Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You

You need not be as avid an X-Men fan to use this method for your own fears. Think of something you’ve been putting off due to self-doubt: taking up a new hobby, or perhaps launching a side hustle. Now, identify an alter ego who would have no trouble with it. Who embodies the qualities you want to have, qualities like confidence, bravery, determinat

So how can we get into the habit of naming our fears – and so learning to process them? One method involves asking yourself a few questions. When you’re procrastinating, say to yourself, ‘What am I afraid of?’ Our core vulnerabilities and insecurities are often at the heart of procrastination. To work through them, we have to first identify them.

If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it.

You might even want to use a SMART goal for your long-term objective, but a NICE goal for the here and now.

second group was given the Fitbit and a series of prompts, starting with a request to explain when they would add steps to their day. Every evening from then on, they were emailed with a request to review their schedules for the following day and identify the time slot when they could commit to the activity.

By adding a side quest to your day, you create space for curiosity, exploration and playfulness – and could discover something amazing and totally unexpected along the way.

Everywhere from schools to juvenile detention centres to the military, people who are given negative labels are much more likely to repeat troublesome behaviours. The labels we give ourselves, Becker showed, affect our behaviour. Becker called his insight ‘labelling theory’,2 and it suggests that labels become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fortunately, the power of all three emotional blockers can be reduced. In the pages that follow, we’ll explore how precisely these negative feelings affect us and sap our energy.

What would this look like if it were fun? The first answer came to me immediately: if this were fun, there would be music. I realised that memorising tedious biochemistry pathways magically became a lot more interesting with the Lord of the Rings soundtrack playing through my headphones.

This study hints at a powerful way to see our fears for what they really are. The goal here is not to stop your amygdala from working completely (which would dramatically increase the chances of you being hit by a truck). Instead, it’s to recognise when an amygdala hijack is happening.