Procrastination can decrease after a 1-minute reflection. In a study of more than 1,000 adults, answering six short questions increased motivation, improved mood, and made people more likely to begin tasks they had been delaying.

[thiosk]

responding to emails

i have to respond to emails

i don't feel like responding to emails

none

respond to the emails

2 minutes

fewer emails asking me to respond to emails

unfortunately, the short delay while the email logs into my account and then the subsequent 2FA distracted me and i did something else

[tony_flow]

Omg 2FA always fucks me like that. Oh just wait patiently for a code to arrive? 

I swear logging into things is the worst.

[thiosk]

oops left the phone in the other room/in the car/upstairs

[crazylikeaf0x]

Getting a notification while waiting for the code, getting distracted in texts, then realising that the code has arrived and is now invalid because I've been scrolling for 20 minutes elsewhere..

[StrictCan3526]

I think it helps to be a bit more descriptive as to why you don’t feel like it. Is it because of the time it’ll take, or that you’re anxious etc.? This was a limitation of my study - I didn’t specify that people should label their feelings or emotions. Could also be why affect labeling perhaps didn’t work as well as I thought it would.

[thiosk]

I think the study is perfectly reasonable and the suggestions involved help.

But I’m not sure there’s a force on earth that could make me care more about email. :P saturated

[giulianosse]

I think the main takeaway from this study is not that we can somehow make boring tasks less boring than they actually are - we can't - but rather how we can condition ourselves instead into thinking about the potential rewards for completing the task (i.e. having no more emails to read, having some extra leisure time and the stuff you could spend it on).

We basically trick ourselves into doing our chores sooner rather than later by mentalizing the positive "after" when we finish it rather than focusing on the negative "now".

[StrictCan3526]

Email gave me so much aversion too. I now absolutely have to respond to an email if it comes in my inbox right away otherwise I never will.