How to force yourself into doing something huge

Procrastination - especially with those remarkable things you know you should be doing but somehow can't seem to get quite there - is probably the biggest obstacle you face. (Along with Resistance and the fear of failure and the fear of success and internal conflicts and so on.) And I get it. It's hard to make you do something you so longingly wish to do. That's not sarcasm, by the way; you're most likely to procrastinate doing thigs that are most important to your overall happiness and meaning in life. You fear getting down to it. You fear it won't live up to your expectations, or that you can't do it after all, or that you'll have nothing to work for once you get it done.

But if you never give it a shot, you'll never know what kind of an impact it would have had on your life. And therefore you have to do it. You've got to give it your all.

So how to overcome the fear and stop procrastinating?

It might have been Cal Newport in his book Deep Work who suggested that you do something remarkable - for example, book an expensive hotel room for a week, rent a cabin in the woods, buy a new laptop - and that remarkable investment triggers your subconscious into thinking that now that you've invested, you can't go back; you have to earn it; you have to do the work.

Want to paint, yet don't know how to make yourself start? Buy a high-end brush kit, one you can hardly afford. Want to write that novel? Rent a cottage in the middle of nowhere and stay there for a week with nothing but your laptop. Want to finally learn how to code? Buy an expensive computer.

Once you've invested, you'll have no excuse not to do it.

RK