can i suggest if you succeeded in last weeks 5-minute per day thing, maybe you should try 10min per day.
-mouser
ARRRGGGHH!!! Pressure!!!
But seriously how do you deal with self-induced stress. I find that I avoid things because it causes some stress to me (either through my reactive brain, or outside source). I am a happy-go-lucky, path of least resistance kind of person. (Basically the reactive brain is firmly in charge!).
It is the goal that maybe causes the stress!.... i think thats why the best way to do things, is like others have already said, to
trick yourself
.
Another thing I've found, is that some things I can do when a friend of mine does it, and i wouldn't do it if i were alone... i.e. that friend reduces my resistance to
0!I think that's because i enjoy being with that friend, no matter what we are doing.
It seems like this whole experiment is
lacking a reward mechanism to reward the person for accomplishing the tasks. Because it is the rewards at the end that motivate you again in the future...
==
i propose that dc implement a reward system for the GTDs.. (maybe this should go in a new thread?)
A simple reward system: Smiley faces.
Each time a person finishes their assigned task, they get a smiley face or a good job added to their nick/page/or someplace else (similar to the ranks that each user has).
They should then be able to see that everytime they login or see a post or something... hmmm... maybe is should be on the bottom or top of all pages they visit at DC! ( a simple PHP code to fetch a database value for a userid and put that number of smiley faces on the header and/or footer should do the trick!, for efficiency you could save that value to a cookie..., now to help reduce the resistance somebody should just put the code for that in a post below.).
Inevitably, we'd like to compare ourselves! However it can be very discouraging to see people who are doing really well!, so i propose that we can have a page that shows your position and 5 above you and 10 below you... (but we shouldn't tell them we are doing this, i.e. a trick!
). This well hopefully help motivate them, seeing they are in the top third... and maybe eventually they'll be in the top spot! (or maybe gain a level after they move 5 spots???)
This concept is quite common and usually observed in homework papers... and someone has to give it to you... the recognition is what people like! (granted this won't help lurkers, but maybe it will give them an incentive?) You will probably need to create a seperate thread where people post their accomplishments and are "rewarded" with the smilies/badge/GTD icon/whatever/you get the idea...
I also remember seeing something similar to this on a board once, where you could click "Thank You" and the post creator would get those thanks or something., maybe it could also work similar to that concept...
