How To Hack Your Emotional Software and Stop Procrastinating
From the ancient Stoics to the current date, the emotion was a struggle for humankind. We are driven by the inevitable power of the emotions which in the end affects our actions yet as a person we feel so hopeless and powerless against them. So why it is so hard to resist the feeling of procrastination when you are anxious about a deadline? Why we are choosing the procrastination and can’t resist the emotions driving that? Wouldn’t everything be easier just tell the brain to shut up and finish that To-Do in *insert any productivity tool* right now? Hey Brain, I am talking to you man! Get your sh*t together!
Unfortunately talking to it like that won’t get you far. Reason being? Your brain was not evolved to get your long wanted promotion or finish your tasks on time. It also doesn’t care if you are happy or not since all the things you want in life was not in his job description. Instead of your modern desires, It was evolved to keep your tummy full, avoid dangerous situations and reserve your energy as much as possible and it is really competent at doing so. Kudos to your brain for doing such good work!
But I Still Want to Conquer the Brain and Tell Him To Do Things I WANT!
Okay okay, the situation is not hopeless, there is still a way to have control over your emotions. So if we gonna hack the emotional firmware, we need the read the documentation first…
Ancient parts of the brain which evolved before neocortex are thought to be a source of emotions and things like ‘gut feeling’. These parts are physically below neocortex which funnily matches with the subconsciousness as well.
If we think neocortex and the rest of the brain as different software components we can assume that there is one-sided communication between them. So Emotion Software (ES) has a direct connection to your Logical Thinking Software (LTS) and it can send packages of information to it but refuses to receive anything from it (It’s kind of an a**hole software right?). Let’s explain with a nice diagram:
As in most of the software algorithms, there is a backdoor. Logical Thinking Software (LTS) can’t access the Emotion Software (ES) directly but it is allowed to access many other peripherals. Example? You are hungry and ES is sending grumpy signals to LTS. LTS decides to go for an apple and after taking a juicy bite from that apple, suddenly ES grumpy signals are getting less. So actually we found a backdoor! We can indirectly send data to Emotion Software using actions. So our software architecture started looking more clear:
I think many of us have the common feeling of having the occasional procrastination waves which affect every part of our daily lives. I had many times feeling like fighting through the day just for simple tasks. As seen from our emotional firmware, It is always good to remember that without an action your state of mind driven by emotions is not going to change easily. Don’t want to work on the project that you were once so into it because you just don’t feel like working? Get a book or something while waiting that ‘feeling’ to come because it might take a while. The reason is obvious, if you keep waiting for the motivation to do things, it will never come to you since you cannot affect your ES by wishful thinking.
So how to hack your monkey brain in this kind of situations? You know you need to put your butt on that chair and start doing the work but you just can’t make it. Do you want to write a new article? Just start with a sentence. Just tell your monkey Emotional Software:
‘I will just write one sentence and then I will go back to chilling’.
You will see that your mindset will start changing the moment you take the action. Because you sir, you just hacked your emotional firmware with your actions…
A note from the author:
I hope this article will help you in terms of dealing with the procrastination! In addition to the techniques outlined in the article, I have some few other resources that might be helpful to improve your well-being:
1. Using affirmations to re-programme beliefs and thinking structures. It helped me massively and I am currently working on a technique called Self Repetition Therapy with Onur Solmaz. Join our Discord! or Learn about Self Repetition Therapy
2. Stoics were the experts in controlling their urges. There are many beautiful quotes and time tested pieces of advice from stoicism. If you are interested learning more, I can recommend the book by Ryan Holiday: The Daily Stoic and my article: How Learning Stoicism Helped Me In The Age of Anxiety
3. Check out the app store for stoic journalling, there are many :)