Pre-Loading Choices

An easy fix for starting something is Pre-Loading your choices.

It means deciding in advance what you are going to do when you arrive at certain conditions.

For example: One of my pre-loaded choices is, that at the end of my writing session I decide in advance what the next step will be when I come back to my writing the next time.

This starting step could be: When I sit down to write tomorrow I will…

…research my topic for 25 minutes.
…read what I wrote the day before.
…do a writing exercise.

And I do that so I don’t have to sit down the next day and think about what I need to do. Instead of wasting my most valued writing time actually writing instead of having to think about what I should do.

Pre-loading choices works because it gives us a clear trigger that “triggers” us into doing what we decided to do. Spot the difference:

“Next week I will start on my essay.”

Or:

“Right after I come back from Sunday Dinner at my parents, I will sit down at my desk and work for an hour on my essay. I will start by gathering my notes and and write an outline of the essay.”

Does it look familiar? It does, doesn’t it? It looks like our old friend Tiny Habit but as a one time behavior.

Pre-loading a choice is at its most effective when you take the time to write it down and afterwards closing your eyes and imagine yourself doing the desired behavior. This tricks your brain into thinking that you have already done the behavior once, diminishing our reluctance to doing it because it is something unfamiliar. I’d wager money it would be even more effective taking a page out of the Tiny Habits book and actually rehearse coming home from Sunday Dinner at your parents and sitting down at your desk to start writing.

But most often when we decide to pre-load the choice, we aren’t in the same spot the behavior will take place or we can’t recreate the proper conditions. So we settle for imagining the process instead. Which for our brain is nearly the same thing.

Remember the study about the pianists who actually practice and pianists who imagine doing the fingering of a music piece? Where it turns out: Our brain can’t differentiate between what is real and what is imagined? It’s the same here: Imagining yourself successfully doing a task and you might just increase your chances of successfully doing said task.

So be nice to your future self and take some minutes out of your day to pre-load a choice.

THE ONE THING

Write down THE ONE THING which was most useful to you from the chapter.

Then think about one way you can incorporate THE ONE THING in your comedy writing right now. WRITE! IT! DOWN!