I Dream Big But Do Nothing. The Psychology Behind Why & How To Fix It.

Have you ever wanted something big and done noting about it? Financial freedom. A healthier body. More love. Success. A completely different life. Maybe these things are in your imagination.

You see it.

You feel it.

You believe it.

You talk to other people about it as if it’s already true. But ultimately, nothing happens.

Psychologists say it’s not laziness. There is literally a neurological cycle happening in your brain that’s preventing you from pursuing your dreams.

And if you want to discover the real explanation as to why you’re acting “lazy”, stick around. This article will help explain how your brain works and how to fix it.

The Avoidance Loop (No Escape)

Procrastination researcher, Tim Pychyl spent decades studying why people don’t stick to their words. What they found is that procrastination is not a time management problem, it’s an emotional regulation problem.

Think about something important you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe a project that could improve your finances or an exercise habit that would build your ideal body. If you’re an introvert (like myself), that might mean signing up to dating apps to find love.

PS. I did this.

I had more failed dates than you can imagine.

But now one year into my relationship and all I can say is, I’m a very lucky man.

The greatest gift in life is finding someone who motivates you to become better and richer together.

That’s a success story because I took the initiative to fail 10+ times.

But let’s focus on why you’re brain fails to follow through.

And that’s because when you think about doing a difficult task, your brain generates a negative emotion. Self doubt. Overwhelm. Anxiety. The fear of not being good enough. Your brain obviously doesn’t like those emotions, so it looks for escapism. Cleaning. Scrolling. Playing video games. Alochol.

When you escape, the negative feelings go away temporarily and you feel relieved. Relief is the reward. And behaviours that get rewarded get repeated. So, the cycle continues.

Further research found that people who procrastinate the most have a weaker connection to their future self. What I call this is present you dumping sh!t on future you. But there is no escape. You will have to go through it either now or in the future.

You either learn how money works and self-educate yourself on a high-income skill in your 20’s or you end up suffering in a job that you want to escape in your 30’s, or even worse, until you retire. Same with health. You can either be healthy and exercise now or you will deal with a weak body later.

However, one thing is guranteed.

The future you will deal with the stress and panic that you right now is pushing away.

Always think about what the future version of you would want. Not what you want right now. If you don’t, the loop will continue to destroy your life.

You often feel like you have no control because you have no control.

You face a difficult task (trigger). You feel a sense of discomfort. You avoid the task. You feel relieved (temporary escape). And back to the start. Pretty common sense.

My YouTube channel (and Subsatck) are a great example. I didn’t start posting consistently until two years later. The trigger (and discomfort) was writing a newsletter or filming a YouTube video. I avoided it with multiple distractions. And that escapism gave me a lot of relief. But it was temporary.

Before we move on to solutions, let’s talk a bit about how your brain works with all this.

Two Systems Competing For Control

Every time you’re challenged with a difficult task, there are two parts of your brain competing for control.

**Amygdala—**this is the part of your brain that’s responsible for detecting threats. If the task is overwhelming, your brain literally treats it as a threat. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a lion chasing you and a simple deadline. It treats both the same. It doesn’t care about your 5-year plan. It only cares about feeling good right now. This is why you resist things that are good for you.
**Anterior cingulate cortex—**this is your action system. It takes all the signals from the amygdala. If the threat is big, it obeys it. But if the task is more important than the threat, it shuts down the signals and pushes you to action.

Procrastination means the amygdala wins.

Your emoitonal brain overrides your rational brain.

One simple fix is to change how the task is framed in your brain. Instead of going to the gym (which is too big of a threat for your brain), change the goal to just move your body instead.

Work with your amygdala, don’t fight it. Because you won’t win.

The other thing is, the longer the dream has been a desire, the more unttainable it seems. The more you drag out doing the task, the more you make the dream bigger than you.

You become seperate from it.

Your mind and body goes into shock mode because what you want is so much bigger than you. Some of you might have been in this freeze mode for a while.

The reason you dream big but do nothing is essentially because your dream is nothing. It’s outside of you.

Instead, think about how the person you want to be would think, act, and feel. Don’t look at your reality, focus on the person who has your desired reality.

Quick story time. I’m designing my website at the moment. A lot of is basically going back and forth with the web developer. When I want to change something, I tell him what I want to change and he changes the coding. As a result, the website looks different (something more of my liking).

It’s the same thing for you.

Not a fan of your life? Install a new program. Pick what you want to change, then actually change it.

Do this through:

Gratitude: programme yourself to see more of what you want.
Identity work: stick around people that have your result**—**put yourself in environments where your ideal identity installs effortlessly.
Act as if: see your wishes already fulfilled, “If I had it, I would do this”.

Your brain trains itself to avoid difficult tasks and procrastinate by default. The question is, can you train it to do the complete opposite?

Research has an answer.

And it’s very simple.

You can.

By just starting.

You don’t need to finish anything. Do it for 5 or 10 minutes. Train your brain to see an alternative. In other words, what we want to do is interupt the loop.

Interupt The Avoidance Loop

There are two ways to do this:

**Catch and name it—**do you notice yourself procrastinating? If so, think about the emotion you’re experiencing in that moment. Then name it. Just by doing that, you’re switching from your emotional mind to your rational mind.
**Make the task stupidly small—**don’t write an essay, open a Word doc and just write for 10 minutes. The actual process of completing a task is almost always much easier than the thoughts you have prior to it. You’re not avoding the task. You’re avoding the way you think that task is going to make you feel. Which your brain is almost always wrong.

If you’re an entrepreneur, creator, influencer, or simply an ambitious person, the next part will resonate with you SO MUCH.

The 2 Types Of Disguises

At this point, you might be saying, “I don’t sit on the couch doing nothing, I’m busy all the time! I just don’t see any results.”

That’s because your brain doesn’t just let you sit there and do nothing.

Doing nothing triggers guilt and guilt is another negative emoiton the amygdala is trying to avoid.

So your brain disguises avoidance as producvity through:

**Perfectionism—**research shows that people who score higher on perfectionism are bigger procrastinators. And that’s because they don’t start. They do the oppostie of what research has proven to work.
**Productive procrastinsation—**this is a sneeky one. You’re not actually sitting on the couch doing nothing. You’re researching. Reorganising notes. Watching videos on YouTube. Tom Pitchel calls this short-term mood repair. When a difficult task triggers negative emotion, your brain swaps it for a less risky task. You get a sense of accomplishment after you finish it, but the task is less high stake so you’re basically not moving towards your goal much, if at all.

From this, I want you to understand why you do what you do and for that reason, what you shouldn’t do.

Solutions

Firstly, don’t confuse thinking with progress. Most of the time, I tell people to expand their imagination of what’s possible. But a lot of people forget the most important part, which is to act. Thinking about success gives your brain a sense of achievement. It releases small amounts of dopamine. It reduces the urgency to take action.

If your brain doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality (which it doesn’t), then it thinks it already has what it wants. If you think you already have what you want, why act? You won’t.

Secondly, don’t have an identity that isn’t aligned with your goals. The brain resists actions that don’t match how a person sees themselves.

And thirdly, don’t be addicted to potential. Be addiced to effort. Real progress is repetitive, slow, and uncomfortable. Instead of doing the hard boring work, most people stay attached to the idea of who they can be because it feels beter than facing who they are now.

Final note. Stop pushing through**. Forcing things don’t work. Work with your brain in the ways we’ve spoken about in this letter. Be mindful of your current thoughts, feeling and actions. C**hange them if you don’t like it. And when it comes to your work or side hustles, start with the tiniest action possible.

Dopamine is released most strongly in anticipation of the reward, not the reward itself.

Avoid getting chemical hits from thinking about success. Get it from actually achieving things.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this reading.

Talk to you next week.

-Serkan