Leonard Ng

A Passionate Calm

A blog about finding your balance in an unbalanced world.

Horror: The Ultimate Procrastination Inducer

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Image by Krzysztof Krupa.
Image by Krzysztof Krupa.

Have you ever felt that you simply can’t get started or simply can’t focus your attention on a specific task?

It’s like the task has a force field around it, a sort of deflector shield that keeps moving you away on a tangent to go start doing something else.

This task could be anything.

It could be writing a report, preparing a lesson, filing your taxes, crafting an ad, going for a run, killing a roach, reading a textbook, sending an email, making a phone call, filling out a form, cleaning your kitchen.

It could be a big project that feels too large to tackle, or a small project that requires a significant mental shift from what you’ve been doing.

Whatever it is, it feels like the task is beyond you. You procrastinate like mad. It escapes you, it deflects you, you’re completely paralysed when you try to deal with it, your brain somehow seems to shut down and stop working.

And whenever you try to get it done you always seem to wind up doing something completely unrelated instead.

This happens over and over again, becoming increasingly traumatic each time.

I have a name for this state of affairs.

I call it horror.

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Why You Fall Sick the Minute Your Vacation Begins

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Image by Benjamin Combs.
Image by Benjamin Combs.

It happens over and over again:

The work is done, the loose ends are tied up, and all your responsibilities have been handed over. You’ve been working extra hard and you’ve had to put in some extra hours over the last couple of weeks to get it all settled — but it’s all totally worth it, because now you’re on vacation!

And then you get sick.

You get a fever. Your nose drips. Your throat gets sore. Your allergies act up.

All you want to do is lie in bed and be grumpy all day.

This sucks.

If you’re one of those people with a tendency to get sick the moment you take a break from work, this post is for you.

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How to Be Mindful When You Don’t Have Time

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hawk
Image by Adrian Kirby.

Meditation is good, but you don’t practise it.

You’re too busy, or you have too many things to do, or you’re always in a hurry to get somewhere, or you’re too tired at the end of the day.

And even when you do sit down to try and empty your mind, you feel a massive sense of guilt about everything else you ought to be doing instead.

(Oddly enough, sitting still for 15 minutes feels like a giant waste of time, while 15 minutes spent on social media doesn’t…

…because one forces you to pay painful attention to the messed-up inside of your head, while the other lets you take refuge in comforting distraction.)

Whatever your reasons, it all boils down to one thing:

You don’t have time.

So here are three ways to remain mindful even when you’re on the go — quick check-ins that will bring you back to the present moment and allow you to centre yourself before your next activity.

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What to Do Before You Burn Out

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Image by typographyimages.
Image by typographyimages.

You know what it feels like. You dread going to work. You feel tired all the time. You get upset about little things like people not saying hello to you in the morning.

You’re far too busy and overloaded to get the job done right, so you’re just phoning it in. You find it hard to focus. You stare into space a lot.

You used to love your job and you worked very hard at it. Now it seems like work never ends. It’s all-consuming. You no longer have time for former friendships and hobbies.

You feel like you no longer care about anything anymore.

All you want to do is escape.

And you hate it.

Welcome to Burnout

What is burnout, anyway? Here’s my definition:

Burnout is what happens after a period when your energy expenditure has been consistently greater than your ability to recover, draining your reserves to the point where you have no energy left.

That is, you’ve been draining the tank for too long and now you’re running on empty.

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The Levers of Optimism: How to Become More Optimistic

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glasses cat
Image by Octavio Fossatti.

Previously I talked about how both optimism and pessimism can be useful to you, depending on the circumstances you find yourself in.

But is it really possible to alter the way you see the world quickly and easily?

The answer is yes.

Pessimism and optimism are not a part of your genetic makeup. They are learned responses based on your environment, your family, and your experiences while you were growing up.

And if they are learned responses, then they can be unlearned and relearned.

At the very least it’s possible to adjust your interpretations of events, making them less pessimistic and more optimistic (or the other way around, if that’s what you prefer).

To understand how this can be done, let’s take a look at the dimension of optimism and pessimism called explanatory style.

What’s Your Explanatory Style?

Explanatory style has to do with how we explain and interpret the events of our lives, both good and bad.

(Good events are events that we want to have more of in our lives, while bad events are events that we don’t want to have.)

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