When You Try to Force Yourself to Work, Things Go Horribly Wrong
Here's what to do instead.
The navy seal work ethic is wrong.
Forcing yourself to work when you don’t want to is a bad idea. You end up desperately looking for a distraction to whisk you away into the clouds. Phones make distracting yourself from working easy.
We disguise our desire to cradle our phone like a baby and escape doing the work as an urgent task. It’s not.
I’ve tried to force myself to work lately. It wasn’t a success. So I stopped forcing myself and the difference felt incredible.
Your brain is trying to tell you something
Not wanting to work is tied to a deeper problem. In my case, the overwhelm of not working a 9-5 job takes a lot of getting used to.
The fear of going back to the cubicle is real.
Then there’s marriage. I get married soon. You know, the whole, “till death do us part.” I’m scared to get married. Any contract you sign that lasts until you die is naturally frightening. I start thinking about my death day. The sadness of the human condition sets in. I begin having regrets. I start thinking about productivity way too much.
These two reasons sabotage my workday. So I leaned into why I’ve been trying to force myself to work, and uncovered the likely causes. Now I can move forward and work on those two fears.
Fear is natural.
Ignoring fear is unnatural.
When you ignore fear for long enough, it starts to show up in your work.
The superpower hack to use when your work sucks
I found an idea on Twitter that will help your work feel effortless again.
But what do you do on days when you are not feeling the creative spark? Change your environment.
Go for a walk. Read a blog. Read a book. Go to the gym. Get the blood flowing toward the brain. Working out can do wonders for your mental state.
What if that does not work? I want to give you my secret. How do I write content continually? This may sound silly but I want this to stick in your mind. I believe it to be true more than anything: Simply, have fun.
Writer's block doesn’t exist when you are having fun.
– The Art of Purpose on Twitter
The first step is to task-switch. Maybe reading instead of writing is better right now. The second step is to change your mental state. But there’s one technique I love more. Habits are worshiped as the holy grail of self-improvement.
Changing environments is the real life hack.
For example, bloggers who write on a laptop versus a tablet have an entirely different experience. You can change the device you write on to feel differently about work. If work gets stale you can change environment too.
I’m thinking of working out of a co-working space to see if it makes me write differently. There will be others sharing the space. The kitchen conversations may spark ideas. I may find cool people in a co-working space to interview for articles or get advice from.
Then there are the tough days. If nothing is working you can simply change your environment. Leave your office and work from a park. It’s hard to be pissed off about work when you’re surrounded by smiling puppies, green grass and tall trees. Then if things go really nuts you can always take a short vacation to a whole new postcode. Your brain feels different when you leave your hometown. Your brain tells you something has changed, so whatever problem you face changes too.
Bottom Line
Don’t try and force yourself to work. It’s a sign something is wrong. Think deeply about what fears you currently have and you’ll likely find the cause of avoiding work.
Then change your environment to change your work.'
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