cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
How to Motivate Yourself to Do Something Difficult - Life Hacker
The next time you find yourself staring down a difficult, time-consuming or boring task, don’t tell yourself that you’ll do it later. Tell yourself that it’s going to be difficult, time-consuming and boring. Acknowledge that you’re going to hate every minute of it. Let yourself accept that it’s going to suck—and then, surprisingly enough, you might be motivated to get it over with.
A recent study from David J. Hardisty and Elke U. Weber (of the University of British Columbia and Princeton, respectively) reveals that people tend to complete positive experiences as quickly as possible and put off negative experiences for as long as possible—which in itself is kind of a no-brainer—but there’s a bit of an interesting twist to the story. Let me quote directly from Hardisty and Weber’s Impatience and Savoring Vs. Dread:
The next time you find yourself staring down a difficult, time-consuming or boring task, don’t tell yourself that you’ll do it later. Tell yourself that it’s going to be difficult, time-consuming and boring. Acknowledge that you’re going to hate every minute of it. Let yourself accept that it’s going to suck—and then, surprisingly enough, you might be motivated to get it over with.
A recent study from David J. Hardisty and Elke U. Weber (of the University of British Columbia and Princeton, respectively) reveals that people tend to complete positive experiences as quickly as possible and put off negative experiences for as long as possible—which in itself is kind of a no-brainer—but there’s a bit of an interesting twist to the story. Let me quote directly from Hardisty and Weber’s Impatience and Savoring Vs. Dread: