Whether we're doing cognitive work or exercising, whenever we do something we feel like we're straining — a sense of effort. The greater this sense of effort, the less we want to do the work or the workout.
In the exercise world there's a concept called perceived exertion. High perceived exertion means you feel more strongly that you're exercising. Put simply, it feels brutal. The higher the perceived exertion, the faster you give up on the workout. I want to broaden this into the slightly more general concept of a sense of effort.
When you're working, the less effort it feels like, the better. If it feels easy, it's easier to start and you keep at it longer. You don't burn out either. Of course, there are cases where a moderate amount of friction is necessary, like deliberate practice.1 But purely in terms of sustainability, less is better. In fact, it's rare for someone to quit because something was too easy and therefore boring. Most people quit because it was too hard.
If reducing the sense of effort is good, how do we reduce it? The first thing to try is thinking only about the near-present. "Near-present" is a term I coined.2 It refers to the window three to five minutes from now — not the present, but a short stretch pressed right up against it. You think about what you'd like to have accomplished three to five minutes from now.
For writing, say, you'd focus only on the part you can finish in exactly three minutes. You don't think about the piece as a whole. In a way it resembles the freewriting technique. You concentrate only on the part you can complete in a moment and get that done first, whatever it takes.
I picked up this method while exercising. When running, if you think about the destination while there's still a long way to go in time or distance, it actually drains you. The sense of effort goes up.3 At times like that, telling yourself to just cover the 200 to 300 meters you can see ahead is what lets you make it. In other words, thinking only about the near-present means pushing work forward by focusing only on small tasks you can finish within a few minutes.
Focusing on the present, as in mindfulness, is actually counterproductive. Concentrating only on the present makes you feel the pain more. Mindfulness makes heavy use of body scans, but doing a body scan in the middle of a long stretch of work or an intense workout only makes you feel more pain. That's why you think about the near-present — neither the present nor the distant future.
This also connects to GTD. GTD says that if something takes less than two minutes, do it right away. If it'll be over in two minutes, the burden is low, and putting it off is actually more of a hassle. In the same way, if you break work into pieces that take three to five minutes and attend only to that one piece, it feels like all you're doing is easy tasks, and the sense of effort drops.
Footnotes
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Another example where friction is necessary is LLM Wikis and Germane Load. ↩
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It's not a very intuitive word, but there was nothing else to call it. ↩
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Anyone who's done CrossFit will know. Say the WOD calls for 100 burpees. Just thinking about doing 100 drains you before you start. But if you think of it as ten sets of ten, it becomes at least doable. Because you're only counting to ten, you reach ten quickly. If you think this is just a shell game, I'd suggest trying CrossFit. ↩