[atdixon]

Similarly I tried to get myself to exercise for years and years.

I must have discovered the same approach as this author.

I stopped any kind of thinking about it and focused on observing myself drive to the gym, get in the pool, do the strokes, etc.

If my verbal ("thinking") centers of my brain needed to say something I would only let them describe what I was doing ("You are driving to the gym", "you are putting your swimsuit on", etc.)

Never did I let any other "thinking" or "reasoning" enter the picture. It was all observation. I was able to keep an exercise routine for years this way.

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I think her post fails in the last section "Do the easiest part first". This is too much thinking, reasoning and I think will backfire. She should delete this section. I think this idea is hard for people to understand. You want ZERO REASONING to come into the picture when the time comes, not even a shred. Only pure observation of you doing the task.

[tmatthe]

I see your point. I meant it more as a method to quickly get started on a task without having to think too much, but I realize that having to select the easiest part might be too much thinking already. I'll add a footnote for that.

[01100011]

For years I would get up at anywhere from 4:00am to 5:30am depending on the season and go climb a mountain. I'm naturally pretty lazy and a professional procrastinator. What worked was just throwing myself out of bed without thinking. By the time I started to think about what I was doing and started to come up with excuses, I was half way out the door.

If you give yourself a chance to think about it, you probably won't do it.

[mopierotti]

I've also recently started trying to do this: to try to have my conscious mind be in charge of observing/understanding only. It works, but it kind of scares me.

It scares me because it feels similar to the mindset I have when watching a movie. What if I become more interested in the plot than the well-being of the main character?

[atdixon]

Your engagement of the plot in any manipulable way can only come if you are not simply observing. So if you find this happening, you're doing it wrong.

[VladimirGolovin]

> I think her post fails in the last section "Do the easiest part first". This is too much thinking, reasoning and I think will backfire. She should delete this section.

I respectfully disagree. This approach absolutely works for me. I usually start a big difficult task by removing trivial inconveniences (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri...)

For example, when I'm about to write a spec, I first do the easy trivial stuff, such as creating and naming the document. Or, when I write a difficult email, I write a rough version of it in a blunt caveman language.

I'd keep this section intact.

[duopixel]

This resonates a lot with the ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching: https://www.taoistic.com/taoquotes/taoquotes-05-non-action.h...

[FeepingCreature]

Different things work for different people.