Just Create Structures

Removing the Weight of Reluctance through Structure

When it comes to task avoidance, what we call “not being in the mood” is really just lack of structure.

When we don’t have a structure to build or perform from, we feel the weight of its uncertainty, and this leads to reluctance.

Imagine not getting around to writing an article, or doing an episode, or coding a feature, or studying. Where does the reluctance come from? It can’t come from the task itself, because the nature of what a task entails is always perceived quite differently before and after we do it.

The weight of reluctance we feel is the lack of a cohesive pattern; the thing we want to already have in our possession, to call it “done.” We feel the hill we have to climb to get there, and choose avoidance. “Maybe once we’re in the mood we’ll have the energy to get over that hill.”

Instead of focusing on the task in its entirety, focus on the structure you will put in place. The few pieces that will anchor and connect your work into its story.

Don’t write to fill pages of full paragraphs, write point form to discover the backbone of your subsequent writing. Don’t spend time thinking of all the things you’ll say in an episode, go create a concept map of its main connective tissue. Don’t code the whole feature now, code the objects that will provide clean separation of concerns. Don’t just start the study clock, arrange a framework to approach the lesson.

All of these grow and fill out over time.

A focus on structure has 2 core benefits: 1) creating structure is far less energy intensive than jumping in fully, and 2) structure accumulates and grows in a recognizable and understood fashion.

Both remove the weight of reluctance.

Just be sure your structures are discovered, and willfully updated with experience. They are not recipes for making work deterministic and predictable, they are for anchoring and providing visibility into what matters.

Once you realize that you have reluctance about things, not because of the things themselves, but because you don’t have structures for them, your first and next steps will be aligned to the simple task of creating structures.

Just create structures.