:::1::: Copyright Zach Browman - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

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2 WARNING: This PDF is for your personal use only. You may NOT Give Away, Share Or Resell This Intellectual Property In Any Way All Rights Reserved Copyright 2012 Zach Browman. All rights are reserved. You may not distribute this report in any way. You may not sell it, or reprint any part of it without written consent from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. :::2:::

3 Anxiety and Overwhelm Cause number four is anxiety and overwhelm. A friend of mine rides horses quite a bit, a few times a week competes and that sort of thing so I called her to make sure that my horse metaphors were all right. It s like, Would a horse chase a ball? No? Okay, I won t use that. Apples? Okay, they like apples. She told me was that one thing that will startle a horse is when the lighting changes. If it s dark and then they pass into a place that s light or vice versa, they ll get really spooked. They ll get anxious. Horses, like people, when they get anxious they tend to flee, they tend to freeze, and they tend to not move forward. Here s a possibly familiar situation: Have you been behind your taxes before? I ve put off my taxes for years sometimes, not because I owed money. That wasn t the issue. It was just getting it done that I didn t want to do. The longer I went not doing it, the more anxiety I felt even thinking about it. The Anxiety>Avoidance Cycle What happens is you think about it I should do my taxes and you get this horrible feeling, so you distract yourself. You call a friend, you get on the Internet. What happens when you distract yourself? You get relief. That relief is rewarding and that keeps the cycle of procrastination. This is the avoidanceanxiety cycle. This is a huge cause of procrastination. Anxiety Avoidance :::3:::

4 We feel overwhelmed and we escape that feeling of being overwhelmed by not thinking about it. But then of course, the next time we think about it, our taxes are even later, work is piled up even more, we feel even more anxiety but we can always call a friend or check Facebook or watch Breaking Bad. This is again another reason why increasing the pressure on yourself to get things done doesn t really work in addition to what we talked about before, the fact that it draws your attention to the threat rather than the task that you need to carry out. Mental Set I have a sequence of numbers. You ve got to write them down and figure out what the pattern is: 8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 3, 2. Take a moment and find the pattern. How are these numbers ordered? (*the answer is at the bottom of the page) Typically, when we re given the set of numbers and told to find the pattern, it s mathematical. That s the way we approach the problem. This is what s called mental set. We have a set way of approaching problems. The problem is that the more anxious we feel, the stricter our mental set. In other words, given the right amount of time and there are no stakes, you d figure this out much more easily than if you had to figure it out in five minutes or somebody would do horrible things. Stress, anxiety, and threats: they shut down higher functioning. They make you rely on old ways of thinking and they make it harder to think. Again, anxiety, punishment, threats they don t work. *Answer: These numbers are listed alphabetically. :::4:::

5 The first source of anxiety is overwhelm The simplest way to combat overwhelm is to break tasks down into as many manageable pieces as you can. Even just thinking about doing your taxes may seem overwhelming. Write down What individual steps do I need to take to get that done? I need to get the forms. Since the tax year was two years ago, I can t get the forms, I have to have them mailed to me or I have to print them out in the computer. In order to print them out, I need to go to Kinko s or buy a printer. Then I need to figure out what forms I need, what other forms apart from the standard form. Then I need to collect my receipts, I need to get my T4s, etc. You add up all these things. When you see them all lined up like that, it becomes much more manageable. Now you just need to execute it. What happens is we tend to not follow the thought through. We just start thinking I need the forms. To get the forms, I need to print them. To print them, I need to I give up. We sort of fizzle out. Oh my God. When I get to printing them, is there going to be another thing underneath that I have to do? You line it all up. Then of course, you don t take on too much. You don t say, I m going to do all my taxes this weekend, or something like that. You schedule it. Tuesday I am going to go to Kinko s and print out the forms. Wednesday, I m going to gather up all my receipts. On Thursday, I m going to etc. Breaking it down really makes it easier to envision what you need to do when you look and you break it down like that. :::5:::

6 It s also easier to face anxiety or do something that s unpleasant if you know you only have to do it for a short amount of time. That s another reason why the 3x15 works. If you're feeling really anxious about work and you've been avoiding it for a long time as I had been, I said, I m going to try and do 3x15, but let me just try the first 15 and see how it goes because I can do 15 minutes. I really don t feel like working right now, but I can do 15 minutes. Then after 15 minutes, that bell goes off. By that time, my motivation has improved and I could keep going. Tell yourself, I just need to get started The hardest part of exercising is getting to the gym. Once you're there, you have the smells of the gym, you've got your clothes - and those associations put you in the mood to work out. There s nothing else to do there but work out, so you work out. Have you experienced that? The hardest part is getting started. Tell yourself you don t need to do everything today. You just need to get started. Fear of Structure Are you afraid of structure and having an overly structured life? This is definitely me. One of the reasons why I didn t really get on top of procrastination for a while was I thought, If I get on top of procrastination, I m going to have to work more. I don t want to spend eight or nine hours a day working. I won t be able to nap when I want. I had a huge fear of structure. As I said, this is one reason why I say schedule only a few sessions a day. I started this whole thing thinking, I still fear that. I still don t want to spend all my time working, so if I go to the gym for an hour and I work for two hours, essentially I have the rest of the day off to enjoy myself. :::6:::

7 Of course, what happened was work became a really enjoyable part of my day and I wanted to keep going. Now I don t see that structure as containing me. In fact, it frees me in a way because it sets boundaries around what I m doing. For the next few hours, I can sit in this coffee shop, create, get things done, and move things forward without having to check my . Think of it as freeing. Structure can be very freeing. I mentioned that I lived in a monastery for a while and we had a very rigorous schedule. We d be up around 4:30am. It was extremely structured. We d chant, we d meditate, we d have breakfast and morning meeting, then we d work, we d mediate again, then lunch, a short half-hour break, more work, a two-hour break, meditation, and then bed. It was a very, very structured day. It worked out to about four hours of meditation a day. I was having difficulty at first. When I was brand new there, it was really rigorous and meditation the way we re doing it can be quite painful to sit cross-legged in the position for long periods of time. I felt really oppressed by the schedule. I wanted to break free of it. I started doing something interesting. I started doing extra. I started meditating more. I had all the structure, and then at night rather than going to bed or having a snack, I d meditate an extra hour. When I started doing that, I felt like the structure supported me rather than limiting me. It s an interesting shift. My goal then was to meditate more deeply, and the structure made it easier for me to do that, rather than my goal being to escape that and it making it more difficult to do that. We talked about this before, but one of the things about punishment is that we do the minimum to avoid it, whereas with reward or positive reinforcement, we ll do more to get more. I mentioned going on the treadmill. I more go on the elliptical machine. One thing I don t like about the treadmill is you set the button and then you re trying to escape falling (one way to look at it). It s setting the pace and I m trying to :::7:::

8 escape that happening. It s an uncomfortable feeling, as opposed to with some other machines where each step or each thing I m doing I m making it happen and deciding the speed. I do more because I m seeking the reward of how good I m going to feel afterwards, rather than just trying to escape. Scheduling your work day When you re scheduling tasks, there are a couple of philosophies on this. Just getting started is important. One philosophy says you should schedule the most unpleasant task first. I ll use going to the gym as an example again. I use this philosophy when I go to the gym. I do cardio first, and then I do some weights, and then I do some stretching. Then I get to pick up my son and we walk home. Each time I finish one of those things, it s a reward to go onto the next one. The hardest part is over; now I get to do something. When I finish cardio, because it s the hardest part, everything else really feels easy. Weights are just enjoyable, and then when those are done, stretching is just really relaxing and enjoyable. Of course when that s done, walking home is really easy. But, in the other order, if I did stretching, then weights, then cardio, as soon as I finish, in a way I m being punished because now I get to do something even more unpleasant. It becomes punishing. Then the overall experience of being there for 90 minutes isn t as good. It s not remembered as pleasantly than if you do it the other way around. One thing I do for work is I schedule the task that s most conducive to sustained focus first. I may have a number of things to do and one of them involves making a lot of phone calls or s. There has to be lots of switching of tasks. Another is I have to write a section of a book. I ll schedule the writing first because that gets me into the mode. Then I ll go onto the pleasantness. :::8:::

9 Fear of Failure Fear of failure we all have. The first key is to recognize it and know that you have it. It s the natural product of doing something that you ve never done before, taking initiative, being creative. Ask yourself: what s the worst-case scenario? What s the worst that can reasonably happen? If I start a business, nobody buys what I m selling and it fails, that probably won t feel very good and that can cause some process. But within six months or a year, I ll move on to something else. I ll learn something from it. I m going to follow it through. It s not going to be the end of the world. Go there and realize it probably won t be that bad and look at the best-case scenario. What are the possibilities that can happen here? What am I possibly missing out on? Wayne Gretzky s famous quote is You miss 100% of the shots you don t take. There s another aspect to fear of failure cognitive-behavioral therapists call personalization, which means taking more responsibility for the outcome than is really warranted. I had a sales job and had sales anxiety. Call reluctance is what they call it. You don t want to pick up the phone and cold call people and you don t want to walk into businesses. I was going door-to-door to businesses selling advertising for the phone book. I was really reluctant to sell. I was talking to a hypnotherapist and I asked, Do you ever talk to people about that? He said, Yeah, I tell them that you can t make anybody buy anything. You just go in and present an offer to them and it s their choice whether they take it or not. :::9:::

10 I certainly know if you re starting a business or writing a book, you re marketing and doing sales, we tend to take responsibility for what other people do. Ultimately, all you can do is put it out there and people will choose. I felt that was really liberating for me to let go of that responsibility to make somebody buy something and realize that some people are just not going to buy, some people were going to buy before I even walked in the door, some people are having a bad day. if you re writing a book, some people may not like it. You might get some good feedback and be able to write one that people like better next time or your business. Take that pressure off of yourself. Of course you want to do your best and you want to succeed, but it s not 100% under your control. Keep that in mind. Prioritizing: The order in which you do things can have a big affect on how easy it is to get started, how easily you find your focus, and how rewarding the whole experience is. Different people find different approaches work for them. Let s find the one that s right for you. List all the activities you have to do day-to-day (ie. writing blog posts, answering customer s, website maintenance, etc.) Rank them from most, to least flow inducing - which ones have the most continuity to which ones require a lot of jumping around. (For example, writing has a lot of continuity, researching online requires jumping around) :::10:::

11 Now rank them from easiest (zero resistance to doing) to hardest (lots of resistance to doing) If you have difficulty just getting started, for one week, start with the easiest one first for one week. If you have no difficulty getting started but tend to avoid certain tasks on your list, start every day with those ones for one week. If you have difficulty getting focused, start with the most flow inducing first for one week. :::11:::

Worksheets :::1::: Copyright Zach Browman - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Worksheets :::1::: Copyright Zach Browman - All Rights Reserved Worldwide Worksheets :::1::: WARNING: This PDF is for your personal use only. You may NOT Give Away, Share Or Resell This Intellectual Property In Any Way All Rights Reserved Copyright 2012 Zach Browman. All rights