The procrastination cure you don't want to hear

- I think one of the most common problems that people have

is not that they don't know what to do to dramatically

move their life forward in a substantial way.

You know exactly what you need to do right now.

There's probably something that you've been avoiding

like the plague,

but the problem is not that you don't know what that is.

The problem is that you just can't bring yourself to do it.

And that's the common theme every single day is

that when you sit down to do this thing,

you feel a feeling and it almost seems unfair

how potent this feeling of resistance is

because it's usually only present when you think

about doing things that are genuinely good for you.

So it's like, what's the deal with that?

Why does it seem like life is set up that way?

Wouldn't it be better

if you just actually enjoyed doing difficult things?

Wouldn't it be better

if you actually had the motivation to be creative

or to write a paper or to do your taxes?

You probably want nothing more

than to be someone who genuinely enjoys

and looks forward to doing the things that are good for you,

doing the things that empower you.

Recently I've been thinking.

There is one strategy that I have

that works every single time.

It always makes me do the thing that I need to do.

It's not very flattering. It's not very sexy.

We don't want to believe that this is the answer.

And I feel like there's so much

self-improvement advice out there that

kind of ignores this fundamental, not even tactic,

it's almost a fact of life.

And when we ignore this fact,

we'll try to do little tips and tricks like, oh,

set a timer for five minutes

and just really try, try really hard to do the work,