Shaima

“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.”
― Ali Abdaal, Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You

“This is a little like the sensation of procrastinating. Often, the reason we don’t make a start is because we don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place – a mystifying fog has set in around us. I call it the fog of uncertainty.”
― Ali Abdaal, Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You

“You can apply this approach to almost any question. Take learning French. Ask yourself, what’s the purpose? Are you trying to understand complex nineteenth-century realist novels? Or are you just trying to survive your upcoming visit to Paris? Next, work through what implications that has for the process. How are you going to learn the language – are you going to use Duolingo or take language classes or just watch lots of 1950s French cinema?”
― Ali Abdaal, Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You

“When you catch yourself catastrophising in this way, try to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. With the right toolkit, we can come to realise things aren’t as bad as they seem – and so the fear becomes less intense. The scientific name for this process is ‘cognitive reappraisal’: changing the interpretation of a situation so that we feel better emotionally. The main goal of cognitive reappraisal is to shift our perspective on an event, thought or feeling, allowing us to experience a more positive emotional response. A simple way to put cognitive reappraisal into practice is to remind yourself that the thing you’re feeling so bad about probably won’t matter that much in the future. You can do this by asking yourself the following three questions, which add up to what I call the 10/10/10 rule.”
― Ali Abdaal, Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You