A Mindful Approach to Tackling those Yucky Tasks You’ve Been Putting Off
For many of us, procrastination is a problem. This can take many forms, but we’ll focus on relatively simple tasks that you’ve been putting off long-term.
Epistemic status: speculative, n=1 stuff.
Yucky Tasks
Yucky tasks may be thought of several ways:
things you’ve been putting off
tasks which generate complex, negative emotions.
that vague thing that you know is there but it’s hard to get a grip on and you’re all like uhggggg
The connection to EA?
EA is not about following well-trodden paths. We’re all trying to do something different and new, and stepping out of comfort zones.
donating big sums of money to unusual causes
seeing the world through an unusual lens
reaching out to people we don’t know
planning our careers and our finances
and more
all while staying organized in our personal lives
For some of us, we may be exceptionally talented or productive in some domains, but find some of the tasks elusive or hard to get a grip on.
So what happens?
Most commonly avoidance. This can go on until there’s some kind of shift: maybe we avoid something until it becomes super urgent, or maybe we just wait until our feelings around it become clearer.
Forcing ourselves to jump right in, tackling the task “forcefully” using all our available willpower. Though this can get the job done it can be unpleasant and unsustainable—we’ll remember all that negativity for the next time, and thus make the next task more difficult. Especially disruptive when working with others.
What’s an alternative?
This talk is about discovering and mapping our mental landscapes surrounding a problem. Tasks, and their associated thoughts and emotions, can be mapped out in a rich web. Often, different sub-tasks will be associated with different emotions, and seeing this laid out can help with getting our emotional bearings, as well as practical problem-solving.
The result is unpacking a complex, muddied anxiety or resentment into something cleaner and truer. We’re still at early stages but we’re hoping to build this technique out into something robust that can help those of us in the EA movement overcome the blocks to personal effectiveness.
A Mindful Approach to Tackling those Yucky Tasks You’ve Been Putting Off
For many of us, procrastination is a problem. This can take many forms, but we’ll focus on relatively simple tasks that you’ve been putting off long-term.
Epistemic status: speculative, n=1 stuff.
Yucky Tasks
Yucky tasks may be thought of several ways:
things you’ve been putting off
tasks which generate complex, negative emotions.
that vague thing that you know is there but it’s hard to get a grip on and you’re all like uhggggg
The connection to EA?
EA is not about following well-trodden paths. We’re all trying to do something different and new, and stepping out of comfort zones.
donating big sums of money to unusual causes
seeing the world through an unusual lens
reaching out to people we don’t know
planning our careers and our finances
and more
all while staying organized in our personal lives
For some of us, we may be exceptionally talented or productive in some domains, but find some of the tasks elusive or hard to get a grip on.
So what happens?
Most commonly avoidance. This can go on until there’s some kind of shift: maybe we avoid something until it becomes super urgent, or maybe we just wait until our feelings around it become clearer.
Forcing ourselves to jump right in, tackling the task “forcefully” using all our available willpower. Though this can get the job done it can be unpleasant and unsustainable—we’ll remember all that negativity for the next time, and thus make the next task more difficult. Especially disruptive when working with others.
What’s an alternative?
This talk is about discovering and mapping our mental landscapes surrounding a problem. Tasks, and their associated thoughts and emotions, can be mapped out in a rich web. Often, different sub-tasks will be associated with different emotions, and seeing this laid out can help with getting our emotional bearings, as well as practical problem-solving.
The result is unpacking a complex, muddied anxiety or resentment into something cleaner and truer. We’re still at early stages but we’re hoping to build this technique out into something robust that can help those of us in the EA movement overcome the blocks to personal effectiveness.
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(I would like to be part of the late session)