Creating Self-Distance

Hi,

Today's email is about how self-distancing can help you overcome procrastination.

One of the most frustrating parts of procrastination is that we know that it’s bad for us, but we do it anyway.

Self-distancing involves creating psychological distance from your current perspective, to help you think about your situation more clearly. There are several ways you can do this:

• Ask yourself “what would I tell a friend if they were in my situation?”, since we’re generally better at giving advice to other people.

• Visualize how your current behavior would look to an external perspective.

• Use self-distanced language when you’re trying to reflect or motivate yourself (“is this what you should be doing now?”).

Self-distancing is also useful for thinking clearly through other situations, even when procrastination isn’t involved.

I originally covered this concept in my other newsletter, Effectiviology, which you’re welcome to subscribe to if you want to learn about similar concepts in applied psychology and philosophy.

I hope you’ll find this helpful.

Have a great week,
Itamar