Why We Avoid Our Most Difficult Work and What to Do About It

This article brings together selected writings by Francis Sopper, CEO of GTD Focus, exploring patterns of reflex, resistance, and rhythm, and what they reveal about how we think, work, and show up.

 

A number of years ago, I was in Hong Kong consulting with a design group, working with a group of young people in a chic modern office. It was mid-afternoon when one guy walked over to share his snack. I recognized a potato chip bag, reached in, and put one in my mouth. All of a sudden, every warning light and buzzer in my brain went off. Just before my gastrointestinal system could reject the offering, I began to understand I was eating a dried fish skin, and managed not to lose my lunch.

 

One of the most profound realizations I’ve had in my career, about myself and about other humans, is how driven we are by reflex. In a setting that would have been at home in Silicon Valley, my mouth encountered something out of place. It wasn’t that I’d never eaten crispy fish skin before. It arrived in a context where I was fully cognitively primed for something else, and the dissonance triggered a reflexive response. Fortunately, recognition arrived just in time.

 

What’s significant is that we have smaller versions of this reaction all the time, reflexive rejections of the unfamiliar and unaccustomed. And by contrast, the art of the con is to make the dangerous look safe and familiar. What we call free will often kicks in after our reflexes have already chosen for us.

 

I don’t consider myself a bad person because my body had a strongly negative response to a tasty and nutritious snack presented in an unfamiliar context. It’s hardwired to protect itself. At the same time, it makes me wonder what other invisible biases might be keeping me away from good things. The important thing is that the negative bias I reflexively generated wasn’t inherited, and it wasn’t permanent. I’d be delighted now to find a bag of those crispy treats in my local market. I learned my way out of it. That takes both awareness and free will.

 

I’ve quoted Isaac Bashevis Singer a number of times for something he himself said a number of times. It went mostly like this: “Of course I believe in free will. What choice do I have?”

 

Make Yourself Uncomfortable

 

Reflex isn’t the only thing that gets in our way. Sometimes it’s the task we keep walking around.

 

Stress is good. Many of the most important things I do require me to manage a stress response. I once told a colleague, “I have pre-traumatic stress disorder.”

 

“That’s called anxiety,” she said.

 

While I prefer more grandiose descriptions of my behaviors, anticipatory stress – okay, anxiety – and the stress of engaging something difficult can actually make us better. Stress builds muscle, builds memory, builds resilience, and expands awareness.

 

All last week, I walked around a task that raised my anxiety every time it entered my consciousness. The way to relieve it was simply to do it. I had the next actions identified. I had the competence. There was space on my calendar. I would be better off when it was done. And yet, the closer I got to it, the more my anxiety went up. So I kept doing other good and important things,  just not that one.

 

I had to treat it like a cold-water plunge. Even after deciding to engage and gathering all the necessary materials, I still thought I needed to top off my coffee, respond to one more email, and let the cat out. Easing out of avoidance has its own elaborate choreography.

 

Got anything like this for you?

 

Here’s one thing worth noting: sometimes, after I’ve finally done the thing, I realize I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. That’s the expanded awareness that stress can trigger. A useful signal to stop saying yes quite so readily.

 

Timing Is Everything

 

I just wrote that title and set a stopwatch.

 

We apply our brains to different things all day, and it turns out we have different attention spans for each of them. Right now I’m doing what we casually call writing, though that undersells the work of conceptualizing ideas, imagining an audience, and pushing words out letter by letter, finger by finger. For me, and for most of us, it’s a cognitively heavy lift.

 

Writing: 4 mins 52 secs.

 

I got up, paced, stretched my neck and shoulders, got a drink of water. Forgot to time the break.

 

Shimatta! Forgot to restart the timer too. It’s on now.

 

One of the most important things I do when working in person with a client is time their various activities. For nearly all of us, there is a predictable arc to how long we’ll spend thinking about something before our brain wanders off for a coffee, a cigarette, and a piece of pie.

 

Writing: 3 mins 28 secs.

 

Boris the cat was scratching the furniture, so scooting him away made a natural break. Didn’t time that one either.

 

As I was saying, when we set out to do something, our brains work on it, then pause to sit, listen to the birds, watch the clouds drift, then get back to work. The on and off periods are different for different tasks. I have a short attention span for reading, a bit longer for writing, longer still for swimming and walking. This session alternated between writing, and reading and thinking about what I’d written.

 

Reading and writing: 10 mins 15 secs.

 

Stopped again, paced, snacked on a sweet pepper, then another. I wasn’t hungry, the eating was just something to do. Gastrointestinal fidgeting.

 

Break: 2 mins 44 secs.

 

Reread this, checked the flow, made some additions. My brain feels restless now. My legs want to move. My neck muscles are stiff.

 

Reading and writing: 9 mins 17 secs.

 

Got up, paced, stretched, snacked on another veggie.

 

Break: 1 min 44 secs.

 

The important thing isn’t how long or short your attention span is, or what your recovery period looks like. What matters is knowing you have one, a natural rhythm, a wave cycle. The danger isn’t the break itself. It’s when the break stops cycling back into the work and becomes an interruption instead of a support. Feel the oscillation and ride it. Lift, rest, lift, rest.

 

Embrace your own wave cycle.

 

Reading and writing: 11 mins 24 secs.

 

Started this late in the day, so stopped around 6:30, had food, watched an episode of The Blacklist. James Spader is fun to watch.

 

Break: 1 hour 49 mins 16 secs.

 

Forgot to restart the timer right away. Let the thoughts percolate on the cognitive back burner so I could find the takeaway.

 

The takeaway: thinking is messy, but it’s not random. Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

8 mins 34 secs, plus a couple of untimed minutes.

 

The Blank Page

 

Just got this text: “Hi Frank, do you have an eta on that newsletter today?”

 

Okay. This helps.

 

Nicanor Parra closes his advice to young writers with this: “You have to improve the blank page.”

 

I’m struggling with this page today. I also had a hard time getting out this morning. I swim laps at a local pool most mornings — it’s good for an aging body, and for me especially, it improves my mental health. The challenge is I have to initiate in a low mood state to get to a better one. A support to the effort is that my colleagues know the difference when I haven’t started the day with vigorous exercise. I’ll be a little to a lot off.

 

I got to the pool. Jen, Karin, and Danny’s affirmation at my arrival helped. During the week, a couple of people told me I’d improved on the blank page last week. My colleagues implored me today to exert myself. I take it as a sign of their confidence.

 

And Nicanor Parra.

 

Sly Nicanor Parra woke up every day for 94 years knowing we must make our presence worth more than our absence.

 

It’s not just about getting things done. We have to make our presence improve on our absence.

 

Thank you all for your presence with me today.