Coaching practices for There's This Thing I Keep Avoiding Because It's a Slog with No Payoff in the Moment and Meanwhile There's a Show I Love That I Feel a Little Guilty About and I'm Wondering If Letting Myself Have the One Only While Doing the Other Would Make the Dreaded Thing Actually Pull Me in
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For There's This Thing I Keep Avoiding Because It's a Slog with No Payoff in the Moment and Meanwhile There's a Show I Love That I Feel a Little Guilty About and I'm Wondering If Letting Myself Have the One Only While Doing the Other Would Make the Dreaded Thing Actually Pull Me in, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- There’s this thing I keep avoiding because it’s a slog with no payoff in the moment
- There’s a show I’m hooked on and a workout I keep dodging
- I want to pair a guilty pleasure with a chore I keep dodging, but I can’t tell which of my treats and which of my avoided tasks would actually fit together
- I only ever think about this in terms of some far-off payoff, so right now it just feels like pure drudgery
- The things that are good for me all pay off way later, so in the moment they just feel like a chore, and the stuff that feels good right now keeps winning
Practices that may help
- Bundle an immediate pleasure with a deferred obligation
Permit yourself an enjoyable activity only while doing the task you keep avoiding — pair present reward with future-oriented behavior.
Hyperbolic Discounting — Why Future You Always Gets the Short End - Temptation bundling
Allow yourself a wanted indulgence only while doing the behavior you avoid.
Reward Substitution - Audit your wants and shoulds to find bundle candidates
List the things you want to do but feel guilty about alongside the things you know you should do but avoid.
Temptation Bundling, Made Practical - Reframe the should as offering something desirable right now, not later
Shift your mental representation of the healthy behavior from "future benefit" to "present experience."
Temptation Bundling, Made Practical - Make it attractive with temptation bundling
Pair a behavior you should do with one you want to do.
Atomic Habits, Made Practical - Confront avoidance with compassionate courage
Do the hard thing — the difficult conversation, the scary action — because you care about your future self.
Fierce Self-Compassion, Made Practical - Place an important-seeming but deferrable task at the top of your list
Put a compelling but non-urgent task first, so everything below it gets done in avoidance of it.
Structured Procrastination, Made Practical - Attach an immediate proxy reward
Give the behavior an enjoyable reward now instead of waiting for the distant payoff.
Reward Substitution - Tackle one avoided task per week
Schedule one thing you have been avoiding — completing it relieves more energy than the task cost.
Pleasant Events Scheduling, Made Practical - Distinguish genuine deferral from disguised refusal
An item that has been on the someday list for two or more years is not deferred — it has been declined without being acknowledged.
The Someday List
Related concerns
- When Temptation Bundling Want Should Audit
List the things you want to do but feel guilty about alongside the things you know you should do but avoid.
Audit your wants and shoulds to find bundle candidates
- Finding Temptation Bundle Pairs
Temptation bundling — pairing something you want to do with something you should do — has direct experimental support from Katherine Milkman’s gym-attendance research, where bundling audiobooks with exercise meaningfully increased visits. Effects are real but decay over time and after disruptions, so bundling is a habit-starter rather than a permanent motivator.
- Temptation Bundling As A Caregiver
Temptation bundling — pairing something you want to do with something you should do — has direct experimental support from Katherine Milkman’s gym-attendance research, where bundling audiobooks with exercise meaningfully increased visits. Effects are real but decay over time and after disruptions, so bundling is a habit-starter rather than a permanent motivator.
- Temptation Bundling When Starting Out
Temptation bundling — pairing something you want to do with something you should do — has direct experimental support from Katherine Milkman’s gym-attendance research, where bundling audiobooks with exercise meaningfully increased visits. Effects are real but decay over time and after disruptions, so bundling is a habit-starter rather than a permanent motivator.
- Bundling Outcomes
Temptation bundling — pairing something you want to do with something you should do — has direct experimental support from Katherine Milkman’s gym-attendance research, where bundling audiobooks with exercise meaningfully increased visits. Effects are real but decay over time and after disruptions, so bundling is a habit-starter rather than a permanent motivator.
- Katherine Milkman Temptation Bundling
Temptation bundling — pairing something you want to do with something you should do — has direct experimental support from Katherine Milkman’s gym-attendance research, where bundling audiobooks with exercise meaningfully increased visits. Effects are real but decay over time and after disruptions, so bundling is a habit-starter rather than a permanent motivator.
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