Have you ever faced a situation where you know that you have to work on a few things but you feel like you can’t get them done? No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to find that mojo or the right amount of motivation to do those things. Well, I certainly have.

After the pandemic, I just could not get back to my old routine of going out for a morning run. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get back on track. I would just not have the right amount of motivation for it.

But then I discovered this technique which enabled me to not only start running but also to enjoy the process as well. I mean I kind of liked running pre pandemic but post-pandemic I had lost the motivation to go back. I know this sounds like one of those TV advertisements where you just pop a pill and everything goes back to normal.

But trust me on this, temptation bundling is one of the most interesting concepts which I have come across and has helped me immensely.

What is temptation bundling?

In the words of the founder of this concept (Katherine Milkman) temptation bundling is: “want versus should conflict”.

We all have certain things which we should do such as exercising, upskilling, developing another source of income, etc. but we feel dreaded even with the thought of working on these things. And then there are things that want to do more of throughout our day such as watching our favorite web series, shopping, listening to our favorite band, etc.

But what if we combine these two sets of activities together? I mean just think about allowing yourself to listen to your favorite band only when you are in the gym. I bet that proposition sounds interesting. Or maybe you already would be doing something of this already in your life.

Basically, the idea is to club the things that you don’t like doing with what you like to do. This makes sure that you would enjoy working on the dreaded things and chances are you would not only complete the task but also enjoy working on that. Such a simple yet effective idea.

The idea is to leverage the short-term temptation that you get from your want tasks and use them to fuel yourself to work on the tasks that you don’t enjoy that much.

And the best part is that you can club any of the activities that you like with any of the activities that you hate to perform. The only exception is that it should be physically possible to club those 2 activities. And since you are the engineer of your bundling, you can decide for yourself what works and what does not.

Why does this work?

Well, the central idea of this concept is the same old concept that we have been exposed to since our childhood. It’s the carrot and stick formula minus the stick.

If we associate a task with something that we like to enjoy then we start associating that task as well with enjoyment even though what we love doing may be secondary in nature. And this not only makes the main task easier for us but also makes it interesting.

Caveat

However, there are a few things that you should keep in mind while designing your bundling:

• Don’t club things that are not physically possible. For example, if you want to work on your school project then it’s best not to watch your favorite web series as that might distract you from your core task.

• Its effect fades away if you don’t stick to the habit.

• Don’t stick to a static bundling rather keep switching the two activities in order to keep it interesting.

We all have grown up listening to the old adage of not giving in to temptations. But what if we can actually turn around our lives, form better habits by giving in to some of them.

What if in order to make things work for us, we need to make them more tempting. I mean we know that in order to make a child eat healthy food, we make it sound interesting. So why can’t we do the same with other activities which we don’t like to do or have a hard time working on?