Procrastination, Emotional Regulation, and Intuitive Creation Systems
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In this entry, I discuss how to break the loop of procrastination and overthinking. The goal is to recognize when I am in a loop, going in circles. By taking a mindful moment, I can reassess the situation and then intuitively take a different path. That path may not always be forwards 👀
I also talk about how the success of my physical habits has helped deepen my mental and creative habits. Rather than staying in the loop of logical productivity, I mindfully break the loop through intuition.
As you read, take a moment to set a mindful intention: think about where you are looping in your life. Are there habits you are blocking yourself from starting due to procrastination?
Are you ready? Let’s get started ✨
Procrastinating
Last week, I realized that the main block to consistent physical exercise was not from a lack of desire, but that I never felt like exercising in the moment. I had the best intentions to exercise, I genuinely want to be healthy and fit. But when the time came to do the work, I found it hard to take the next step. I was procrastinating.
I have been listening to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle on the Waking Up app, a great series to pair with reading Atomic Habits. Also very metaphorically fitting, given my goals of identifying the pieces to build the puzzle of the bigger picture (more on this framework in Recalibrating Entry #3).
To start, let’s ask ourselves: what is procrastination? As defined in the series by Tim Pychyl:
| Procrastination is voluntary delay of an intended action, despite expecting to be worse off because of the delay.
I was voluntarily delaying the intended action of exercise (I had the time to do it, no excuse) and I knew that my body would be worse off (not as healthy) because of that delay. So why was I procrastinating?
Part of the issue with procrastinating habits I have set for myself is that each time I failed, I felt guilt. Guilt that I had taken this time off from work to focus on recovering from burnout, yet I was still putting myself into the same unhealthy lifestyle as before.
This guilt began to form a negative association with my ability to exercise and achieve the habits I had set out for myself, with each failure making it more and more difficult to do the task with consistency. I had been exercising, but inconsistently; I was not forming the habit, the intended action, I wanted.
Emotional Regulation
As noted by Tim, procrastination is an emotional regulation problem, not a willpower problem. When faced with an action I have set for myself, perhaps one I don’t want to do in that moment, I experience discomfort. Instead of doing the action to get rid of that discomfort, it is much easier to tell myself that I will do it tomorrow. I give in to feel good now, pushing the discomfort off to another day, making it tomorrow Callum’s problem.
Over time, this procrastination can form a bad habit of delay, making it harder and harder to achieve any action that make me feel uncomfortable. In other words, by procrastinating with tasks that emotionally dysregulate me and giving into the delay to feel good, I taught my brain that this is how I should respond to future uncomfortable situations.
James Clear in Atomic Habits has a good analogy for comparing good and bad habits: imagine a good habit as a fresh, delicate plant that has just burst forth from the soil. It requires extreme care for weeks to give it the proper amount of water, sun, and soil. After a month or more, the plant may be ready to stand on its own; the good habit has been formed and is self-sustaining.
In contrast, bad habits are like trying to uproot an oak tree. If you’ve ever tried to remove a tree, you know it takes extreme effort and is very difficult to do. Each time the bad habit is reaffirmed, the roots grow a little deeper and stronger.
My Intuitive Solution
Upon reflection, I looked around at other moments I had procrastinated, times I was emotionally dysregulated and avoidant of my tasks. On the flip side, I also thought about when I had success in accomplishing large tasks that took a long time and dedicated focus.
My first thought was reading books, as reading is one of my favourite activities. Reading also takes a lot of time. The structure of a book is chapter by chapter, together forming the complete book. The book as a whole can appear daunting, but breaking it into chapters makes the task of reading for 6 + hours manageable. Also, finishing a book is satisfying.
As a bonus perk, reading actually improves our attention span and is one of the most common ways to find flow (more on that in another entry). Reading has been in sharp decline over recent years, with ~57% of Americans not reading a single book in a year. To learn more on this topic, I highly recommend the books Stolen Focus (Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How To Think Deeply Again) by Johann Hari and Finding Flow (The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
I tend to feel more satisfied upon completion of a task that forms part of a larger whole. One after another, each completed task moves forward the state of progress, building on the actions before it. We tend to like reading physical books because we can see the progress as we work our way through it, chapter by chapter.
My exercise solution was to remove the ability to delay my actions through procrastination. I set a mindful intention that I would do yoga and cardio every day for the next 30 days. I wanted to structure a system that avoided my need to make a decision in the first place, removing the possibility of me pushing the exercise off to tomorrow. Note that this 30 day task is not a “goal” per se, because my goal is to establish a system that enables me to exercise every day as part of being a healthy person, not merely trying to hit 30 days in a row. I want exercise and health to be part of my identity as a healthy person, not merely an action I do to check something off of a list.
I realized that if I had other things I wanted to do, I should prioritize exercise before letting myself do those other things. In a way, it was affirming my healthy identity earlier in the day than I would have before. I no longer reached the point in the day of not feeling like doing the exercise because I had already accomplished it.
Setting an intention for a month allowed me to step back and look at the bigger picture I was working on. That bigger perspective helped to see more of a system I could structure, the system of habits that I acted on each day as part of my identity of a healthy person. Day by day, piece by piece, I can build up this identity through my habits.
A Week of Success
Fast forward one week. The above realization and exercise strategy occurred to me soon after I wrote Recalibrating #4. For over a week now, I have been exercising every day with both yoga and cardio (except for one day I did a long walk instead).
The results have been astounding already.
Let’s get into how this habitual physical restoration has impacted the rest of my system ✨
Intuitive Creativity
Allowing myself to strengthen and stretch my physical body has helped bring my brain and body into better alignment. I feel more relaxed, stronger, and capable. Even better, I find myself able to resist the rooted trees of bad habits with more strength.
Instead of getting caught in the productivity loop, when I am feeling stuck, I began taking a mindful moment to assess the situation, beginning with breath to check in with myself. This mindful reset, beginning again, has allowed me to approach my looping problems with new perspective.
As an example, I kept getting stuck on the organization of my second brain (more on second brains soon). I often experience overthinking and decision fatigue, so organizing and structuring my thoughts can feel like a daunting task when building my system. Each day I would sit in front of my computer for hours, building and pushing myself forward.
Even worse, by sitting in front of the computer hour after hour, I was negatively impacting my posture and introducing pain into my body (hands, wrists, elbows, back). Humans are not meant to sit in front of a computer.
I kept returning to my habit of logically approaching the problem of how to structure my second brain that I kept getting stuck in a thinking phase loop instead of moving forward with an action phase.
I was missing a step: the being phase.
Mapping My Mind
Instead of brute forcing myself to find clarity, I mindfully decided try a different approach: mind mapping. Mind mapping is a way that I can creatively explore my thoughts without reverting to my default logical approach. I can organize without thinking. Intuitive creation.
To start, I took two photos I had edited in the past to generate a colour palette and began intuitively writing the words on my mind. Each time I went to write a new word, I selected a different colour based on how the word felt intuitively. Afterwards, I reviewed the colour choices and reflected on how I could connect the meaning of the words to a deeper, more subconscious level.
It worked.
My mind mapping enabled me to see deeper into the problem from a more intuitive perspective, something I knew to be true but found hard to put into words. Apparently, on the path towards self-actualization, my next step was not forward, but inward. To break the loop, I had to give myself an exit through mindfulness and explore alternate paths that led me not only forwards, but inwards and upwards.
Referring to the mental models below, imagine the problem-solving loop (red) is at the bottom of a pyramid. When I am in a rut, unable to solve the problem, I circle the pyramid over and over again without making progress. However, if I recognize that I am stuck in a loop, I can take a mindful moment (blue) as an exit. The mindful moment provides an opportunity to begin again. I can start fresh by deciding if a physical need is lacking or if the problem would better be solved with creativity than logic.
Once I have gone for a walk, exercised, stretched, etc., I can still decide to proceed with a creative approach. Alternately, the creative approach may just be what I was looking for from the start. Either way, the mindful break can enable me to find clarity (yellow) with my problem and identify a solution.
Instead of staying in a loop at the bottom of the pyramid, mindfulness can provide a staircase to a higher level, enabling me to shift my perspective and look at the problem differently. When viewing the pyramid from a top view, we can appreciate that to gain elevation, we must also move inwards. In a way, mindfulness provides that opportunity to move inwards through reflection and self-awareness, instead of by seeking answers externally.
By mindfully creating space to be, I was able to make space for intuitive creativity. Even better, I was able to pair that creativity with a form of self-expression that brought my internal state of being to light, providing the solution I was looking for. The combination of mindfulness and intuitive solutions is what enables me to move to the next level. To grow ✨
Recalibrating for Next Week
This exercise in self-reflection intuitively led me to solutions that my thinking/logical brain was unable to see, so caught in the loop of “I need to solve this, I need to solve this, I need to…”. I realized that creativity and self-expression are not actions that fall naturally into my day. I need to make space for them.
I have been conditioned through the efficiency culture to prioritize my logical brain more than my creative intuitive brain. As part of my Recalibrating exercise, I want a more balanced approach to problem solving, allowing space for both logic and creativity. There will always be a tension between the two, though the balance will vary for each person.
Tension is not bad, as tension builds energy that can be released in beautiful ways. I can leverage the tension between my two ways of thinking (logic and creativity) and use the tension to form synergy with my subconscious.
Self-expression is an incredibly powerful exercise for glimpsing into the subconscious self to see where I am at on my journey while also providing a light to illuminate the darkness ahead of me, showing me the way out of my loop.
Now that we have covered the basics, we are ready to move onwards, inwards and upwards to the second level of Maslow’s Hierarchy: Safety and Security. Stay tuned ✨
P.S. I selected the cover image for this week almost two weeks ago based on where I hoped to be on my journey. The colours of yellow and blue illuminating the staircase are coincidental, as my mind map colours were selected 5 months ago. Perhaps my subconscious is leading me even more than I thought 🤔
