Why we dodge the work we care about

and how to change our own minds about what's possible

A few years ago I started a practice of reviewing which items lingered on my to-do list because I was curious about why these items in particular felt difficult to get done.

It didn’t take long for the answer to become obvious: I was scared. Scared I couldn’t do it or that I wouldn’t do it well, scared of the outcome, scared of the reaction of someone involved. 

That led me to a mantra that I now say to myself multiple times per week: All procrastination is fear. 

This has been freeing. It’s not that I can’t or won’t do something. It’s simply that I’m afraid and once I acknowledge that fear is at play, I can figure out what I’m afraid of and what to do about it.

My most common fear is that I can’t do it. My experience isn’t unique. It turns out that our belief in our ability to do something has a lot to do with whether we’ll ever try or whether we’ll ever complete a project. The fancy word for this is a lack of self-efficacy, or the belief in my ability to do something. 

The good news is that lots of people have studied self-efficacy and found that there are ways to build confidence so that we can get those lingering items crossed off the to-do list and so that we can dust off those shelved dream projects and get to work.

Buckle up, we’re about to get nerdy (again).

The godfather of self-efficacy was a guy named Albert Bandura and in 1977 he wrote the study that everyone still refers to on the subject: “Self-efficacy: Towards a Unifying Theory of Behavior Change.” According to his framework, there are four sources of information that determine our sense of self-efficacy and the good news is they are modifiable. Let’s discuss.

1. The most important thing to know is that we can increase self-efficacy through mastery experiences. Mastery experiences are opportunities to try out and succeed at a new skill.

So if I think to myself, I could never write a book, that would mean that my sense of self-efficacy is low and I’ll be unlikely to get to work on chapter 1, let alone self-publish the novel that’s in my head. If I want to improve my sense of self-efficacy, I could do that by writing for several days in a row. I still might not be sure I could write a novel, but I’d start to learn that I was capable of writing a lot of words and a lot of words are necessary to write a novel. Mastery experiences give us a personal reference point for what we’re capable of and change our thinking about what might be possible in the future. 

This is why we believe in tiny steps every day at Brainstorm Road. They build confidence. They’re micro mastery experiences. You write today and tomorrow and the next day and it’s not too long before you realize, “oh hey, look at that, I can write things.” Now you see “write for ten minutes” on your to-do list and you don’t dodge (or you don’t dodge as frequently) because you know you are a person who can sit down and then words come out.

2. We can also increase self-efficacy through vicarious experiences.

This means that we watch others and we make determinations about what we think might be possible for ourselves. This is the magic of community. People just like us – with screaming toddlers or aging parents or day jobs in finance – are pulling their dreams off the back burner and are making them happen in real life. We watch them day after day and we start to believe that the same process and outcomes might be possible for ourselves. We need others to remind us of what’s possible. 

We think of Brainstorm Road as a sort of live modeling of going after a Dream Project in Real Life. That’s what folks in community do for one another.

3. Verbal persuasion works too.

Encouragement helps. This is why we give out high fives every week here on Substack and it’s why our community members comment on one another’s in progress work. Self-efficacy increases when other folks remind us of what’s true – that we are trying, that we are capable, that we are doing great.

When we’re starting something new, when we’re contemplating taking on a project we really care about, self-doubt is normal. It’s part of trying something new, something we aren’t quite sure we can do. But what Bandura teaches us is that it’s also modifiable. We don’t have to stay frozen. We can seek out the experiences and support which give us the confidence to try.

High Fives on Friday

Tiny steps alongside people who are also giving it a go and lots of high fives. That’s where the magic is. Get a taste of the experience by becoming a paid subscriber with access to creative prompts, weekly High Five Fridays, and more.