Yesterday's topic was knowing what to do but somehow not getting it done. I will probably revisit this one often because it's one of the harder productivity skills to master. Today I'll start with a quotation from Gregg Kretch posted on the ToDo Institute website:
"...Demons of Inaction. Traditional therapies generally suggest that you must conquer such demons through various strategies such as insight, self-talk, motivation, or increased self-esteem. But Morita Therapy offers a set of tools that is less about conquering and more about co-existing with. Rather than vanquishing your anxiety about the job interview, you simply take your anxiety along for the ride. Western therapy suggests that we must exorcise these demons before we can take action. Morita therapy recommends that we accept their presence, as unpleasant as that may be, and move forward anyway.”
When people procrastinate, they usually have a whole series of thoughts and feelings about the task in question; worrying about failing at it, anxiety about how long it will take or just not being in the mood to do it. All of these feelings and thoughts that we have about the task are just there. They come and they go but it's useless to try to control them or beat them into submission. We don't need to know where they came from or relive our childhoods to defeat them. If we simply accept them, we can stop being burdened by them.In meditation, the idea is not to have a completely blank mind the whole time, it's to greet and then release all the thoughts that come parading through our heads. So it is with our to do lists. Every day I write a blog entry, whether I want to or not :). And then it's done. Once it's done, interestingly, my worries and fears about it evaporate.
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