Looking for people willing to do a simple exercise

[Paul Keith]

(Both quotes from Wikipedia:)

Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy intended to treat anxiety disorders and involves the exposure to the feared object or context without any danger in order to overcome their anxiety.[1][2] Procedurally it is similar to the fear extinction paradigm in rodent work.[3][4] Numerous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in the treatment of anxiety disorders such as PTSD and specific phobias.[5]

Exposure-based therapy may be effective in preventing the progression from acute stress disorder to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a report in the June 2008 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.[6]

It is also very closely related to exposure and response prevention, a method widely used for the treatment of obsessive–compulsive disorder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml9ViuZ5j3w

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is a treatment method available from behavioral psychologists and cognitive-behavioral therapists for a variety of anxiety disorders, especially Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is an example of an Exposure Therapy.

The method is predicated on the idea that a therapeutic effect is achieved as subjects confront their fears and discontinue their escape response.[1] The behavioral process is called Pavlovian extinction or respondent extinction [2] An example would be of a person who repeatedly checks light switches to make sure they're turned off. They would carry out a program of exposure to their feared stimulus (leaving lights switched on) while refusing to engage in any safety behaviors. It differs from Exposure Therapy for phobia in that the resolution to refrain from the avoidance response is to be maintained at all times and not just during specific practice sessions. Thus, not only does the subject experience habituation to the feared stimulus, they also practice a fear-incompatible behavioral response to the stimulus. While this type of therapy typically causes some short-term anxiety, this facilitates long-term reduction in obsessive and compulsive symptoms.[3]

Recent results (Lovell et al., see below) indicate that ERP can be carried out effectively with minimal face-to-face contact between the therapist and the subject.[4]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5D56Cg7y4I

Exercise:

Replace the definition of productivity on your systems/software with your interpretation of ERP above and measure if you've become more productive/just as productive or less productive. (You don't have to gather data for everything, even 1 or 2 examples on your task list would suffice.)

[Paul Keith]

Someone from subjot expressed difficulty with the exercise above and they haven't confirmed whether my guess as to why they felt the exercise was complex is indeed accurate but I thought for the sake of the lurkers, I'd share that post here:

The #1 dilemma is always how to get a CTA from the general internet populace. This especially applies to someone like me who's a poor communicator and has no academic background. Worse, if CTAs are vast then it feels too open ended.

This leads to dilemma #2: Online surveys asking for people's experiences are not very effective since you can't control the situation and you also can't guarantee that no one is subconsciously lying.

Dilemma #3 makes this worse: Everyone has a different way of applying productivity. Especially personal productivity. Yet that's the element I'm trying to gather here. Global personal productivity experience. At least within the space of who ever wants to participate.

Then there's dilemma #4: What exactly is exposure therapy "specifically". I'm not sure people get that either. I'm not an expert but this reads obvious to me but I can't be sure that people have the same interpretation as me. The easiest instruction then is an open instruction. After all, the important key is not the system. People would obviously feel strongly for each of their preferred systems. The key can't be the ERP either. It's very scenario-centric and yet productivity (esp. systems) aren't. Some have pure paper planners and some have software and some have mixed.

[mwb1100]

What's a "CTA"?  Call to action?

[Paul Keith]

Yep. Subjot's a micro-blogging site so I had to put aside my bias for opting against acronyms. I apologize for not considering people who may not know what CTA means.

I'm also using the term loosely. Not as a marketing concept for those who google for what call to action means.

[iphigenie]

I have heard of a technique which tries to do this via exercise - the idea being that you go on a treadmill and get yourself worked up to a certain level. This way you already have adrenalin up (which comes when in fear too) but also endorphins etc.
Then you do the exposure (object,image, imagination through a scenario) and somehow the physical reactions of fear will be less because your body is already in a positive state of stress. And that can help reprogram the reactions over time, sometimes quite dramatically.

Sounds plausible - won't help if your phobia is a phobia of exercise though

[kfitting]

Is exposure any relation to hormesis http://gettingstronger.org/ ??  The idea that small amounts of stress make your body respond in beneficial ways?

[40hz]

I can't help but sometimes wonder how much more "productive" many people would be in their daily lives if they stopped worrying about productivity systems and just did some work instead?

I've got nothing against notetaking...or organizational systems, or productivity tools. As long as they don't turn into superfluous and never ending preparations to actually do something.

Unfortunately, most people I know that get too far into the "productivity" thing make me think of somebody who wanted to build a cathedral, but ended up so in love with the blueprints and the scaffolding (and talking to the master masons) that the church never got built.

[40hz]

I can't help but sometimes wonder how much more "productive" many people would be in their daily lives if they stopped worrying about productivity systems and just did some work instead?

I've got nothing against notetaking...or organizational systems, or productivity tools. As long as they don't turn into superfluous and never ending preparations to actually do something.

Unfortunately, most people I know that get too far into the "productivity" thing make me think of somebody who wanted to build a cathedral, but ended up so in love with the plans, the scaffolding, and conversing with those übercool master masons, that the church never got built.

[40hz]

I can't help but sometimes wonder how much more "productive" many people would be in their daily lives if they stopped worrying about productivity systems and just did some work instead?

I've got nothing against notetaking...or organizational systems, or productivity tools. As long as they don't turn into superfluous and never ending preparations to actually do something.

Unfortunately, most people I know who get too far into the "productivity" thing make me think of somebody who wanted to build a cathedral, but ended up so in love with the plans, the scaffolding, and conversing with those übercool master masons, that the church never got built.

[Paul Keith]

Is exposure any relation to hormesis http://gettingstronger.org/ ??  The idea that small amounts of stress make your body respond in beneficial ways?

Nope. Different. Exposure is just that. Exposure to show how we've built up irrational fears for phobias.

@40hz:

I can't help but sometimes wonder how much more "productive" many people would be in their daily lives if they stopped worrying about productivity systems and just did some work instead?

I wouldn't. I know others would. That's why I'm obsessed with systems, sometimes people have the ability and they hold themselves back. Sometimes people don't have the ability and they could only work towards what they think they can work on & what breathes life into their everyday and sometimes the latter need actual productivity inducing ways to intentionally get out of a mindset. (instead of hoping for luck to strikes right)

If I can just be "productive" enough so that people won't accuse me of being trolls or misunderstand my words, I would probably get more done for example.

For something grander,

If I can just be "productive" and charismatic enough to change the course of politics in our country so that I don't fall into the pitfall of how politicians use their words to steer the country into the wrong way but at the same time be able to convey my hopes and desires to my fellow countrymen of clues as to where we could start changing our perception of how in a democracy/republic we citizens (no matter how smart or stupid) are the ones who are in control of our country and not as the mythology goes that only politicians have then not only do I not have to obsess over productivity but my country's overall productivity would increase due to a better economy which would lead to more money for better welfare or better opportunities for the people to be more entrepreneurial in their lives.

Of course I could work on more specific areas like speeches or law but our country neither lacks charismatic speakers nor lawyers. Great help they are. Maybe they are not as smart or strategic as other countries but they exist and they can't even give people the confidence or will to understand why a Constitution is not just a subject for them but is supposed to be for everyone and so, as an unproductive person who is just as useless if not even more useless in that area, I take the less walked route in the hopes that maybe in between the scams and the very flawed systems, I could at least find some way to push the outcome of the future closer to a place where the weak can have less barriers to stand shoulder to shoulder with the talented. The good news is that productivity systems are accessible and implementable to everyone who can read no matter how unproductive they are. The bad news is that...well, I'll let my rant below represent the bad news.

Of course the above may be hyperbole, and as I constantly say to myself whenever I wrote posts like the above: I'm at fault for not living and breathing my passions in such a way that everyday I wake up I'm doing something close to what I gave my life unto 24/7

...but I still have to claw at something. Not just for me but for future versions of people who are going to be like me. (Sorry if I said this before in this sub-forum. My passions are redundant I know.)

Unfortunately, most people I know who get too far into the "productivity" thing make me think of somebody who wanted to build a cathedral, but ended up so in love with the plans, the scaffolding, and conversing with those übercool master masons, that the church never got built.

That's not even the surface of it. I'm currently planning to include these points into the system I was writing (though I'm not sure I can write/link them word for word:

Most systems don't know how to fail well.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Failing_badly

Many productivity systems though they claim to be applicable for many areas in people's lives, have a single point of failure:

Most systems asks us to be gatekeepers:

The real problem is that we don't have time to be gatekeepers, that as Clay Shirky posits the filters we've relied on to reduce the information that's out there have broken down, and we're overflowing with content to consume. How do we find the real nuggets out there without spending our days scanning RSS/Twitter/Facebook?

http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/the-new-gatekeepers/

Most systems don't show us how to be great finishers:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/06/how_to_become_a_great_finisher.html

The road to hell may or may not be paved with good intentions, but the road to failure surely is. Take a good look at the people you work with, and you'll find lots of Good Starters — individuals who want to succeed, and have promising ideas for how to make that happen. They begin each new pursuit with enthusiasm, or at the very least, a commitment to getting the job done.

And then something happens. Somewhere along the way, they lose steam. They get bogged down with other projects. They start procrastinating and miss deadlines. Their projects take forever to finish, if they get finished at all.

Does all this sound familiar? Maybe a little too familiar? If you are guilty of being a Good Starter, but a lousy finisher — at work or in your personal life — you have a very common problem. After all, David Allen's Getting Things Done wouldn't be a huge bestseller if people could easily figure out how to get things done on their own.

More than anything else, becoming a Great Finisher is about staying motivated from a project's beginning to its end. Recent research has uncovered the reason why that can be so difficult, and a simple and effective strategy you can use to keep motivation high.

The list goes on and on...

The plans? The scaffolding? That would give too much praise for the way current systems are.

Productivity systems are not even near the blueprint stage.

There's no historical contingency for when a productivity system fails like with what happened with app's experience.

No attempt at analyzing where a system failed.

Just people often saying a system is complicated and being a perfect victim for people who say they have managed to create a workable simpler system this time.

If productivity theories (even sets of ideas, and not just systems) were a drawing class... we would just be at the caveman tug of war stage where Ugg says you just need to draw a circle and Ogg says, No! You need to get a sharper stick to draw a better circle first and the Teachers are going "Here's why making the perfect circle would fulfill your life and here's how to draw a perfect circle so that you can always draw a perfect circle whenever life gives you lemons." and the notetakers and the planners are all software to make it easy for you to keep all those circles in one bag and so you have a handy circle every time you need a circle besides your problem. (Oh and bonus feature, the circle can be checked off!)

...then instead of being deliberate when the ideas fail; something that is crucial to developing and nurturing people even the talented among the populace - Many systems are so high on their own methods that they end up adopting the Law of Attraction as the contingency answer to why something may not be working for someone who deeply wants to get it to work for them (assuming they don't switch to another method)

If you believe and believe and just skim your Weekly Review list, you would finally Get Things Done.

If you believe and believe and just re-write your tasks tomorrow, you will finally Do Things Tomorrow.

If you believe and believe and just write a journal of your tasks, you will finally organize your problems.

If you believe and believe and just let a system make recurring reminders on your calendar, you will finally reach enlightenment.

If you believe and believe and just read three or less tasks today, you will finally be productive.

If you believe and believe and just note down a task and see it when you actually need to do it, you will finally get things organized.

...course no offense to the references. I'm not saying everyone will fail using them. Just that they don't have an answer for when they fail except maybe it's not for you or you're doing it wrong.

In contrast, even a cathedral, may have people inspecting and researching why things failed. No matter how ambitious a cathedral, when built, exists and when failed, would have people looking and checking at the materials.

No one's going to do that for our own implementation of personal productivity systems unless we hire someone to do it and if we have the money to hire someone, chances are we're not as incapable as we think we are. Not only that, just because a system has been built and is working, does not mean we're receiving the full benefits of the system unlike cathedrals.