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Harness the Butterflies: The science of reclaiming your productivity.

Michael E Johnson
9 min readMay 5, 2023

Worry and Procrastination are trauma we experience about things that haven’t happened yet. But, “Work Needs Done”. With some guidance from the Science and a little practice we can learn to separate the emotions from the work we need to accomplish, and we can learn to be compassionate with ourselves so that we may heal without punishing ourselves for being human.

Image: Pendens Proditor

Procrastination is an emotional response to pain we haven’t suffered yet. We use procrastination as a way to regulate those emotions. So we have a thought, or a memory, that becomes attached to an emotion. The emotion is uncomfortable, and may be tied to failure, or just getting started. When the task looms, the emotion is triggered.

Memories are malleable, and reinforced. We attach emotions to events. An external event (even FUTURE external event) becomes wrapped up in our internal state. In productivity, the knowledge of the looming task brings the emotion… the emotion causes avoidance. “Worry is a misuse of the imagination.”, Dan Zandra reminds us. That energy could be put to much better use.

Simple ways to regain control:

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Michael E Johnson
Michael E Johnson

Written by Michael E Johnson

Inventor building an iron-based battery for the one billion humans living without access to light once the sun goes down. www.bigattichouse.com

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