Do you know that urge that awakens inside you that keeps you from doing what you should be doing?
Everyone knows it. You know you need or want to do something, but you don’t feel like getting to work. It’s those moments when you need to finish writing something, but suddenly you think you have to clean your room first. Or you think that you just scroll through social media for a few minutes before you get to work, and hours later, you still haven’t gotten the job done.
At some point, though, depending on how urgent it is, you have to do it. For instance, you have to finish your thesis, so you eventually go to work and finish it.
But why is it so challenging to get the work completed? Why couldn’t you just get the job done earlier? Why at the last minute?
In the book The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle, Steven Pressfield calls the reason we don’t do what we want “resistance.” He says resistance is like the dark cloud that hangs over us and prevents us from seeing the light.
It seems like resistance is annoying and stupid; why couldn’t you do something in the first place if you end up doing it anyway. Suppose resistance holds you back from something you don’t need to do, but you want to do, such as starting a side business or writing on the Internet. In that case, resistance keeps you from achieving your dream life. So I think resistance can make or break a life. It’s solely up to you whether you overcome it or not. It may be hard, but great things are waiting on the other side.
Combating Resistance
There are many reasons for resistance: the tasks seem too complex or difficult, you’re uncomfortable sharing your work online, or the fruits of your labor are still a long way off. But there are also many ways to combat resistance.
The 5 second rule
There is The 5 second rule by Mel Robbins. It states that when resistance arises, you should start working on the thing within 5 seconds. The technique is meant to reinforce an impulse to move from thought to action before objections prevent it.
Brick after brick
Another tactic is to break the large, complex goal into smaller pieces and then work on them. That way, you can see your progress, and you are not afraid of the big, audacious goal. Will Smith begins his memoir WILL with a story about this point. The bottom line is if you’re building a wall, don’t focus on the big wall you need to build focus on one brick. Every day you just need to lay another brick. Just lay the brick as best you can. Do it consistently, no matter what the circumstances are, all you have to do is lay another brick. After some time, you have built a wall.
WOOP
Then there is the science-based mental strategy WOOP. I heard about it some time ago, but this week I got a magazine from my health insurance company where one article about WOOP caught my attention.
So I went to the health insurance website and read the longer article. Since I’m in the process of transforming my life, I thought this strategy might be useful to help me work on the Vision AI app I’m developing.
WOOP is a method to help you achieve your goals. It stands for wish-outcome-obstacle-plan.
To do a WOOP, you need to take time for yourself, go to a quiet place. It takes about 10 minutes. You can find audio sessions to guide you through the WOOP session.
So a WOOP session goes through each of the four parts.
Wish
First, you need to come up with a wish. What do you want to achieve? What is the most important desire in your personal/professional life or relationships?
Choose a wish that is challenging for you but that you can accomplish in a specific time frame. You can think about a time frame for accomplishing your wish, but you don’t need a time frame.
Outcome
Then think about the best outcome? What would be the best, the best outcome in fulfilling your wish? How would you feel about the fulfillment of your wish?
Now take a moment to imagine the outcome. Try to really feel like you have achieved your goal.
Obstacle
Next, you need to identify your obstacle. You can ask yourself what is it within you that is holding you back from fulfilling your desire. What is it within you that is standing in your way? What is your main inner obstacle?
Now take a moment and imagine your obstacle. Imagine how the obstacle occurs and how it feels.
Plan
Finally, you need to come up with an if-then plan to make your wish a reality.
Think about what you can do to overcome your obstacle. What actions can you take or what thought can help you overcome the obstacle?
It’s best to come up with a few actions.
Then you can design your plan.
IF OBSTACLE, THEN I WILL ACTIONS
How I use those techniques
So how do I use these three tactics to work on my goals and fight resistance?
I think it’s generally essential to know your vision, or more simply, to understand why you want to achieve that goal. If you don’t know why you are doing it, resistance will eventually be stronger than your desire and you will inevitably give up.
My goal right now is to develop the Vision AI app. But because it’s something I want to do, not something I have to do, it’s hard to stay motivated. Every now and then, I don’t feel like working and get distracted by social media or other pointless things.
That’s why I use WOOP first to define my wish and my plan.
My wish is to build the app and to make it measurable, my wish is to earn €100 with this app by December 31, 2021.
The outcome is that I made some money all by myself, which makes me grateful and happy that I am able to create value for other people.
The obstacle is resistance; specifically, resistance shows up as the urge to do something else, distracting myself from work that needs to be done. Another point of view is that I don’t get an immediate reward for working on the app, so I get demotivated.
My plan is to apply the 5 second rule, which means that if I feel like I need to do something else, I get to work within 5 seconds. Another action is to think about why I am doing this in the first place so that I connect with my vision.
This is the concrete plan:
IF resistance arises, THEN I WILL start working within 5 seconds and I think about my vision to remind myself why I am doing this.
Now we have a plan to overcome our inner obstacle. But what about the other technique?
Building the app and making money with it is a bigger goal, so we should break the goal into smaller parts. For me, that means defining the functionality I want the app to have. Then to plan what I want to implement within a week (I use Scrum, a project planning method, to do this in a more structured way).
With this, we are ready to set one stone at a time, but what to do when resistance comes again?
We use the WOOP based plan. And what is important is that we actually follow the plan within 5 seconds as suggested by the 5 second rule.
I hope these tactics help you think about what you want and make it happen.
Best
Nic