摘要：我们经常拖延并不是因为不知道要做的是什么，而是知道做什么却就是没办法让自己行动起来。当我们要去做一件真正有益的事情时，总会出现一种非常强烈的抵触感，怎么办呢？我的解决方法就是让自己无聊，这既是问题所在，也是答案所在。因为大脑并不喜欢太无聊，总是想办法找点事情做

我们经常拖延并不是因为不知道要做的是什么，而是知道做什么却就是没办法让自己行动起来。当我们要去做一件真正有益的事情时，总会出现一种非常强烈的抵触感，怎么办呢？我的解决方法就是让自己无聊，这既是问题所在，也是答案所在。因为大脑并不喜欢太无聊，总是想办法找点事情做，这时候只要消除所有无关的事情，关掉手机，把你的电脑、游戏机搬离，让你除了需要做的事情之外别无选择，你就会去做了。

I think one of the most common problems that people have is not that they don't know what to do to dramatically move their life forward in a substantial way. You know exactly what you need to do right now. There's probably something that you've been avoiding like the plague, but the problem is not that you don't know what that is. The problem is that you just can't bring yourself to do it. And that's the common theme every single day is that when you sit down to do this thing, you feel a feeling and it almost seems unfair how potent this feeling of resistance is, because it's usually only present when you think about doing things that are genuinely good for you.

我认为人们最常遇到的一个问题并不是他们不知道该做什么，才能使生活有实质的进展。你其实很清楚自己现在需要做什么，可能是一些你一直以来都在逃避的事情，但问题并不在于你不知道要做的是什么，而是你就是没办法让自己行动起来。而每一天你都要面对的问题就是，当你要去做这件事的时候，你会感受到一种非常强烈的抵触感，这甚至让你觉得很难理解，因为通常只有你考虑要去做对你真正有益的事情时，这种感觉才会出现。

So it's like, what's the deal with that? Why does it seem like life is set up that way? Wouldn't it be better if you just actually enjoyed doing difficult things? Wouldn't it be better if you actually had the motivation to be creative or to write a paper or to do your taxes? You probably want nothing more than to be someone who genuinely enjoys and looks forward to doing the things that are good for you, doing the things that empower you.

这到底是为什么？为什么生活会是这样？如果你能够享受做困难的事情，那不是会更好吗？如果你能够有充足的动力去进行创作，写论文或处理税务问题，不是更好吗？你也许非常渴望能够变得真正享受并期待做那些对你真正有益的事情，做那些能让你变得更强大的事情。

Recently I've been thinking. There is one strategy that I have that works every single time. It always makes me do the thing that I need to do. It's not very flattering. It's not very sexy. We don't want to believe that this is the answer. I feel like there's so much self-improvement advice out there that kind of ignores this fundamental, not even tactic, it's almost a fact of life. And when we ignore this fact, we'll try to do little tips and tricks like, oh, set a timer for five minutes and just really try, try really hard to do the work, or try to think more positive thoughts about your work. But all those strategies, they're kind of throw away strategies. They might work here or there, but they get old really quick. This strategy is nuclear. So if you need to do one particular thing, then if you do this, you will do it. You will have no choice.

最近我一直在思考，其实有一个方法对我很有用，这个方法总能促使我去做我需要做的事。它不怎么讨人喜欢，也不会让人感到兴奋，我们都不愿意相信这就是答案。我觉得有很多关于自我提升的建议其实都忽略了这一根本，它甚至不算是一种方法，更像是一个事实。而如果我们忽略了这一事实，我们去尝试一些小技巧和小方法，比如设置一个五分钟的计时器，然后努力投入到你的工作之中，或者尝试更积极地看待你的工作，但所有这些策略都只是一时的权宜之计，它们可能适用于某些情况，但很快就会失效。但这个方法是核心，因此，如果你需要做一件特别重要的事情，那么坚持用这一方法，你就能做到，你别无选择。

The solution is boredom. Ironically that's also the problem. The solution and the problem are the same thing. You don't wanna do that work because it's so boring to your brain, you want to gouge your eyes out. All of these distractions that you have around sound so much more entertaining than doing that thing. So you always have a backdoor. Why in hell would you write an essay when you could be checking Instagram? When you could be watching YouTube videos like this one? But the key realization is that your brain doesn't see objective entertainment values. It's always relative. A good analogy for this is when you're spending all day outside in the sun, it's a super bright day, and then you walk into a dim room or a store, that indoor space feels super dark. You're like, I can't see anything. What is this? And then you see that weird fake sun in your periphery that starts to fade. Everything looks weird and purplely. And in a very similar way, if you've been asleep for a couple hours and you have to get up and go to the bathroom, you turn the lights on and it's just blinding. It's not that that bathroom is any more bright than it was before you went to bed when you were brushing your teeth, it's just that your brain interprets things using contrasts. It uses comparison. So the key is to utterly delete the back doors. The key is to strip away every single option, to sit in a blank room with nothing in it, no phone, nothing. Eliminate your ability to do anything other than the thing that you need to do and you will do it.

这个解决方法就是无聊。不过讽刺的是，这也正是问题所在，答案和问题是同一件事。你不想做这些工作，是因为它对你的大脑来说太无聊了，无聊到令你抓狂。你周围很多令你分心的事情听起来都比你要做的事情有趣得多，所以你总是有别的选择。当你可以浏览社交媒体时，为什么要去写文章？或者你为什么不去看视频？但关键你要明白，你的大脑并不是客观地衡量了娱乐的价值，只有相对的。一个很好的类比就是，当你一整天都在外面晒太阳，阳光灿烂，然后你走进一个昏暗的房间或商店，你就会感觉里面非常黑，你会觉得，我怎么什么都看不到？然后你看到在你的周边视野有一个太阳的虚像会逐渐消退，一切都看起来很奇怪，而且都是紫色的。同样的，如果你已经睡了几个小时，你要起床去洗手间，这时你把灯打开就会觉得很刺眼，并不是洗手间的灯光比你睡觉前刷牙时更亮了，只是你的大脑会用对比来解释事物，通过比较。所以关键是要彻底删除备选，关键是要将其他选项都排除，坐在一个空的房间里，里面什么都没有，没有手机，什么都没有，让你除了做你需要做的事情之外别无选择，你就会去做了。

And now you might be thinking, oh, it's not that simple. I can just do nothing. Well, you actually won't do nothing. And there's studies to prove it. There is a really weird study published in Science in 2014. That was a mouthful, it's not. What am I, a freaking Neanderthal? That's not a mouthful. That was really hard to say. So in this study, they got a bunch of undergraduate students to sit in an empty room by themselves with absolutely nothing to do and be alone with their own thoughts. But they had one other option, and that was to electrocute themselves with a shocky button. And it turns out 67% of the men and 25% of the women decided that electrocution was better than boredom. And some of the students electrocuted themselves multiple times. Even the ones that didn't electrocute themselves either strongly considered it or at least lamented how miserable the quiet time was and how boring it was. You might have heard about this study before, but I think it's a great example as to how much human beings dislike being bored. And so the reason why solitary confinement is considered one of the least humane forms of torture imaginable. There's this ancient torture method where they basically just throw somebody down a hole under the castle and forget about them for their entire lives. Number 15, the oubliette. The last thing you'd want after stealing a cup of buckwheat is to end up in one of these mother (bleep). That sounds terrible because it's so boring. If you were put in an empty room with nothing to do except one thing, unless that thing is like chop off your hand, you're probably gonna do that thing. And while you're doing that thing, that thing will feel so much more entertaining than doing nothing.

现在你可能在想，没那么简单，我可以什么都不做。其实你不会什么都不做的，而且有研究可以证明这一点。2014年《科学》杂志发表了一项非常独特的研究。在这项研究中，他们找来了一群大学生，让他们独自坐在一个空房间里，完全无事可做，唯一的活动只有思考，但他们还有另一个选择，那就是按下电击按钮电击自己。而事实证明，67%的男性和25%的女性最终决定电击比无聊更好，而且有些学生多次电击自己。即使是那些没有电击自己的学生，要么是差一点就动手了，要么至少也会感叹安静的时间是多么悲惨，多么无聊。你可能以前听说过这项研究，但我认为这是一个很好的例子，说明了人类是多么不喜欢无聊。这也是为什么单独监禁被认为是现行最不人道的酷刑之一。还有一种古老的酷刑是把某个人扔到城堡下的一个洞里，然后余生都不再管他，15号地牢。你最不希望的就是在偷了一点荞麦后被关进这些鬼地方。这听起来很可怕，因为真的太无聊了。如果把你放在一个空荡荡的房间里，只有一件事可以做，那么除非这件事是让你砍掉自己的手，其余的你基本都会去做的，并且当你在做那件事的时候，你会觉得那件事比什么都不做快乐多了。

So you have to ask yourself, what are you constructing your life around? How are you structuring things? Are the things that you're supposed to do entertaining in comparison to the things that you use as distractions? Because the larger the disparity, the more agonizing that thing will be. And you'll find very quickly that if you delete distractions as an option, it works right away. It's insane. This isn't like some dopamine detox that you gotta do over weeks and months and years, although that will help you get used to finding the entertainment value in difficult things. But this is something that works right away because your brain needs to survive. It hates feeling bored. So it will make whatever your only option is as entertaining as it needs to.

所以你必须问自己，你是在围绕什么来安排你的生活？你是如何安排事情的？与会分散你注意力的事情相比，你应该做的事情能让你提起兴趣吗？因为差距越悬殊，那件事就越让人痛苦。而且你会很快发现，如果你把分心的事情当作选项删除掉，效果会立竿见影。这很疯狂，这并不像一些你必须在几周、几个月或几年内完成的多巴胺戒断，尽管那也能帮助你习惯在困难的事情中找到快乐，但这种方法是可以马上发挥作用的，因为你的大脑需要生存，它讨厌无聊的感觉，所以，无论你的唯一选择是什么，它都会赋予这件事必要的娱乐性。

I even have personal evidence for this. One of the most productive, social, and energetic times in my entire life is when I was living in a little 900 square foot basement suite in the middle of suburbia with absolutely nothing to do except edit videos. So here's Alex looking in the pantry for stuff to eat. These guys cooked us our only good meal that we've had in several days. And basically this whole video is basically just to show off what we have going on in our fridge right now. Ketchup, a little bit of milk, some Korean honey. Three pickles, salsa, and water. I was absolutely broke. And to edit these videos that I had to do for my very few corporate freelance videography clients. I was sitting on an upside down laundry hamper because I couldn't afford an office chair, but this was deeply motivating to me. Although I did live with my friend, Alex, he was hardly ever around so I had these long periods of loneliness, but that sting of loneliness made me social. It made me make plans. It made me seek opportunities. My lack of money made me seek money. And most importantly, the lack of things to do in there, the lack of distractions that I surrounded myself with, made me extremely bored, bored enough that editing videos and being highly creative and doing what I love actually felt entertaining as well.

这一点我甚至有亲身经历，我一生中最高效、最善于交际、最精力充沛的时期之一是我住在郊区一个900平方英尺的地下室小套间里的时候，除了剪辑视频外完全无事可做。这是亚历克斯在储藏室里找吃的东西，这几个伙计给我们做了几天来唯一的一顿像样的饭，基本上这个视频就是为了给大家看看我们的冰箱里现在有什么，番茄酱，一点点牛奶，一些韩国蜂蜜，三个腌小黄瓜，辣酱和水。我当时一贫如洗，不得不为我为数不多的企业特约摄影客户制作这些视频，我当时坐在一个倒置的洗衣篮上，因为我买不起办公椅，但这一切对我来说是一种激励。尽管当时我的确和我的朋友亚历克斯住在一起，但他常常不在家，所以我经历了很长时间的孤独，但这种孤独的刺痛使我变得善于交际，它使我制定了计划，它使我寻求机会，我的缺钱使我寻求金钱，最重要的是，我当时无事可做，我周围没有什么能分散注意力的东西，这使得我非常无聊，无聊到去剪辑视频，进行创意，并且做这些我热爱的事情也很快乐。

So there's a perfect example of my environmental conditioning helping facilitate a mindset of creativity and attitude of productivity because I had very few other options. So in summary, if you have something you need to do right now, then eliminate all your back doors, turn off your phone, remove your gaming PC from your room, remove your Xbox. Auto hide the toolbar so when you're thinking of the next word to write, you don't look at Safari and automatically click on it. And in living life this way and treating productivity this way, it's not that you're going to live a less entertaining life. In fact, you might find it far more entertaining and fulfilling and empowering than you ever knew possible.

这个例子很好地说明了我的环境条件帮助推动了我的创意和生产力的迸发，因为我没有什么别的选择。因此，总的来说，如果你现在有需要做的事情，那就消除你所有的备选，关掉手机，把你的电脑、游戏机从你的房间里搬走，自动隐藏工具栏，这样当你思考要写的下一个词时，你就不会盯着浏览器然后自动打开它了。这样生活，这样工作，并不会让你的生活变得无趣，事实上，你可能会发现它远比从前的生活更让你感到快乐和满足，也更让你充满力量。

By: Better Ideas

翻译：Ahnam Law

来源：重症医学一点号