Let me explain.

I want to fill my big pasta pot with water to boil pasta but I can’t fit it under the faucet because the sink is full of dirty dishes.  Bummer!  I open the dishwasher to put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher but the dishwasher is full of clean dishes.  Hrmph!  So, I have to put away the clean dishes so that I can put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher so that I can fill the pasta pot so that I can boil water so that I can make pasta for dinner.

Ah, the domino effect.

As you may have figured out, the domino effect is the situation in which you can’t do the task you want to do until an earlier task is done.  Just like dominoes standing in a line, the first domino has to fall before the others fall.

Do you have a to-do list with some items on it that have been there for weeks? months? (years??)  Look at them.  Ask yourself whether those items are not getting done because something else — perhaps something small but easily overlooked – needs to be done first?

In my dinner example, I easily traced the holdup to the first “domino” task — the clean dishes – and took care of that before I was able to take care of the next “domino” task.  But there are cases where it’s not so clear what’s going on or what the first “domino” task is.  All you know is that you have a vague feeling that you don’t want to do a certain task and you procrastinate instead of figuring out what’s wrong.  There are many reasons why people procrastinate on their tasks but the domino effect is a sneaky one, one that’s once identified, makes it easy to zip through the task that you’ve been dreading.

Do you need to “call Bill” but you’ve been putting it off for a while and you don’t know why?  Think about what’s holding up this task.  Could it be that you don’t have Bill’s phone number and you don’t know where to get it?  If that’s the case, you need to add the task, “think about whom to ask for Bill’s number” before you can get to your original task.  Now that you’ve traced the task to its true beginning you can get this done.  Your brain will no longer be trying to call Bill without a phone number.  Your brain will have a new directive to think of the person who might know Bill’s number.  Once you’ve come up with the person, your task becomes easier.  You go ask that person and now, armed with a phone number, you can  finally “call Bill.”

Now, wasn’t that easy?

Are there any tasks on your to-do list that are held up by other tasks that you need to do first?

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Let me explain the difference.

The good kind of Resistance is born of fear.  Fear that you’re not good enough, fear that you can’t do it, fear that you’ll fail.  Whatever it is you’re pursuing, you want to pursue it yet are blocked by fear that manifests itself as Resistance.  This Resistance tries to divert you from your higher self.  You can beat this kind of Resistance by noticing it and summoning your courage to beat it.

The bad kind of resistance is born of “should.”  When I sat down to write, I realized that I felt that I should review this book*.  But I didn’t really want to because it didn’t move me and therefore, I wasn’t terribly motivated to review it.   I don’t know why I felt that I should do it but I did.  And then it hit me: this is the other kind of resistance, the resistance that’s not covered in The War of Art.  This is the resistance to the “shoulds” of life.

There are so many things in life we as adults feel that we should do.  We should go to work every day and we should keep a clean and tidy house and we should save for retirement and we should be respectable and say “please” and “thank you.”  Well.  With so many things that society already prescribes for us, why add more unnecessary “shoulds?”  Do you realize that these “shoulds” are sucking the vitality right out of you?  You already spend a large portion of your day on the “shoulds” that you can’t get away from, why would you pile on more “shoulds” that you’ve created yourself?

Take a look, a close look.  Right this moment, are you experiencing resistance to anything?  (Of course you are, else you wouldn’t be procrastinating by reading this post.)  Does it resemble Resistance (a.k.a. Fear) or resistance?  Are there “shoulds” that you’ve convinced yourself are external?  That is, have you convinced yourself that all these things that you should do don’t come from you but from others around you - your boss, your spouse, society?  Who says that your house has to be clean and tidy?  Who says that you have to call the annoying person back?  Who says that you have to eat a healthy, well-balanced meal?  And who says that I should write a blog post about a book that I read?  Recognize that nobody is forcing you to do these things.  You created these “shoulds” and they are running your life.

Why is this a problem?

Because you’re wasting time on things that won’t make one iota of difference in your life.  This is precious time you could be using to do something you enjoy.  Because when you do things you enjoy instead of slogging through the day dutifully doing what you think everyone else wants you to do, you’ll feel more fulfilled.  When you’re old, you’re not going to look back on your life and say, “Gee, I wish I’d kept a neater house.”  You’ll look back with regret on the things you didn’t do. 

Instead of dutifully following all these self-created “shoulds,” recognize them for what they are and let them go.  Free yourself of the handful of “shoulds” that won’t make a difference in your life but will just rob you of time you could be using to do something with passion.  Most of your life is already taken up with all the things you have no choice but to do.  Don’t fill up the rest of your precious time with unnecessary “shoulds.”

* If you really want to know, the book I didn’t feel like writing about is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

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But next time, it happens again.  No matter how many times I go through my ten-minute pool acclimation procedure, it doesn’t get any easier.  Every single time, I experience resistance.  For me, writing is the same way.  Writing is scary, boring, and hard.  I don’t know why I do it when I’d rather be curled up in bed, reading.

William James said in The Varieties of Religious Experience:

Sometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many contrary ones are mixed together.  In that case one hears both “yeses” and “noes,” and the “will” is called on then to solve the conflict.  Take a soldier, for example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him to advance, his fears impelling him to run, and his propensities to imitation pushing him towards various courses if his comrades offer various examples.  His person becomes the seat of a mass of interferences; and he may for a time simply waver, because no one emotion prevails.  There is a pitch of intensity, though, which, if any emotion reach it, enthrones that one as alone effective and sweeps its antagonists and all their inhibitions away.  The fury of his comrades’ charge, once entered on, will give this pitch of courage to the soldier; the panic of their rout will give this pitch of fear.  In these sovereign excitements, things ordinarily impossible grow natural because the inhibitions are annulled.  Their “no! no!” not only is not heard, it does not exist.  Obstacles are then like tissue-paper hoops to the circus rider–no impediment; the flood is higher than the dam they make.

I say this: when the desire to do finally outweighs the desire to not do, you do it.  I don’t know how or why this push happens but eventually it happens.  And I’m always glad in retrospect that it happened… both when swimming and when writing.

What are you resisting doing? 

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