LifeScore Chronicles #4: The best moment to start something 🔥🔥
Hola! Welcome to the #4 edition of the LifeScore Chronicles. Did you miss the first #3 editions? Reply to this email and I’ll forward them to you right away!
If you just landed here, this guide aims to help with personal growth by providing tips to improve your health and well-being in a fun and consistent way. Sounds cool, right?
So, let's get into it!
Today’s summary:
🔥 When’s the best moment to start something?
🙅♀️ Mozart and the Symphony of Procrastination
📌 Since we’re on the topic, get some tips to beat procrastination
🍅 The tomato timer revolution: A guide to the Pomodoro Technique
🎼 How many random facts about Mozart can we collect?
🔥 The best moment to start something
The best moment to start something was yesterday
Since it’s almost the end of the year, I wanted to take some time to go a bit deep (hold on guys, boring alert!).
This year has been a bloody rollercoaster. It sure has been a rough year, and it should have been a bad one (layoffs, having it hard to find a new job, not the best financial year ever… the list could go on and on but I guess we all have our struggles).
But, somehow, when reviewing it, I am pretty sure it has been a really good one, if not the best year ever (that’s pretty big words) at least one to remember with a smile.
If any, I do regret not having started some things sooner. And here goes my reflection. If you have something in mind, an idea, a project, or something you want to start doing, don’t wait for the right moment. The right moment doesn’t exist. The right moment was yesterday!
Of course, there might be some things preventing you from starting something. But in general, it is better to go wild and start and then iterate on it. Perfection doesn’t exist, success or failure are just a matter of perceptions, and to be honest, no one cares about your stuff but you.
I take this newsletter as an example. I know it’s not gonna make any difference to anyone but to me (if any, I just want it to be entertaining to you), and I should have got rid of all my blockers months ago. At the end of the day, it’s just you fighting your demons, your fear of failure, your fear of being judged… and what? If it doesn’t work you just pack your things and try something else. No one is gonna judge you if you try.
Keep this in mind. Just try things. If it doesn’t work, just try again. And if it does work… Oh boy, then the reward is amazing!
Sometimes is just us procrastinating, right? And since we’re on the topic, do you know who was also the biggest procrastinator ever?
🙅♀️ Mozartstination
This week's topic brings us face to face with procrastination (I keep miserably failing to write the word procrastination right).
Let’s start with Mozart, who, besides being a genius, was also well known for his tendency to postpone. One of Mozart's famous works, Don Giovanni, was almost ruined due to his delay in composing the overture. In a pretty drunk state (another skill Mozart seemed to have mastered), he turned to his wife Constanze for help and miraculously wrapped it up in just three hours. This risky procrastination paid off with the opera's success (let’s assume this is not the usual result of postponing things eternally). Perks of being a genius.
Jumping to modern times, there’s Tim Urban, creator of Wait But Why, and a self-proclaimed master procrastinator. Long story short, he claims to have written his college thesis during the last two nights before the deadline. There is this story where he got a call from the college administrator claiming it was the best thesis they'd ever seen. The story would be amazing this way, but Urban admitted the call never happened, and his thesis was basically pretty bad.
So, to summarise this: Procrastination affects approximately 20% of people globally (I found this number in different papers but it still looks short to me). Understanding it involves recognizing it as the act of delaying unwanted tasks until later. To combat procrastination, one effective approach is thinking about how your future self will feel if you actually keep postponing your duties (and using that motivation to overcome the procrastination trap).
But this sounds pretty vague, right? I do have my own list of tips and tricks, and even a tool to fight it. And who doesn't love a good list?
📌 How to beat procrastination
Let’s start by saying that, sometimes, procrastination can be a good thing. Allowing an idea or important work to simmer for a while can lead to new and creative things. Try it: start something, walk away, and come back to it later. You may even find a new idea related to what you were working on before.
But, normally, let’s face it, we’re just postponing tasks because, well, because we’re human after all. And how can we beat procrastination, you’re asking?
Well, I don’t have a magic recipe, but there are a few things that work (at least they do for me!):
Break large and overwhelming tasks into smaller actions: Sometimes we’re overwhelmed by the task itself, and only by breaking it into smaller chunks we can make it way easier. Let’s take a (silly) example. Cleaning the house. While cleaning the whole house might feel like a pain in the ass and we tend to postpone it over and over again, just starting with the bathroom might seem a bit easier to execute, and since we’re already on it, we keep extending the area to clean and voilà, there you go!
Give you rewards for beating procrastination: Ok, you might not want to do something, but just by completing the task, you can reward yourself with something, so you have a bit of a motivation boost. A treat, a rewarding activity… you get the feeling!
Plan your days and create a (daily, weekly) to-do list: Again, the idea here is to reduce the mental friction that blocks us from starting something. By listing down what we need to do, our brain enters execution mode and goes step by step killing items from the list.
Use time blocking: A bit related to the previous one. If you block time in your calendar with specific and achievable tasks, it’s way easier to handle the willingness to procrastinate. Ok, you have 35 mins blocked to do something, so no excuses, go for it!
Avoid context switching: One of procrastination's best friends is context switching. You’re reading a work email, then switch to a phone message, then you look for information on something you just read, and all of a sudden you’re lost in your social media feed without knowing how the hell you ended up there. By focusing on one thing at a time, we keep our procrastinator at bay.
Get an accountability partner: If you tell someone that you’re gonna do something… well, you get the concept, right? Establish a process, let someone know what you’re gonna do, and have an open communication about your process with them. Failing to someone is harder to handle than failing to ourselves (sad but true).
Have a Procrastination Power Song: I love this one. Find a song that makes you feel energized and play it whenever you need to start something you've been putting off. The brain responds well to triggers for forming new habits, and you're more likely to get into action when you're feeling good. Sorry not sorry, my 2023 procrastination power song is Taylor’s Anti-Hero.
Dig Deeper: Sometimes, it can be helpful to understand exactly why you’ve been procrastinating on a specific task. Maybe you feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start. Maybe you just feel really stressed and don't know how to begin. Try finishing this sentence: "I'm not doing this task because..." and see what comes up. Identifying your whys can help you realize the monsters in the closet aren’t as horrible as you think.
And I left the last one for the next section because a tool can sometimes help better than plain content. Keep reading to know more!
🍅 Pomofocus: Your Pomodoro Technique Clock
To give you a brief introduction, the Pomodoro Technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo to provide a more efficient way to work or study. The technique involves dividing work into intervals, typically 25 minutes long, with short breaks in between. We call each interval a pomodoro, inspired by the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used while he was a university student.
There is an easy AF tool called Pomofocus, a customizable Pomodoro timer that works on desktop and mobile browsers. You just need to add the tasks you want to work on, set the estimated time for each task, start the timer, and focus on that task for 25 mins. Take a break and repeat the process until you’re done.
Magic, right?
And with this, I’m already closing this newsletter. I had another section with some random facts about Mozart (the guy has a pretty impressive collection), but this one is getting longer than expected and I’m sure you can make a better use of your time right now (probably using the Pomofocus app).
Before closing, though, a little dive into some data just because #buildinpublic
Since I want to understand the type of content you like the most (the goal is to create something we both like), I will be asking you some questions at the end of each newsletter. Just one click is required, so no worries!
📊 Data Dive
You know how this works already. Every week, a little look on the LSC performance:
93 Subscribers → Steady (and slow) progress here!
0 Unsubscribed → Yay, clean week!
65.16% Open rate → Not bad for the holiday season...
And something stupid for you before closing. Mozart and Metallica? Well, why not?!
This is it for today. Stay tuned for next week— And feel free to share this content if you think there is someone out there who could benefit from it. 📤
Until next week, stay safe and healthy!