theoconbrio said:
What I have been looking for is a gentle way to PYA, because I find that if I think of it as an authoritarian "just do it" command, then I am more likely to resist it, even (especially) if it is wholly internal, unrelated to externally imposed requirements and deadlines.
Hi there, excellent points and honesty. I appreciate that very much.
All I am doing in this thread is just trying to be as honest as possible. I have a niggling suspicion, that there are many folks who do GTD, who do a Weekly Review once every 6 weeks, and end up running around town with a To Do List handwritten in their pocket, even after trying to 'master' GTD for quite some time. Its human nature. Nothing to be ashamed of or to try and hide.
But it is true that different people have wildly different issues regarding procrastination. Some people don't really procrastinate, and some others procrastinate almost everything, and everything in between.
Myself, when I get external deadlines, I always finish them early, these days. But certain personal Projects get stuck, and certain challenging Objectives seem to not get moving, 'somehow'. Our mind is tricky thing.
But let me throw a clarification out there. PYA is probably a very poor term to use for most people, when taken out of context. I took it from REBT and Dr. Albert Ellis, and REBT is about getting rid of the 'authoritarian' commands in our head. Its really a huge area of research.
So PYA, just taken in the casual lexicon, is probably not a good term. Its works great for me, as I know the background, and it reminds me of Dr. Ellis hilariously screaming it out when I saw him speak.
He did a workshop on procrastination a few years back. There was one guy who only had to do ONE COURSE to get his degree, and he put that off for YEARS, until he had only ONE semester left to do this course, or he would lose his degree.
Now for most of us, we might think, "oh come on, just take the course", but most of us don't understand the pickle people can get themselves into, but Dr. Ellis does of course.
Anyway, he told the guy what to do, which included REI (Rational Emotive Imagery), and a number of other things from REBT.
But in the end, he told this guy, and others, that sometimes ya just gotta PYA! As in, forget the fancy cognitive theories, and your toilet training, and just push yourself!
The reality is that for people who have 'serious' issues in this area, the day is going to come when they gotta face their demons. It can be nerve-wracking, but its possible.
I myself had some anxiety-stress problems years ago, and I was fortunate enough be able to go through a 16 week anxiety clinic, using CBT and Behavior Therapy principles. Its too complex to explain the entire thing, but here is one small point from it.
After some long interviews, the psychologist designs with you a graded hierarchy of all the things that you are avoiding due to anxiety. They space it over about 16 weeks, with the 'worst' fear at the end, and the easiest up front. You do all sorts of cognitive work with them, but you also have Behavioral Homework, where you commit to going out and DOING certain things you are avoiding due to anxiety, and making notes about it.
They tell you up front, if you do NOT do what you commit to do, pretty much each week, they will kick you out of the program. They tell you that point blank. So you can't go in and say, 'well I didn't do X, because of X". You can do that maybe once or twice, but no more. They almost kicked me out for not doing what I said I would do a couple of times. (due to avoidance and anxiety!). They will literally kick you out of the program, and you can't get back in for quite a while, I believe, if ever.
Why do they do this? Because they are mean and evil people?
No, the exact opposite. Its because they want to actually help you.
Research has shown that if people are not 'pushed' through leverage to do these things, they are NEVER going to do them! YEARS, and we are talking YEARS will go by, and people will not do them. That is a fact.
So they get leverage on you, and you literally have to push, and yes even 'force' yourself to do these things you have committed to do.
What happens, is that your brain learns that doing X 'feels bad' when you start, but, once you do it a few times, then it loses its power. It becomes extinguished.
(notice how this is the opposite of 'Rogerian style' therapy? If you came back and told him that you did not do X this week, he might say, 'that's ok, you are still ok, lets talk about it' and on it goes, for years sometimes! The Anxiety Exposure methods were designed to short-circuit that process of avoidance, and even though its stressful, that is how you can overcome these problems).
So what I am saying is that yes, we do NOT want to be a fascist and try to 'order' ourselves to do things. We will just resist that even more, or sabotage it.
But on the other hand, the reality is that there is no 'gentle' way to go about some of this stuff. For certain serious issues, you might even get to the point of thinking you are going to puke, or 'go nuts', etc. These are dealt with by doing things like, 'ok, get a barf bag, and see if doing X makes you so scared you will barf'. Then, guess what? You learn its not as bad as we feared in our heads.
The reality is that the human is very tough, and we can handle a lot more than we think. Pushing ourselves to do things, is not going to hurt us, as long as we know what we are doing. It will FREE us from our false fears. As a matter of fact, the reality is that we sometimes have to push through it, to get to the other side. According to everything I have learned on this subject, there is no escape from this. But it has to be done in a careful and controlled way. (get advice from highly trained professionals in this area).
Again, there is a lot more to it than this, and its impossible to communicate with plain text properly.
But the point of PYA is a simple, emotional one. Sometimes, we just gotta take a deep breath, and go for it. It could be called TLC-PYA.
But the reality is that just even reading these types of ideas will make some of those who have challenges in this area extremely anxious, or even very angry. We can be so anxious about facing the things we are putting off, that we will discount the very simple and basic idea of starting to face it today, or even facing it today.
I used to have severe stage fright when I was young, as in, 'needed to go the bathroom' stage-fright. But when I was young, I got a job where I has to speak to large audiences 2x a day, 5 days a week! It was a HORROR! I felt nauseous everyday, all day. But I needed the job, so I kept doing it.
One day, after lunch, after about a month of this, my anxiety VANISHED. I just got up there, and felt ZERO angst. My brain learned through exposure that there is nothing to fear. It was just a mental fiction.
I have not had performance anxiety since. Once I start to speak, or whatever, it vanishes.
I know that there is not ONE, not ONE Next Action on my lists that is going to 'hurt me' if I just did it right this second. Not one of them. Zero.
I might 'feel stress' for a while, but its not going to kill me, or hurt me.
So why not just push myself to do it then? What is there to be afraid of? Feeling some stress, or fear or frustration? That's ok, it will dissipate once I get going.
So, that's interesting, and I just thought of it.
What is stopping any of us from picking our 'scariest" NA right now, and just pushing ourselves to do it?
Would it kill someone to call the tax-man, or whatever it is they are avoiding?
Our brain will come up with INFINITE excuses to AVOID doing what it fears. Infinite, and it can go on for years, and years, in an irrational way, for some people.
All I am saying is that after looking at this very carefully for many years, these are the conclusions I have come to.
I am not saying they are for everyone, not at all. Just thinking out loud, as it helps to clarify things. This has been very helpful to me, and hopefully it has also been for some others.
But the harsh fact is that I know of no other way to overcome procrastination, based around anxiety avoidance, than to ultimately have to face it down, and Behave your way through it. As far as I know, there are no magical or easy solutions. (now the hypnotists are going to hate me too...No hypnosis doesn't work either!).
In the end, we are going to have to do it, someday, somehow.
Why not today?
Why not now?
What I have learned is that the only way out, is to learn that facing it down, and feeling 'discomfort' in the moment is not a big deal. As a matter of fact, that is what it takes.
It can be a Catch-22, this is why some folks get trapped.
We don't do what we need to do to get over it, as we fear the 'bad feelings' we might have when we do it. But if the only way to get through it, is to push through those 'bad feelings', and that is the thing that STOPS those bad feelings, then its easy to see why folks can get trapped in this for years and decades. It literally is a Catch-22.
All my experience shows me that they way to get through this, is to simply focus on the Next Action, and then 'push' our way through it. This actually automatically handles the cognitive aspect of it, as it occurs naturally as we do this. As far as I can see, this is really what it all comes down to.
(again, I am just brainstorming, thinking-out-loud, and writing my experiences, and not giving people 'advice', or anything of that nature).
