Strategies

Strategies for Persevering Through Difficult Tasks

You don’t need to be faster, tougher or smarter than anyone else. You just have to rely on your own mental and physical strengths to get through, rather than measuring yourself against the successes and failures of those around you.

On one hand, what gets people to want to finish their goals is their ability to look into the future, to transcend the here and now, and to anticipate what is going to happen depending on their own behaviour. These strategies are a means of making sure that you can anticipate the positive consequences that you imagined for your future and to avoid the negative ones. 

On another hand, these strategies can make the difficult task that you are doing less effortful. In other words, they change the experience of the here and now and make it easier for you to arrive at the future you are trying to accomplish.

1. Regulate your emotions

There are many ways that people can regulate their emotional states to keep themselves in a good mood - even despite being in the middle of an otherwise unenjoyable task. For example, thinking of something that makes you happy - whether a memory of a sunny beach or your pet’s joyful greeting when you come home. Regulating your emotions can be conceptually different from distraction, because distraction doesn’t necessarily have the component of changing your mood for the better. When you think of your homework list and chores to do while you are pushing through on a long run, you may have successfully distracted yourself from the here and now of your circumstances, but not necessarily made yourself happier with your thoughts.

When all else fails remember the 40 percent theory. Whatever your brain is telling you, you're only 60 percent done, so picture the rewards at the end and get yourself there. Quitting is not an option!

2. Think of the near finish

When you are getting close to completing your goal but feel the strain and effort of continuing, thinking of the near finish might be another helpful strategy for reaching your goal. For example, if you had planned on running for 30 minutes, and you feel like you are about to give up after 25 minutes, thinking that you are nearly there can give you the extra boost of self-control you need to push through the last 5 minutes.

3.  Add a positive activity to the task to make it more pleasant

Task enrichment is a strategy that can be useful in situations where the cognitive load of your task is relatively low and the effort is more physical than mental (for example, listening to music while completing house chores or running). 

However, it might become a negative distraction if the task itself is only meaningful if you have to focus on it. For example, if you are trying to understand or memorize material that you are reading, then having the TV in the background would likely not be helpful in getting the most out of your reading. This is because it will either add to your cognitive load or distract you from focusing on what you are doing.

EXTRA STRATEGIES

4. Focus on the positive consequences of the activity

If you find yourself on a treadmill - exasperated and ready to give up - you could remind yourself of the good that you are doing to your physical and emotional wellbeing. Or if you are a student labouring over tedious reading material, you could think that studying now will likely help you pass your exams and achieve your academic goals and or your positive motivator.

"I learnt a lot about survival through rugby. When I get thoughts of giving up I visualise my why, my goal and what that Nick looks like in the future. I see the outcome. I see the result. When you are in the pain time, that is actually just the growth period to get to that guy there. So you are chasing you down."

Nick 'Honey Badger' Cummins - International Rugby Union Player

5. Monitor your goal progress

This strategy involves checking in with yourself and your progress in order to see how well you are doing on your task and how close you are to your goal. For example, if you are on a long run, you can monitor your progress by looking at the amount of time or distance that you have already put in. We do this mental evaluation of where we are, compared with where we want to be often and naturally, and according to research, it can be a successful self-regulatory strategy to help us persevere at our tasks.