this:&lt;p&gt;- A beam lies ok the ground. Everyone can dare to walk on it.&lt;p&gt;- Now the beam gets lifted up between two skyscrapers.&lt;p&gt;- Now almost no sane person would walk across it.&lt;p&gt;- If it starts burning in the building, at some point one will cross, if necessary by sitting and sliding yourself across: embarrassing but better than the alternative.&lt;p&gt;- If however there was a reliable safety net right underneath the beam a good number of us would enjoy crossing between even if there was no fire.&lt;p&gt;I think this example speaks volumes about how to get oneself and others to get past certain fears by making sure there are known, reliable safety nets.&lt;p&gt;FWIW: I found out a while ago that the example with the beam (or rather a plank) probably comes from Coué. (There&amp;#x27;s a reference here: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;radical-spirits&amp;#x2F;the-man-who-helped-the-beatles-admit-its-getting-better-3ddcf1afbbb3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;medium.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;radical-spirits&amp;#x2F;the-man-who-helped-the-...&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>The Now Habit</title><url>https://www.2uo.de/the-now-habit/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>codemac</author><text>The Now Habit really helped me let go of procrastination being my fault, and just seeing it as a systemic side effect of my approach. Brilliant book, on the order of GTD or the Effective Executive in terms of how true everything has held up over the years. Recommend reading it for anyone, any single tip from the book is likely to be worth your time.&lt;p&gt;However, the best for addressing procrastination for me was a coach. They really worked through things with me to give names to the bad habits I&amp;#x27;d developed, and the tools to recognize emotions as they occurred. It reminds me a lot of the &amp;quot;noting&amp;quot; practice in meditation.&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;foldering&amp;quot; - once, I decided that I needed to make folders and put all the documents I needed to create &amp;amp; review in various states (e.g. incubation, pre-review writing, published for review, reviewed, complete, etc). This is not effective, as what I needed to know was &amp;quot;what should I work on today&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;how aligned are my projects with the business&amp;quot;. Instead I was making sure all my documents and folders were right. Now whenever I do this over-organization-as-avoidance, the word &amp;quot;foldering&amp;quot; occurs to me before I even notice I&amp;#x27;m doing it.&lt;p&gt;One of the hardest things is that the best coaches come through recommendations from others. If you don&amp;#x27;t have a social or professional network where people have worked with coaches, it can become very hard to find a good one. Many friends according to their instagrams are &amp;quot;coaches&amp;quot; now who have never been near a stadium.</text></comment>