Outcome anxiety is primarily worrying yourself out by excessively thinking about the end results.
Overthinking before taking action is a common cause for this state and feelings of stress, worry and inaction are the symptoms.
Let’s understand why does this happen?
Most of us either stop at nothing or want all. This leads to situations where we might just get overwhelmed by the task’s enormity & lose motivation to pursue it midway.
A typical example is when trying to lose weight, we shift from our usual diet, which may be around 4000 cal per day to 2000 cal per day, and then start weighing ourselves daily. Knowing fully well that we didn’t pile up those inches in one day, getting rid of the excess fat will also take its own time.
When we don’t see the results coming through, we give up in the middle and go back to 4000 cal /day. Between 4000 and 2000 we can also limit ourselves to consuming 3000 cal/day which is more sustainable and once body get used to it we can gradually bring it down to 2500 and 2000 as the body adapts to this new way. Instead of weighing daily, measure your weight once a week so that you can see the gradual movement in scale and stay on track. We already know most of this stuff; the only problem is the application.
Imagine if a mountain climber just keeps thinking about the height they need to scale; the chances are that they would never complete it due to worry and anxiety. Even in writing, many books don’t see the light of the day as authors just burden themselves by overthinking about the completion instead of enjoying the writing journey.
An alternate and effective way would be to focus on today and just do what you can achieve today and keep moving. This way, we will not only be able to achieve the goal without panicking but would also be able to enjoy the entire journey. This method can also be applied to improve productivity.
Instead of being overcome by emotions and deciding to do ten things a day while earlier, you may be doing just one thing a day; aim for a small increment every day. It should be a reasonable, realistic, and tiny enough target, achievable by an average person without extraordinary effort.
The accomplishment of each small task will give you enough fuel to carry on every subsequent day.
A mere 1% rise in weekly productivity can improve your overall performance by 80% in 1 year. A daily increment of 1% in productivity can translate to a 3900% increase in annual productivity(The compounding principle comes into play).
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Cheers!
Lalit Hundalani
Leading Life Transformation Coach||2X Best-Selling Author||Mentor
thanks for sharing very useful advise