Cultivate reasonable anticipation

Anticipation is a double-edged sword.

It helps us to be patient. It motivates us to get started working on complex projects. Anticipation is a vital tool that allows us to battle and often defeat the resistance.

Anticipation is a self-feeding force. As we go, the resistance ramps up, and anticipation puts images and feelings in our heads that are increasingly satisfying. The promise of a fantastic reward helps us cope with the difficult path to achieve it. It provides fuel to our fire.

But this deception comes at a price, as the reward is rarely as good as we were led to believe, and we are left disappointed or burned out.

I sometimes see people attributing this crash to the sheer tiredness of the work that went into completing the task. There's, of course, something to that as well, but digging deeper will reveal the tricks that anticipation plays.

We need anticipation, no doubt. It, however, often escapes our control. The modern world does everything in its power to empower it. After all, when anticipation overcomes us, we can't resist our desires to purchase and consume.

When you feel anticipation, pause and ask yourself if the picture it paints in your head looks realistic. If not, deliberately adjust it.

Reasonable anticipation is enough to drive us to act.