Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [24]
Second, we should drop the task at hand when opportunity comes knocking. In a frenzy of determination, we finally set out to wash all the windows in the house. Halfway through the job, we’re invited to an impromptu get-together with our friends. There’s no particular reason why the windows should be finished today rather than tomorrow or next week. But the get-together is only today. It’s an opportunity. In this instance we have a lot to gain and nothing to lose by changing course. If we opt to finish the windows today, simply because they were begun, we forgo a pleasure for no purpose.
Naturally, freedom from resistance is not a guarantee that opportunities will never again be missed. We may have to decline a sudden and attractive invitation if it will cost us our job to accept. But it’s pointless to let opportunity slip away when the present task can be postponed without cost.
We’re not likely to forgo opportunities that are very large and obvious. But our reluctance to change course often causes us to miss little pleasures. We won’t stop to look at a sunset until we’ve finished our work—and then it’s too late. Even when the opportunity is large and obvious, we don’t make a transition to it without wasteful effort. We have to tear ourselves away from our half-finished accounts to leave for the rendezvous of our dreams.
It’s curious that we should experience any difficulty at all in harvesting an obvious benefit. Our reluctance to face the unpleasantness of an emergency is understandable enough. But mere aversion to unpleasantness can’t explain our hesitation in the face of opportunity. It seems that we’re unconditionally averse to change itself, whether it’s for the worse or for the better. But this is only another way of saying that we suffer from mental inertia.
Third, we should drop the task at hand when we’re visited by an imperative interruption. The doorbell rings just as we sit down to watch the evening news. We know that a change of course is inevitable. We surely will answer the door. We don’t seriously consider rejecting the new course. And yet we resist it. We glare at the door and heap maledictions upon it. We delay entering into our new condition even though we can no longer abide in the old. All of this is wasted time and energy.
This isn’t to suggest that we should, like a leaf in the wind, accede to every external demand for our attention. The traveling salesman does not always require a full hearing. What matters is the irresistibility of the demand. Like everything else, irresistibility is relative to the observer. We can always elect not to answer doorbells and telephones, toss out talkative bores, stay in the race with a broken leg, ignore the cries of a drowning child. But if, for whatever reason, we know that we will not repudiate a call to the new, we might as well stop what we’re doing without a fuss. It’s irrelevant that our work is enormously important or that the interruption is trivial. If we surely will be interrupted, we might as well make the transition gracefully. It’s pointless to struggle without a hope of victory.
Resistance to interruptions is the easiest of all mental traps to detect in everyday life. We’re always acutely aware of interruptions when they occur, for otherwise they would fail to interrupt us. Thus the occasions upon which we are liable to resist them are clearly signaled beforehand. This makes every interruption into an especially valuable opportunity to practice the skill of not getting trapped. The ring of the doorbell at news-time and the alighting of a talkative bore in the middle of our work provide us with indispensable first exercises in self-improvement. If we remember this beneficial side of interruptions, we will greet them with an openness that already precludes resistance.
The occasions for resistance are greatly increased by certain forms of prior anticipation. When we fall prey to one-step anticipation and needlessly decide what we will be doing next, our decisions are often undone by unexpected circumstances.