The Path of Least Resistance and Making It Work For You.

If you’re anything like me, the usual “just get it done” or “you can do it” accompanied by a photograph of a smiling model ‘achieving their dreams’ type motivation doesn’t really work but can also feel very empty and fake.

So let me try to guide you through what does work for me, starting with how my problem manifests.

Indecision and procrastination are two subjects I’m far too familiar with and I fall into their trap almost daily. I’ll wake up, decide today is the day, start my plan of attack and then come up with a hundred reasons why I’m not quite ready to do it. “It” can be anything from starting a project at home to all the usual things like exercise and doing paperwork. Even now I know I’m going to second guess everything I write today in case it could be a little bit better or be written in a way that makes it easier to read or understand.

I believe my issue is that I always want to take the path of least resistance and that may or may not be due to my past. Having worked a job I hated for almost two decades, and I deliberately use the word ‘hate’, my will to do anything I don’t enjoy has been damaged to say the least.
The problem then is that I don’t enjoy anything unless I’ve figured out exactly how to do it so that when the time comes, it’s executed with the kind of precision you can only really dream of, and in such a way that it goes smoothly and without any problems that could send me off course.

This is unrealistic and I know it.

Meticulous planning is therefore essential from my point of view so that potential pitfalls are identified and eliminated before the process of getting something done has even begun. Like many other people I’ll find so many problems with any given task that there seems to be no end to it. I’m actually very good at problem solving so eventually I’ll work out a way around each issue in my mind before realising that I’ve spent hours doing so and there isn’t time to start the project.

Newsflash: There IS time, I just don’t want to do it in case there’s a problem that I haven’t seen yet.

So I put the next step off until tomorrow, content with the fact that the planning stage is basically over and tell myself “that’s enough for one day”.
Then I go and do everything else I wanted to do in the first place. Enjoyable things, but mostly non productive.

For context here I’m now self employed. I was able to leave my old job but if I live to be a hundred years old it will have taken me nearly a fifth of my life to do it and that’s too much for my liking. I also do the bare minimum which I know is asking for trouble but I just about make ends meet, so as far as life is concerned, I’m able to keep ticking over and that’s all you really have to do. As long as the basics are covered, such as food, you’ll be okay, right?
That is the root of my problem. The path of least resistance I mentioned earlier. Currently I can live without doing anything more, so why bother? If I don’t need to do anything extra, then taking days to do a relatively simple task shouldn’t matter too much should it?

Yet I hate that it happens.

I’m caught between my desire to achieve and my desire to live an easy life. I can imagine that there are many of us who feel the same way.
Achievement takes commitment, but commitment takes hard work and hard work is fine unless you can’t finish it due to unforeseen circumstances, which hinders achievement. So I plan, and plan some more, until I exhaust myself and can’t face the actual project itself.

You might be asking by now why I’m telling you any of this and it’s because I want you to know that you’re not the only one. I’m here to offer my perspective, based purely on my own experience, in case there’s something there amongst my ramblings that can help some of you but also to offer a potential solution that has worked for me recently.

Many of us appear to have struggled with something, or many things, for a long time and it’s ruined our motivation. Now we just want to cruise through life without making things too difficult and we’ve become the “under achievers” we all first heard about when we were at school. The kind of people that have SO much to offer but either don’t realise or just don’t want to go the extra mile to give it.

So how am I fixing it? How do you get around all this, if you do actually want to achieve some degree of your full potential? As cliché as it may sound, you start with the first hurdle, or the first step.

Now other people might tell you that the first hurdle is always the hardest, and from a motivational perspective that makes a lot of sense, but what I’ve found myself is that to begin with, every hurdle is as difficult as the last and then the final hurdles are the hardest. If hurdles are problems, and I’ve already got over the previous ones, then my desire to live an easy life is telling
me to stop because they just keep coming.

So here’s how I deal with that.

In contrast, it may be that the first hurdle is actually the easiest. It’s often the one which requires the least amount of commitment. It’s the first problem you’re going to face, and you’re probably most prepared to deal with that one. In fact, you’ve probably already got over it without knowing because it represents the simple act of deciding that you want to do something in the first place. This realisation is what sets you up to deal with the next hurdle.

There’s a theory that once you’ve actually started a task, it becomes easier to continue. This could be where the idea behind the first hurdle being the hardest came from but I disagree with approaching it that way and would like offer a counter argument which at first may seem similar but has a crucial difference.
For example, you really don’t want to start your housework and it gets to the point where you’ve not done any for a while and you really should. So you set yourself the goal (the first hurdle) of doing a small amount, maybe ten minutes or half an hour at most. Knowing that you have a small amount of time set aside to at least start the task, is easier on your mind and motivation than knowing you have to spend all day doing it. It’s easier to motivate yourself into doing something for a short period of time than it is for a much longer period, and as a result you’re much more likely to actually start.

When you treat the initial problem as the most difficult, you’ll set a goal that is out of your reach and thinking about it will sap your motivation away. “I have to spend all of this afternoon cleaning the house” is much harder to think about than “I’ll just do this little bit for ten minutes.”

Exercise is much the same, and a common one for people to procrastinate on.
You want to get fit but the goal is so far away that it seems like an impossible task. You set yourself the goal of doing an hour a day, five days a week. After day two or three, you don’t want to do it. It’s too much, so you start putting it off until tomorrow again.
Instead, set yourself a much smaller goal. It can be as low as you want. Ten minutes, or even ten seconds. The goal here is to start. Stand up and sit down ten times and it’s better than nothing at all but once you’ve physically started, it’s easier to do it a few more times, maybe even twice as many times, or ten times.

This article itself is another good example. I put it off for weeks, but eventually set myself a goal. I wanted to sit down and write for just a few minutes but after starting, I was able to continue until it was finished. It was easier to motivate myself initially to work for a few minutes rather than an hour or two and once I’d started, the next hurdle was the same, I only needed the motivation to stay for a few more minutes and then a few more. Eventually I’d stayed until it was done.

So in my own mind I used the path of least resistance to my advantage. I took the easiest goal I could and just did that. I made the decision to do the bare minimum again, except this time I made it so easy that it became just as easy to carry on.

This can be applied to anything for myself and maybe it can for you too. If we want things to be easy then we’re best off focusing on the easiest solution.
To summarise, reading this article alone is a first step or a first hurdle on the path to dealing with a problem that you know you have. It was so easy, you probably didn’t even realise you’d done it. Telling yourself that the first hurdle is the hardest is actually in some way, preventing you from starting because it’s the hard things that we don’t want to do. Realising that it’s actually been easy and is already done, is what helps you carry on to do the next one.
The last few may still, as with me, feel like the hardest, but you’ll also find that because you’ve started, you can look back and see that you’ve already come far, and consequently you’ll have a much better time finding the motivation for the final push to finish.

So if you’re putting things off regularly for whatever reason, try to remind yourself of what the first real problem was and that you’ve probably already dealt with it. In this way, I hope you can motivate yourself to achieve everything you’ve ever wanted, a bit at a time.

Just remember that many people, myself included, are in the same boat, and because we understand you; we’re all rooting for you.