This one is going to get personal. Sorry.

When I say “this one is going to get personal,” I’m saying that this article is going to get a little personal because it – like pretty much every other f$&%ing thing I write – is inspired by actual s$&% from my gaming life. Either by problems I’ve personally encountered, content I’ve personally written, shortcomings I’ve personally seen in my own personal game, solutions I’ve personally tested, or issues I’ve personally discussed with persons. Okay, that last one isn’t AS personal. But those discussions did get pretty personal. Uncomfortably so. Mostly for them; not so much for me. I don’t really have any filters. Especially when it comes to the questions I’ll ask.

But, when I say, “this one is going to get personal,” I mean also that the Long, Rambling Introduction™ is going to get personal. Because the Long, Rambling Introduction™ is where I explain why the hell I’m about to write what I’m about to write and what – usually personal – incident made me feel like it was worth blasting out 5,000 words about the whole damned thing anyway. And the context, in this case, is about dealing with my own mental health. If glimpsing into someone else’s broken brain bits makes you uncomfortable, you might want to skip down to the actual article. Consider yourself warned.

See, I’m dealing with some problems. Mental things. And when I say “I’m dealing with mental things,” I don’t mean in the Tumblr way where I diagnose myself with an issue, shrug my shoulders and say “I guess that’s just how I am,” and then write articles telling everyone else how to deal properly with me because of my issues. I mean that I am under the treatment of a mental health professional who is working with my doctor, I have been diagnosed, I am attending regular sessions with the said professional, and I have been assigned regular work to do outside of my therapy sessions. Kind of like what happens after you break your knee and have to have major surgery and your leg is totally shot. You get regular checkups with your doctor to assess your recovery, you attend physical therapy, and you also have to exercise regularly outside of physical therapy. You don’t just go on your blog and tell people “I’m pretty sure my leg is shot so you’ll all have to carry me everywhere; I’ll post my schedule online and everyone can sign up to be my human pony day after day.” Because look, you should never, ever expect anyone to work harder than you for your benefit and if you’ve got a problem, you’re the first and last person responsible for fixing it. Even if it wasn’t your fault that it happened.

I mean, sure, I can sit and blame my parents for screwing up my brain and my neurochemicals for being all broken and whatever. But at the end of the day, blaming things doesn’t fix things and no matter who did what, I’m the one who has to keep living my life and if I want it to be different, I’m the one who has to step up.

I warned you this was going to get personal.

ANYWAY…

I’m not going into all the details of the issues I’m dealing with. Some of them are chronic and come back periodically. Some of them are underlying problems that I wasn’t aware of that are probably exacerbating the chronic problems. Most of them are acute; the result of events in my life that I haven’t properly dealt with and with me not really taking everything seriously and pursuing help when I should have. But I am doing what I have to do. With actual medical professionals. Which, by the way, means I don’t need your advice. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound like an a$&hole to some well-meaning reader, but I am being looked after by trained people and working on my own under their supervision. They know what’s going on and they know the best way to fix it. Keep your own medical and psychological advice to yourself. It will all be deleted. Not just because I don’t need it, but also because I don’t want someone else following the unqualified advice you post in my comment section.

Why am I setting down this much context and why am I being so harsh about it? Because the stuff I’m going to talk about today isn’t about mental health, but it also kind of is. It’s about something that most people experience once in a while in small amounts that can get in the way of their running a good game or writing and publishing the content they want to write. Normal, human stuff that can nonetheless be a little tricky to get over. But it is also stuff that is made infinitely worse by certain mental health issues. And, in fact, one of the catalysts for my seeking help was how bad those normal, small amounts of human stuff that make it hard sometimes run games can get. And as a result of working with a doctor and a therapist and being assigned stuff to read and stuff to do and pursuing research on my own because I believe I should be an expert on my health, I learned a lot about those normal, human things and why they sometimes happen. And I feel like I have some advice on that front now.

However, this is not mental health advice and I am not a mental health professional or a doctor or anything else. If you find yourself sometimes struggling in small ways to find the confidence you need to run a game or with putting off a project you really want to work or with establishing some gaming habits, this stuff might help. If you find yourself in a deep pit where you feel these things are ruining your life, stop reading right now. Because this isn’t for you. And this isn’t what you need. You need the help of a professional just as surely as you would if you broke your knee. And I know it can be hard to find the help you need and it can be costly to seek help, so I’m going to suggest you check out the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. If you’re in America, obviously. They have a lot of resources, including lots of advice for finding low-cost treatment near you. I also know it’s hard to admit you need help. Trust me. But, once again, you wouldn’t be embarrassed to go to an emergency room if you broke your damned knee. Also, as I’m going to talk about below, often making the decision is the hardest part of doing anything. Once you start doing something, you often find it’s easier to keep doing it.

Legally Necessary Disclaimer

You’re about to read a really great article that can help you find the confidence to run games regularly if you’ve been struggling to keep up your game or can help you start that project that you just keeping put off for absolutely no good reason. The advice you’re about to read has been tried and tested by me. Personally. And it – and the theory behind it – comes from a variety of professional sources with expertise in such things. But I am not an actual psychologist or neurologist or anything remotely related to that. I’m a formerly professional accountant and semi-professional freelance game designer and author. This is not mental health advice. If you need mental health advice, seek a mental health professional. Someone who has some initials after their name. And if any of the problems I talk about below have become so severe that they are making you miserable, you should probably find that person. Also, this is not life advice. Because I am also not a life coach and, quite frankly, when I look around at the chaos swirling around, I’m not sure I’m qualified to give life advice. Except maybe to write my autobiography and title it, How to Get Your Life in Order by Doing the Exact Opposite of Everything I’ve Ever Done. Yeah, this advice might look like it would also help you start a new, healthy habit like going to the gym regularly or to figure out why you keep putting off starting that hobby you want to try or how to stop avoiding social gatherings, but don’t use it for any of that. Only use it for gaming stuff.

The “too long; didn’t read” version is: this is just simple advice from a gamer about how to fix your work habits a little as they relate to gaming. Nothing else. The management is not responsible.

Hey GM, Has This Ever Happened to You?

Have you ever found yourself canceling a game because you just weren’t ready for it or because you weren’t feeling up to it or whatever? Sure. Everyone has. But have you noticed you’re doing it a little more often than you’d like? And even if you don’t cancel a game, you find yourself wishing you had when the game starts and you just can’t figure out how to start talking and get the ball rolling? Do you struggle to get your game started? Have you started searching for articles or videos from other less awesome GMing advice gurus about “GM burnout?”

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re not alone. Every year Moderate to Severe Gaming Avoidance affects dozens, maybe even tens of dozens of GMs just like you. And I was just like you. But now, I’m on the road to recovery. I’m canceling fewer games, hitting the ground running when the game starts and having a ton of fun doing it. And I’m here to tell you why it might be happening to you and how you can fix it.

Hey Freelance Creator, Has This Ever Happened to You?

Do you have a project sitting on your desk that you’re really excited about but nonetheless just can’t find the time to work on? When you do finally find the time to work on it, do you find it impossible to focus? Do you suddenly notice how cluttered your desk is or how desperately your RPG library needs to be sorted by genre, then system, then edition? Or do you just sit on the couch staring at a horse’s a$& while you ride from lake to lake in New Hanover because you’ve just got to find that legendary perch so you can finally get the platinum trophy in Red Dead Redemption 2? Do you have a pile of great ideas for gaming content that you just can’t seem to cobble into a finished state? Do you know – KNOW – that right now, you should be working on something, but you’re not? You’re reading this dumb article by some sweary internet a$&hole who takes 2,000 f$&%ing words just to start giving out advice. And have you ever found yourself arguing with yourself to just go start working? And no matter how much you beg, plead, cajole, insult, and threaten yourself in your head, you’re still playing video games or staring at YouTube videos? And are you totally incapable of explaining why you won’t just do the project you know you can do?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re not alone. Every year, dozens of would-be content creators struggle with not actually creating any f$&%ing content. And, as any creator will tell you, that’s pretty much the worst thing that can afflict a creator. A creator who doesn’t create is, well, nothing. But I understand your pain. I’ve been suffering from Acute Not Actually Creating any F$&%ing Content. And I can help you understand why you might be struggling with either Acute or Chronic Not Actually Creating any F$&%ing Content. And I can help you fix it.

The Pain of NDS

Okay, enough joking around. Let me get to the point.

Whether you’re a game master running a regular game or a designer or a content creator who is putting together stuff for your own personal use or for distribution to the masses, you know – like I do – that there’s stuff you’ve got to do. As a GM, you’ve got to show up and run a game every week. And, also as a GM, you’ve got to spend some amount of time preparing to run your game. As a designer, you’ve got to take your brilliant ideas and turn them into designs. You know. With words. And math. And game balance. As a content creator, you’ve got to take your designs and polish it up and make it look pretty and proofread it and lay it out or mark it up with HTML or whatever and then you’ve got to submit to some platform or post it on some site or something. Now, in theory, all of that stuff is stuff we want to do, right? Either we want to do it because it’s satisfying, or we want to do it because it’s our job and livelihood and we need to earn a living. Or both. Ideally both.

Side note: notice that the work of a designer isn’t coming up with ideas. And the work of a content creator isn’t coming up with ideas. That’s the easy f$&%ing part. The hard part is turning the ideas into actual designs and content. And sure, people who struggle to come up with ideas scoff when you say ideas are the easy part, but anyone who’s actually tried to turn an idea into a design or piece of content knows exactly what I’m saying about. And so, if you’ve ever thought about being a designer or content creator because you have lots of good ideas, I have some really bad news for you. But it’s okay. I didn’t know that either. And I said EXACTLY that to myself years ago. But I digress…

So, look, there’s stuff we have to do. Stuff we probably want to do. Stuff we’ve probably done before. But sometimes, we find it hard to actually do the stuff. That’s only human. It happens to the best, most conscientious, most dedicated, hard-workingest person. Sometimes, we don’t want to do the stuff. And sometimes, we just don’t. And that’s no big deal. You just forgive yourself for being a human being and then, you know, actually do the stuff.

But sometimes we find ourselves stuck in a rut where there’s stuff we have to do – stuff we want to know and stuff we know we should do – that has become hard to do and that, try as we might, we can’t stop avoiding doing it. Everyone cancels a game now and then. But sometimes we find ourselves canceling a bunch of games. We find ourselves habitually canceling games. Until we’re canceling every other game session. And the excuses we’re using to cancel those games are becoming weaker and weaker.

Sometimes we find ourselves putting off work we know we need to do. Maybe we keep putting off designing the dungeon for our next session or else designing a massive dungeon adventure we used to be really excited about and that we actually planned out in excruciating detail. Sometimes it’s a specific project we’re putting off. Sometimes it’s a subset of projects. Sometimes it’s starting a new project. Or starting a new game. Certain projects fall by the wayside. Sometimes we find ourselves avoiding or putting off all of our gaming-related work.

And this is where I remind you that this is not life advice. This is only about gaming. Never, ever use anything I say below to help you get back into a good habit you’ve let lapse or to start a new habit you’ve been meaning to start. Gaming only. And this is also where I remind you that this is not mental health advice either. And I’m serious there. If you find yourself not doing ANYTHING and you spend all of your time staring at a screen and you feel like your accomplishing nothing, please seek help from an actual professional. If you find yourself thinking, “man, I’m frustrated because I can’t finish this project,” that’s fine. If you find yourself thinking, “I’m a completely useless lump doing nothing with my life,” talk to someone. Please. But, again, I digress.

Let’s lump all of that stuff together: canceling games habitually, not doing the prep work and feeling unprepared as a result, not finishing specific projects you want to finish, not starting projects you want to start, and letting work lay fallow. Let’s call that all NDS. Short for “not doing s$&%.”

NDS can be really frustrating. But, worse, it can also be really baffling. I understand that.

I’ve been suffering from weird bouts of NDS myself for a while now. This is where I get a little personal. Brace yourself. There’s projects I was really excited about and projects I promised to people that I started putting off. That I started avoiding. And the thing is, they are projects I was genuinely excited about. Projects I had – and still have – good ideas for. And projects that I am genuinely sad that they are sitting on the back burner. And you probably know exactly what they are. You know that thing I started working on that you were really excited about whose articles started stretching farther and farther apart until they disappeared altogether? Yep. That fell into the hole of my NDS. Or rather, THEY did. Because there’s several projects and articles in that hole now. And whichever one you’re thinking of? It’s down there.

And I don’t want to give you any false hope, but now that I understand what’s down there and why they are down there, well, my therapist and I both want to see them fished out of that hole. It’s a good way to learn to cope with NDS. The best cure for NDS is DS. I’ll let you work out what that acronym means. But that doesn’t mean everything will start back up tomorrow.

Eventually, my NDS got so bad that it started to swallow up my game sessions. Well, it started to swallow up my game prep, really. And then, when it came time to actually run games, I felt unprepared. So, I’d cancel the game to buy myself time. But then, I wouldn’t actually use that time to prepare. Or I’d prepare only a little bit. So, I’d cancel more games or run shorter games. And when I did run games, I found myself having a hard time just starting. And eventually, my ongoing D&D campaign that I was genuinely enjoying a hell of it, that also fell down the pit of NDS.

Dear my players: I’m sorry. This is what was really happening. I know I had lots of good excuses for canceling games. And, look, I never actually lied. The excuses were true. At least mostly true. But the excuses were also things I could have managed or worked around. Or things that weren’t as big and bad as they seemed.

Now, in my case, my growing NDS was – and still is – being severely exacerbated by several mental health issues I was pretending weren’t a thing. Or issues that hadn’t been properly dealt with in the past because I convinced myself I had a handle on them and stopped taking care of them. And eventually, I had to seek professional help because EVERYTHING was in the NDS hole and I was miserable. I’m getting help. It’ll be a long process. But I’m learning a lot.

But the help I’m getting has been really revelatory. It’s taught me a lot about myself and my brain and also a lot about procrastination. That’s what most people call NDS. Because not only am I undergoing regular therapy and working with a doctor, my therapist has also given me some books and assigned me some reading and homework and I’ve continued to pursue the research on my own, seeking out other books and resources. Because that’s what I do. I try to become an expert in a thing that affects me so I can get the best handle on it possible. And in so doing, I realized that a lot of people I talk to could also benefit from the stuff I was learning.

I have a lot of friends – fellow GMs and content creators – who all suffer from various degrees of NDS. It has all sorts of different names. It gets called GM burnout. It gets called writer’s block. It gets called procrastination. It gets called “I’m an idea guy, not a finisher.” But a lot of it – not all, but a lot – comes from the same place. So, I’m calling it all NDS.

The reason I say it’s baffling is that we who suffer from NDS don’t really understand what the hell is happening. We sit on the couch, playing video games or binge-watching crap on Netflix and, the whole time, we’re thinking “okay, just one more quest and then I have to get to work.” But we don’t get to work. We beg. We plead. We cajole. We argue. We say, “just get off the damned couch.” But we don’t. And we don’t know why. And then we worry that we’re just lazy. Even though we know we aren’t. Even though there’s mountains of evidence in the form of the thousands of words we wrote for our blogs every week WHILE we were both working a full-time job and going to college full-time through an independent study program. And we were running a regular, weekly, homebrew game most of the time while we did all that. And now that we think about it, we’re not really sure when we slept and ate. And we did that for like three years straight. So, no, we’re not lazy.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, we stare at ourselves in the mirror and say, “what’s wrong with us?” “Why,” we ask, “why aren’t we doing the things we know we should do, the things we can do, the things we want to do?” That’s NDS. And if you ignore it for long enough, it can become very toxic. Because you start to get really mad at yourself and tell yourself really terrible things about yourself. Which, believe it or not, does not make you any more productive. And that is, again, the point at which you stop reading this article and get help.

So, why does it happen? Well, I’m going to summarize the answer as I understand it based on how it’s been explained to me and how I understood it from my supplemental reading. With the caveat, again, that I’m not a psychologist or neurologist. And then I’m going to give you three tricks that can help you start to get a handle on it.

Neurophysiology for Dummies; As Explained by a Dummy

Roughly speaking, your brain has three major parts. The most primitive part of your brain – the basal ganglia – is colloquially called the lizard brain. And it handles one thing: not dying. It’s very simple. It is there to keep you alive. And it responds to danger – or anything that looks vaguely like danger – in one of three ways: “kill it and eat it,” “run the hell away,” or “freeze up and hope the problem goes away on its own.” And if you’re a lizard and basically just need to survive from one day to the next, that’s pretty much all you need.

Fortunately, your brain has more. You also have a limbic brain. Also known as the mammal brain, the limbic brain occurs in higher animals who band together to survive. And it is basically where emotions come from and thus, it’s the part of our brains that make us care for each other and, more importantly, care for our young. The limbic brain is actually central to decision making, as it turns out. We know that because people with damage to their limbic brain have a really hard time making choices. They just keep rationalizing and rationalizing and rationalizing, but they never actually choose anything. And that’s partly because the limbic brain is also about recognizing patterns and building preferences. We prefer things that have worked out well in the past and we avoid things that have worked out badly. Our loyalty to particular brands lives here, which you can prove with a power drill and a really accurate chart of the brain. Once you’ve hit the right spot with the drill, your subject will start choosing the objectively better-tasting Pepsi Cola to the much more popular Coca Cola. You might think I’m making a joke here, but there is actual science behind literally every word of that sentence. Look it up.

And then, there’s the neocortex. This is the fancy part of the brain that’s able to do things like reason and think and do math and understand language and stuff. Some folks call it the primate brain. This is the one that provides the voice in your head whenever you’re thinking.

And this whole three-part system leads to an absolutely hilarious joke that neurologists tell about how our brain contains a lizard, a monkey, and an angel. Which is why every great party needs a neurologist. They are a laugh riot.

What does this all have to do with NDS? Well, it turns out that your body isn’t really that well-designed. Your brain is an energy hog. It uses a lot of calories just to keep the juice flowing. And rarely do you have enough power to turn on all the parts of your brain at once. So, there’s this little nugget in your brain called the amygdala. Yes, like the Bloodborne monster. In fact, functional magnetic resonance images of working brains show that it actually has eight arms, a whipping tail, and shoots lasers out of its face. The amygdala is kind of a switching station. It pays attention to what is coming through the eyes and ears and decides which part of the brain gets enough juice to function.

Basically. I’m leaving a lot out. And yes, I know there’s actually two amygdalas. One on each side.

The point is, when you see something that causes stress or anger, your amygdala sees that s$&% happening. In fact, it sees it before you do because it’s hooked into your eyes earlier in the circuit that the parts of your brain that actually let you see what you’re seeing. And so, it switches energy to the lizard brain so it can handle the stress. By killing it, running away, or freezing up and whimpering until it stops. Which, by the way, is why if you lose your temper, it’s almost impossible to talk yourself out of your anger logically. Or for anyone else to reason with you.

Now, here’s the thing: if you’re a lizard, you need to eat and you need to not get eaten. That’s it. Any day that you eat and don’t get eaten is a good day. So, the lizard brain lives paycheck to paycheck. If something looks like it is necessary to keep you alive, it goes for it. If anything looks like it will threaten you, it avoids it. Done and done. And the lizard brain is really, really primitive. So it treats pretty much anything that might cause you stress or discomfort as if it’s a threat to your survival.

Your mammal brain is a little better. It allows you to make basic choices and build preferences. And it also allows you to sometimes put something else’s survival over yours. Basically, it allows you to spend some of your paycheck on food for your kid. And it allows you to choose between two different types of food based on which one is probably better. But it’s still mostly about “in the moment” sort of decisions.

It’s your primate brain that can really do something amazing. Your primate brain can plan ahead. And make sacrifices. It can decide that you should eat less right now, even though you are hungry, so that you’ll have some food tomorrow. Or so that you can lose weight and reduce your risk of developing type II diabetes later. That’s called delayed gratification. Avoid satisfying a need at the moment so you can satisfy a want sometime later on.

Sure, I’d love to watch TV or play RDR2 right now. That’d be fun. My mammal brain is all for things that feel good. But my primate brain can tell me that if I just put down the controller and go work on my dungeon design, I can run a really fun game next week. My mammal brain doesn’t like that idea, though. Because work is not fun. And fun things are better.

Now, as noted, your brain isn’t really great at resolving conflicts between different areas. Amygdala basically only switches the juice from one part to another. So, there’s this struggle between who gets to drive between the mammal brain and the primate brain. And one wins.

Delaying gratification is hard. It is part inborn talent and part learned habit. Some people’s amygdalas just naturally tend to shunt energy to the rational part of their brain. Those people are called “conscientious” in a certain psychiatric model of personality that is neither here nor there. Others tend to prefer instant gratification. But there’s a habit component. The more often your brain switches to the primate brain over the mammal brain, the easier it gets to make the switch. And you can call that “willpower” if you want to.

By the way, all this crap about primates and mammals and amygdalas and s$%& is also the reason why people are better knowing what they like than why they like and why playtesters drive designers crazy when they explain their own opinions wrong. The mammal brain decides whether something is good or bad. Then, the rational brain has to figure out why.

Anyway, you may know all of this. Or at least have a passing familiarity with it. I did. There’s a popular video on the Internet about an instant gratification monkey and a rational decision-maker and a panic monster that gets this far. And it explains basic procrastination well enough. Which is what this is all about. But the problem is that the only real solution to this whole thing is by just training your amygdala to switch more easily to your rational brain. And you do that by forcing yourself to do stuff. That’s why the cure for NDS is DS.

But if you’re like me and you find yourself struggling with NDS more and more frequently, you find the “just do it and eventually it gets easier” approach to be a bit lacking. Maybe even impossible. Because, as much as you tell yourself to get up and do the thing, you actually can’t do it. You physically can’t stand up, walk to the computer, and start designing the megadungeon. Or the learn to play module. Or the crafting system. Or the dungeon for your next game. And that’s because there’s a part of your brain you forgot. And THIS was the thing that changed my view of procrastination forever. THIS was the thing I learned that blew my mind. My rational mind. My mammal mind was playing video games and didn’t care and my lizard brain was planning to kill and eat my mammal mind.

Why You REALLY Procrastinate

If you only procrastinate because your brain is wired to prefer instant gratification and you have to assert your will to switch on the rational brain, you can win that fight with persistence. But there’s another level to procrastination that makes the fight much, MUCH harder. And it has to do with that part of the brain you forgot. The lizard brain.

So, let’s say you have this project that you just can’t bring yourself to do. You can do all of your other work just fine. Sometimes you really have to struggle to switch on your rational brain and delay your gratification, but you can do it most of the time. And there’s the albatross project. The one that is just dragging you down. Why the hell does that happen? And why does the problem spread?

The delayed-vs.-instant-gratification equation is a pretty simple one. If the satisfaction you’ll get from the future thing is more than the pleasure you’ll get from the current thing, you can argue that out in your brain and eventually teach yourself to win that fight. You can train yourself to switch back and forth between mammal and primate. In fact, those parts tend to work together more often than not. They are both involved in decision making.

The lizard part of your brain is not so cooperative. It tends to get control and keep it. And that’s because it’s the oldest part of your brain and the one that has kept you alive the longest. And it is solely concerned with keeping you alive. So, your amygdala gives it a pretty high priority. And it even gets to start working before your senses have really processed anything consciously.

So, imagine if the project you’re working on is something that isn’t just difficult but rewarding. What if it’s risky? What if it’s scary? What if there’s something about it that makes it seem dangerous to your primitive lizard brain? What if failure at that project promises humiliation? Remember, your lizard brain is millions of years old and sees all fear, pain, and stress equally. Literally anything that looks painful or scary is deadly to it.

In that case, you are not just trying to exercise willpower to get your pleasure monkey to take a back seat to the delayed gratification angel. You’re literally fighting the part of the brain that is convinced you will die if you don’t let it take control. See, due to differences in the way different parts of your brain connect, your lizard brain doesn’t converse with the other parts of your brain. It can’t listen to the other parts of your brain. It has no incoming connections. Or very few, anyway. It can only dictate and dominate. This is why your rational brain can talk until it’s blue in the brain-face. The lizard brain can’t really hear it.

Procrastination is not always driven by a lack of conscientiousness or willpower or the inability to delay gratification. It’s often driven by fear. And if you procrastinate on certain things but not others, and if you’re really really honest, you’ll find the things you avoid doing have something wrapped up in them that’s changing the equation. There’s usually some kind of fear at the heart of the thing. Maybe certain projects are more heavily wrapped up in your self-worth than others. Maybe people have gotten so excited about the promises you’ve made that if you don’t deliver a high-quality product, you know they are going to hate you. Especially if it’s something a lot of people want. Or maybe it’s just the idea of looking into the faces of your friends who have given up their free time to play in your game and seeing disappointment there and knowing they are only coming back out of obligation or pity. Or worse, knowing they won’t come back. Maybe it’s just the fear of publishing your first module, something you’ve never tried to do before, and knowing that a lot of people have very high hopes for it. Or that you have high hopes for it.

See, once those sorts of fears get involved – and you may not even realize they are involved – the lizard brain notices that you are feeling some major stress and it takes over and moves to keep you alive by getting you the hell away from that stress. It’s not just “this isn’t fun, let’s not do it now,” it’s “holy mother of f$&%, something is going to kill us, get away.”

And that is why you can sit on the couch staring at the TV while your rational brain screams “just finish the damned module already; it’s all planned out, it’s half-f$&%ing-done; get up and do it” and you just won’t move. Because you’re frozen. Because the parts of the brain controlling you literally cannot listen to reason.

Hypothetically, I mean.

I know I’ve spent a lot of time on this brain stuff and explaining why it happens. The actual “here’s some tricks to start turning things around” part of this article is pretty short. And the tricks are simple. And, they do work. They have started working for me. But what helped me more – and hopefully what will help you more – is first understanding what is happening in your head. Understanding why you can feel so powerless over your own brain. Understanding why you won’t do the things you tell yourself to do. So that you can gradually realize you’re not lazy, you’re not bad, you’re an okay person laboring under fear that you probably didn’t realize was there. And then, you can start to really work through the fear. Confront the fear. Overcome it.

The thing is: I can’t help you resolve the fear. I don’t even know what you’re afraid of. But I can say this: once I recognized that I was afraid and once I started analyzing those fears and writing about them and working through them, I started to master them. Started to. It’s going to be a long road. But if I don’t work through it, I won’t ever be able to do all the things I want to do. Recognizing and admitting fear is only the first step, but it’s an important and difficult step. It’s the step that enables all the other steps. If you really want to master this s$&% – assuming this s$&% is just normal human fear s$&% and you don’t need to deal with other, more serious issues in your head first with a professional – get a journal and start writing in it every day. Especially about the things you can’t do and what you might be afraid of and why and whether those fears are valid or not. And gradually, you’ll desensitize yourself to them.

But that is a LONG f$&%ing process. And you can’t always wait to get through that process to start doing the things you’re avoiding. And, honestly, you shouldn’t wait. Because, in the meanwhile, the best thing you can do is start training your amygdala to keep your rational brain evolved and train your instant gratification mammal brain to quiet down a little and let the more evolved adults do the thinking. And maybe that’s all you need. Which is why I’m going to end with three tricks that can help you stop NDS and start DS.

How to Stop NDS and Start DS

Let’s get one thing clear: overcoming procrastination – whether it’s the normal, instant gratification vs. delayed gratification kind or whether it’s driven by fear – is about building habits. It’s about doing something over and over until it becomes easier to do it. That takes time and it takes energy. And you aren’t always going to succeed. If you’ve been suffering from NDS for a while, you’re going to fail a lot at first. I fail a lot. And that can be disheartening. And the only thing you can do is just keep at it. Even if you fail today, try to not fail as much tomorrow. Eventually, you fail less and succeed more. And the habit starts to build.

Moreover, some of this s$&% seems positively silly. Like it can’t really help. And because it won’t seem to help at first – because everything takes time to work – you might be tempted to give up. Don’t. I f$&%ed myself up a bit because certain things my therapist asked me to do seemed silly and useless and they didn’t help immediately, so I kept giving up on them and telling him they weren’t working. Yeah, I know. In retrospect it’s kind of silly to get mad that something you aren’t doing isn’t working. But that’s because I’ve got a monkey and a lizard sharing the space with my human brain. What can I do?

And note these three things are just quick fixes. They are ways to start building good habits. If you really do have underlying fears that are changing the equation, these won’t make them go away. They will just make it possible to overcome them a little more easily. You still want to resolve the fears with introspection, analysis, or even therapy. And if things have gotten so bad that everything has become a source of pain and fear and you can’t do anything, please seek help.

Okay? All of those disclaimers out of the way: here’s three things you can start doing tomorrow to stop canceling games, work on that project you’ve been ignoring, or otherwise stop NDS.

Get Ahead of the Decision

It’s actually possible to get ahead of both your lizard and mammal brain. This is because part of what gets them so upset is this thing called anticipatory pain. Basically, your brain will always imagine that anything you don’t want to do is way worse than it is. That’s because your mammal brain and lizard brain really want to win the argument. If there’s something you don’t want to do, your mammal brain is going to really overstate how miserable that thing is going to be. And your lizard brain is always going to overstate the pain of doing the thing. But remember, both of those brains live in the present. It’s only your rational brain that can think about the distant future.

The upshot of all of this is that it is actually much harder to decide to do something than it is to do something. Once you actually start doing the thing, you can usually keep doing it. Your brain does a lot based on simple inertia. So, if you want to increase your odds of doing something, you want to make the decision part as easy as possible.

Let’s say you need to prepare for your next D&D game. Because remember, this is only advice about gaming and not about how to start going to the gym regularly or anything like that. Let’s say you need to do the prep on Wednesday. Tuesday night, get out all of your D&D books and materials and dice and everything and lay them out on your desk or table. Spread them all out. Get them ready. That way, on Wednesday morning, everything is already set out for you. There’s nothing you have to do before you start working. Even better, if they are spread out all over the same desk where you also play video games so that you’d have clear all that crap away to play a game, then your brain has a lot harder time arguing that it’d be more fun to play a video game than to prep for your game. And remember, only do this with gaming supplies. Don’t pack your gym back the night before and put it right in front of the door to your apartment and put your gym attire in the bathroom instead of your normal clothes for when you get dressed in the morning. That’s misusing my advice.

“Stimulus, Response, Stimulus, Response; Don’t You Ever Think?”

Another way to get ahead of the decision is to actually remove the decision part altogether. It’s a lot easier to NOT make a decision than it is to make a decision. Hell, that’s what building a habit is really about. It’s about automating something so that you don’t have to make a decision about it every f$&%ing time. And that’s’ what we’re really trying to do. And that comes down to a technique one psychiatrist I read called something boring like “implementation intention” or some s$&%. Boring name. But a helpful idea.

Basically, what you do is you take the thing you have to do and then use an “if-then” statement to connect it to something else you know you’re going to do anyway. Well, it’s not really an “if-then.” It’s usually a “when-then.” Or an “after-then.” Or sometimes a “before-then.” Maybe an example is easier.

Let’s say there’s this thing you have to do every night like, say, meditation. You have to meditate every night for your mental health. So, you say, “every night, after I am finished cleaning up the dinner dishes, I will go into the office and do my meditation exercise for ten minutes.” And then, you write that s$&% down. Writing it down is important. Write it down. And be specific. You connect anything to anything else, as long as you’re specific. You can even connect together two habits you’re trying to build as long as you connect them to something you already know is going to happen. For example, “every night, after I do my meditation exercise, I will write at least two pages in my journal.”

Of course, you only want to use this stuff for gaming. That was just an example. So, you might write down something like “each evening, after I come home from work, I will spend one hour working on that monster design project I’ve been putting off.” Remember that this only applies to gaming-related stuff.

Priming the Pump

Now, even if you make the decision well in advance and even if you automate the decision by connecting it to some part of your existing routine, it can still be very hard to do certain things. That’s especially true if it’s something that has some fear or insecurity wrapped up in it. You’re still going to need some willpower to actually follow through on the action. And that’s when you need to prime your brain and pump yourself up. Basically, you’re trying to jam your amygdala firmly in the rational position even though your lizard and mammal brains are trying to grab the wheel.

For example, let’s say you’ve done all your game prep and now it’s time for the moment of truth. It’s time to run the game. And you really, really need to go through with it. You know once you start running the game, you’ll have a good time. You usually do. But you also have all the standard fears about running a crappy game and humiliating yourself and losing your players and proving to everyone that you’re not a good GM at all and the reputation you’ve built for yourself for years online is a total lie.

You need a showtime habit. A showtime habit – I think this idea actually came from some stupid YouTube channel of all places, but I can’t remember which one – is a thing you always do right before the thing that scares the s$&% out of you. It’s a warmup habit that puts you in the right mindset. And it’s silly and ridiculous and pointless and fun. So much so that the lizard brain can’t really see anything bad about it and the mammal brain just laughs and claps.

For example, you might – fifteen minutes before the game starts – go into your bedroom and change into a specific hat you always wear when you run games. And only wear when you run games. And then, as you walk out of the bedroom with your hat on and head to the computer where you run your game, you might throw up your hands and shout at the top of your voice, “I will dare to fail gloriously!” And you might do that every time you run a game. Every. Time.

Now, I just made that example up. So, if you’re one of my players. Don’t imagine me doing that before I start the Discord call. Because you’ll be imagining something that doesn’t happen. I don’t wear a hat when I run games. I wear a specific tee shirt. Totally different.

And also remember that this is only the sort of thing before you run a game. Or before you give a seminar at a convention. Because I don’t use life advice. So, if you’re trying to overcome a bit of introversion and social anxiety, you definitely shouldn’t stand in front of a mirror before every social gathering and say, “it’s time to PAR-TEE!” and then dance crazily for 30 seconds while the Vengaboys hit song We Like to Party plays from the iPhone XR you recently got a month before your forty-second birthday on January 18th. You know, hypothetically. Because I’m not talking about myself. And I am not giving life advice.

And that’s it. That’s three tricks you can start using tomorrow to help you start to treat an acute or chronic case of NDS.

Or, you know, start using today.

P.S.: It’s a Far Side reference. Does anyone remember The Far Side?