<story><title>The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks</title><url>https://dcgross.com/accomplish-dread-tasks/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Dowwie</author><text>Additionally..&lt;p&gt;1. Give yourself permission to just try, for a little while&lt;p&gt;2. use fear-setting for really tough moments&lt;p&gt;A technique that I&amp;#x27;ve found helpful when dealing with anxious thoughts is I become mindful of the anxious feeling, realize what I&amp;#x27;m feeling anxious about, and then give myself &lt;i&gt;permission to just try&lt;/i&gt;, regardless of the outcome.  I&amp;#x27;ll explicitly granting myself permission to &amp;quot;just try&amp;quot; and even throw in &amp;quot;just for a little while, see how things go&amp;quot;.  This at times has turned into a productive, multi-hour session.&lt;p&gt;Tim Ferriss talks about a technique use to confront fears, called &amp;quot;fear setting&amp;quot; [1].  Essentially, I put together a 3-column table and think through the worst that can possibly happen.  It helps me think about risks and realize what I can handle. This helps to manage worry.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tim.blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;15&amp;#x2F;fear-setting&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tim.blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;15&amp;#x2F;fear-setting&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks</title><url>https://dcgross.com/accomplish-dread-tasks/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tofflos</author><text>In the &amp;quot;Learning How to Learn&amp;quot; course, that was mentioned in the MOOC-discussion a while back, they suggest tackling this by focusing on process over product and tying a reward to it:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m just gonna sit here and do taxes for 25 minutes and then eat some chocolate&amp;quot; rather then &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m going to finish my taxes&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The reasoning is that by removing the pressure of completing the whole task you can sometimes convince yourself to stop procrastinating.&lt;p&gt;If that still doesn&amp;#x27;t do it for you then at least you have the chocolate.</text></comment>