Force Yourself, Yes, Force Yourself to Get Started on That Task

Conventional wisdom is that forcing yourself to do a task won't enduringly reduce procrastination. So the argument goes, you must address the underlying cause, perhaps fear of failure, or increase frustration tolerance. 

I used to try to help my clients using those two models but in recent years, I've have had more success with a simpler, baby-step approach. In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I outline that approach, including how I used it to make myself write that article. 

Your Child and College: Contrarian ideas

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers contrarian ideas I believe that most parents of high school students should consider. 

Your Child and Mind-Altering Substances

Substance abuse is among the most important parenting topics, and among the most ticklish.

Key preventers of abuse are parents’ role modeling and placing the child in schools, activities and with friends who are unlikely to be abusers.

But done well, one or more conversations with your child can also help I offer a sample dialogue as my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Your Child and Sex

Whether you want to be sexually liberal or conservative with your child, key is communicating your values while taking your child into consideration.

One way I might make this potentially difficult goal more doable is to offer sample dialogues.

That's what I do in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Your Child's Friends: Doables that encourage good friendships

Psychologist Judith Rich’s research found that peers influence children more even than parents do. Certainly, friends can influence your child, and you can boost the chances of that influence being positive. I offer doables in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

You and Your Child's Homework

Homework was probably first assigned the first time a teacher was frustrated that students weren’t learning enough, and that's probably when civilization began. 

Since then, legions of kids have pleaded, yelled, lied, done everything possible to avoid the dreaded task.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers parents tips that work in the real world for getting your kid to do the dastardly deed without your pulling your hair out. As with all the articles in this series,  the focus is on what's realistic, what works in the real world, what I call doables.

Choosing Your Child's School: A parent's most important decision?

Parenting may be the most important subject they don’t teach in school or college. And among the most challenging, at least emotionally. 

Many writings on parenting can make you feel inadequate if you’re not perfectly consistent, ever striking the balance between setting limits and providing freedom, with no helicoptering Tiger Momming allowed!

Today's and the next few installments in my PsychologyToday.com series focuses on potent parenting practices that are realistic in the real world, what I call doables.

Because so much parenting literature focuses on birth-to-five, this series will focus on K-12. 

Today’s installment is on choosing your child’s school. That's probably the most potent single action a parent can take. Make the one-time effort to get your child into a well-suited school and you’ve gone a long way to ensuring your child gets an appropriate education and has a peer group you feel good about.

Learning Better: Doables toward a better college or graduate school experience

Of course, many people go back to college or grad school mainly for the piece of paper. 

But it’s an awful lot of money and time just for a piece of imitation sheepskin. You might as well extract as much useful learning as you can, right? My PsychologyToday.com article today should help you do that.

Many such articles are overoptimistic about how much students are willing to do. This article, like the others in this Doables series focuses on what most people are actually willing to do.

Getting Closer: Doables toward better relationships

I always feel a little sheepish writing about human behavior. It so varies depending on the people and circumstances, and behavior predispositions change. I’m doubly sheepish about relationships because all that doubles and the permutations of each factor mushroom.

That said, to ignore relationships in a a blog called How to Do Life would be remiss. Hence, I periodically wade into the muck: The Relationship Report Card,  Refreshing a Stale Relationship Relationships in 2019, Beyond  Later Relationships. and The World’s Shortest Parenting Course.
 
My PsychologyToday.com article today takes a shot at helping you decide your non-negotiables, nice-to-haves, and not-importants regarding your relationships, platonic or romantic. Then, I offer thoughts on addressing a relationship problem.

Getting Happier: 12 doable pallaitives

Who wouldn’t want to be happier? Alas, enduring happiness comes from hard-to-change things: genetic predisposition, early childhood, the quality of your current life—If you’re living with four roommates in a crappy apartment, have  a soul-sucking job, and your lifetime savings are in three digits, well, you’re unlikely to go through life skipping down the lane.

But there are palliatives, what I call, doables, that can help, at least for a while. I offer a dozen in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Fear of Firing: Doables to help you keep your job....and if you lose it.

Especially if you have a good job but sense you’re viewed as average at best, it’s only natural that you’re worried you might get the axe, if only in a round of layoffs.

And that’s scary. Even though the unemployment rate is the lowest in 50 years, that statistic masks that good jobs, as opposed to grim gigs, are harder to come by.

What’s a mere mortal to do? My PsychologyToday.com article today offers doables, things you can realistically change, to help you keep your job and if you lose it, how to make that for the best.

Doable Baby Steps to Conquering Procrastination

I’ve probably written more on procrastination than on anything else, yet my experience with clients ever improves my thoughts on the subject. 

I just had a session with a client that crystallized my most recent thinking and I want to share that with you. It's my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Making of a Scientist: Winner of the Nemko Prize

You probably wouldn’t bet on Lauren Reynolds winning a prestigious young-scientist award.

Her father was a mechanic, her mother a stay-at-home-mom, and later, a school-cafeteria worker. Lauren focused on art in high school, then went to an art college, and dropped out.

Yet, indeed, yesterday it was announced that Lauren is this year’s winner of a prestigious international young-scientist award, the Society for Neuroscience’s Nemko Prize.

My PsychologyToday.com article today tells Lauren’s story.

Baby Steps Toward Self-Awareness

 “Know thyself” was first invoked by the ancient Greeks, including Socrates and Plato, and often since then, from Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac to the transgender character Nomi in the Netflix show Sense8.

The popularity of "Know Thyself" is understandable. After all, self-awareness is key to figuring out what to do and whom to do it with, professionally and personally.

But “Know Thyself!” is easier said than done. Might any of the tips in my PsychologyToday.com article today help?

Baby Steps to Your Financial Security

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers baby steps toward your improved financial security and to living more richly, at least in the important sense of the word.

Baby Steps Toward Career Success

I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that career success is mainly a function of intelligence, drive, technical depth, and yes, luck. 

Fortunately, there are easier, less potent but still valuable baby steps you can take to improve your career. My PsychologyToday.com article today focuses on things you can do on the job, rather than in job-search.

Living By Your Principles: Baby steps toward getting there

Most of us would like to prioritize principles over expediency. As social reformer Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “Expedients are for the hour, principles are for the ages.”

But we’re human. As psychologist Alfred Adler wrote, “It’s easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.” Perhaps one or more of the tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today will make it easier for your principles to prevail.

Becoming a Teensy Bit Better Thinker

Becoming a better thinker may seem daunting. After all, intelligence, at least as measured by intelligence tests, has proven quite resistant to improvement.


While your raw brainpower may be hard to improve, whether you make the most of it is more malleable. So, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers some teensies, suggestions that don't require undue effort, that could generate at least some improvement. That's worthy in itself.

Becoming a Teensy Bit More Disciplined; Baby steps

Few people who are reading this post will ever become super-disciplined, but if you're willing to settle for getting a teensy bit more, this article is for you.

You see, some perfectly good people just aren’t perfectly driven. No matter how much I tell them that the life well-lived is about productivity, they think, “Yeah, yeah” and get back to something more fun than that task.

Might any of the baby-step tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today tweak your lazy butt even a teensy bit?

Life in 2030? How politics may affect our work lives, values, and personal lives

The times have always been a-changin’ and people have always predicted that the changes will be big. I’m no different.

My PsychologyToday.com article today proposes how likely political changes could affect our work lives, our values, our personal lives.

Utilty: My guiding principle

Everyone has a foundational principle from which everything flows. Mine is utility: what will make the biggest positive impact on me, on my sphere of influence, on the world. My PsychologyToday.com article today expands.

Clear-Eyed Self-Assessment, Not Inflated Self-Esteem

Not so long ago, being hard on yourself was seen as an asset. Now, self-acceptance is more lauded. My PsychologyToday.com article today argues that's a mistake.

Are You Living a Life More of Integrity Than of Expedience?

My PsychologyToday.com article today argues that expedience too often trumps integrity, a problem I see worsening. It ends with a three-question self-assessment.

People As Impediments: Is human interaction overrated?

Involvement with other people is typically seen as central to the life well-lived. 

And for most people, it is. For example, self-love doesn’t duplicate love with another. Many people prefer to be on teams than to work solo. A baseball sent from a ball-throwing machine just isn’t the same as one from a pitcher.

And yet we perhaps too rarely stop to think how often people are impediments to our lives. I offer examples in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Truly Considering Diverse Views: A now undervalued value

Nearly everyone considers themselves open-minded if not downright celebratory of diverse ideas.

Alas, from where I sit, the truth isn’t as sanguine. Indeed, I see people getting more closed-minded.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers a self-assessment plus a practical suggestion.

The Case for Strictness Over Leniency

Increasingly, we venerate leniency over strictness, for example, the “kindly” boss, judge, spouse, or teacher. 

Students routinely give better evaluations to easy-grading professors. We respect  the decisionmaker who gives slack because of the “externalities” that contribute to a person’s bad behavior rather than a decisionmaker who rejects all but clearly serious and legitimate excuses.

I’m certainly not calling for the cruelty of a Dickensian villain but at the risk of seeming hyperbolic, I believe the trend to replacing strictness with leniency is a core cause of America’s descent. I make the case in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Merit: A now undervalued value?

Not so long ago, it would have seemed absurd to describe merit as “undervalued.” Merit has, for time immemorial, been venerated.

Alas, today, demographic factors sit aside merit in allocating taxpayer and non-profit spending as well as in hiring, promotion, and college admissions.

My PsychologyToday.com article today makes the case for why decision-making based on pure merit, of course, fairly considering people of all races, genders, etc, is ultimately wisest.

Becoming Much More Efficient...In three minutes. Efficiency: a vilified virtue

Efficiency has moved from lauded trait to something negative, vaguely corporatist even militaristic. Yet that vilified virtue is crucial to productivity. And from where I sit, productivity is core to the life well-lived.

I feel on safest ground if I tell you the things I do to be efficient. I know they work, at least for me, and no one can accuse me of not walking my talk. At minimum, my PsychologyToday.com article today should only take you three minutes to read—an efficient use of your time.

A Capable Teen Wants to Drop Out: A mock career counseling session

My PsychologyToday.com article today presents a mock career counseling session with a very bright teen who wants to drop out of high school.