Why Looking Backward Moves You Forward

Oct 26

4 min read

By Andrea Spyros & Nancy DeFina | BD3 Solutions

You finished four things today; you'll remember none of them. But that one email still sitting in your drafts folder? You’ve been procrastinating on it for so long, you could probably recite it from memory. It keeps rattling around in your head along with the three other things you’ve procrastinated on. You judge yourself by thinking: “Why can’t I get anything done? What’s wrong with me anyway?”

Judgments point at all that’s left to do, while your actual progress is immediately forgotten. They light up like a neon sign flashing: “You. Didn’t. Get. Anything. Done. BOO, you!”

We've spent the last three articles Untangling the elusive Hidden Knot #3, the Judgment voice that turns a fifteen-minute task into an all-day standoff. You've met Awareness, the pause that catches the Judgment in the act. You've met Ask Questions, the reframe that trades certainty for curiosity. Now, we close out the Three “A”s with the one that flips your entire vantage point: Accomplishments.

The Mountain Only Looks That Big From the Bottom

Judgments have a favorite trick. They focus you on what’s still left to do, the inbox that won’t empty (like Andrea’s 24,046 unread emails—down from fifty thousand, though), the project you’ll get to “later” (but later never comes), the version of "done" that keeps moving further away (rewrites, anyone?). Stand at the base of that mountain long enough, and it starts to feel less like a task and more like you’re gonna need a Sherpa and an oxygen tank.

Accomplishments turn you around. Instead of measuring yourself against what's left, you measure against what you've already done. It’s the same task, the same mountain, but a completely different feeling because the path behind you shows your progress. (And you covered every step of it yourself, no Sherpa needed.)

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Meet Lena

Lena ended every day by listing what she hadn't finished. By the time she closed her laptop, she felt even more behind than when she'd started, and that nightly tally had a way of bleeding into the next morning, too, making her slower to start and quicker to stall.

One evening, worn down and irritable, she tried the opposite. She sat down and listed everything she had accomplished that day, large and small. Instead of a “to-do list” for tomorrow, she created a “to-done” list for the day. Something shifted. The next morning she was eager to get started, and she noticed that she had more energy to get through the day.

That's Accomplishments: instead of measuring against everything still left to do, you measure against the progress you've already made. That shift in vantage point is often what makes it possible to get more done, not less.

A Few Recipes to Try

After I feel far from the finish line, I will name one thing I've already accomplished on this project, then I'll Celebrate by saying, "Look how far I've come."
After I close my laptop for the day, I will think about how much I got done, then I'll Celebrate by saying, "That counts!"
After I think "I'm not good enough," I will recall a time I overcame something similar, then I'll Celebrate by saying, "I've got receipts."

Each one takes seconds. None of them requires the project to be finished, just a quick, honest look at what's already true.

Three “A”s All in One Place

If you’ve been reading along, you've picked up three different ways to loosen the grip of a Judgment the moment it shows up: catch yourself (Awareness), challenge yourself (Ask Questions), and credit yourself for what you’ve done (Accomplishments). None of them require willpower. All of them work in the moment and prevent you from getting sucked into the Procrastination Cycle.

If you want all thirty Recipes in one place, ready to use the next time a Judgment grabs you, we put them together in a guide: Be Kinder to Yourself, Get More Done: Tiny Habits® to Stop Judging Yourself and Start Moving Forward.

It's got ten Tiny Habit® Recipes for each of the Three “A”s, plus a handy primer on how to make Celebration actually work for you. For a limited time, it's only $9.97 (regularly $19.97).

Get the guide → https://www.bd3solutions.com/untangleprocrastination#habits-to-stop-judging-yourself-guide

Your Move

You don't need to master all Three “A”s all at once. Choose the one that speaks to you most this week: Awareness if you're still learning to notice the Judgment at all, Ask Questions if you're ready to challenge it, Accomplishments if you need a reminder of how far you've already come. One small Recipe, tried once, is enough to start Untangling the Knot.

Next week: How often have you called yourself a procrastinator? Next week, we start a new series on identity and why that label is so hard to shake. You’ll also learn how small actions can change the story you tell about yourself.

Andrea Spyros and Nancy DeFina are the founders of BD3 Solutions and creators of Untangle Procrastination™, a science-based program grounded in models and methods from the Stanford Behavior Design Lab.

ICYMI→Get our full program here.

Learn more at bd3solutions.com/untangleprocrastination.