When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
The Pomodoro Technique is straight-forward enough. Decide on what you have to do and work at it with short cycles. This technique works because it hacks our natural inclination to fear, in 2 effective ways:
Reducing initial fear so you can get started
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Remember what we learnt about fear and anxiety? These are emotions that happen naturally without your control, and they are triggered when something feels threatening to you.
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When you plan a 5-hour work session ahead of you, it feels threatening. That's a lot of time. It sounds like it will be painful. Your amygdala starts to trigger, you feel scared and anxious and worried, and you... procrastinate.
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In contrast, a 25-minute session sounds much less threatening. And you get a guaranteed break after.
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Since it's less threatening, you're more likely to start work on the task. In this way, you allay the potential fears in your brain (which is why it's so important to understand how our brains work!)
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The Pomodoro Technique is very similar to the Kaizen philosophy from the Japanese. Kaizen advocates a modified approach - the 1-Minute Technique. When folks face a challenging task and have trouble starting, the 1-minute technique simply asks us to work at it for 1 minute. This reduces the fear and anxiety we have to the bare minimum, allowing almost anyone to start on something.
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Once we've started, we build momentum, and we are often able to keep going.
Fear of time running out
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Ever seen a sale or infomercial, where there is a time limit to a particular price? You might not have wanted to buy anything. But when you see the timer, your brain clicks into action - maybe you need to take action.
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The timer triggers a different sense of fear in our brains, the fear of losing something. In this case, that something is time
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By having a short cycle, you find that time passes really quickly. And when you see that clock counting down, you feel the sense of urgency to not lose the remaining time you have. You have a higher chance of working harder.
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Primacy and recency effect
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We tend to be able to recall more of what we learnt at the start (primacy) and at the end (recency) of a learning session. This is what is know as the serial position effect, or the primacy and recency effect.
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The Pomodoro method creates multiple learning sessions with breaks in between; this creates more primary (each time you start) and recent (each time the session ends) brackets.
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Finally, there is some research that shows that 20-25 minutes is about the maximum time the brain can concentrate fully before it needs a break (this is also why Ted Talks are less than 20 minutes). However, this is highly context dependent, and can have wide variability.