Sueñas en Grande Pero No Haces Nada... La Neurociencia Detrás y Cómo Solucionarlo

You have big goals, but you're not doing

anything to achieve them. Well, I'll tell you

something that might comfort you a little.

You're not lazy and there's a solution. The problem

is that your brain is trapped

in a loop that is impossible to get out of if you do

n't know how. And for this I have gathered

the greatest discoveries of

elite neuroscientists such as Ledus,

Seigarnick or Aaron Beck. And I'll

simplify it into a practical guide where

you'll see why you can't move forward right now

, the mistakes you're making,

and the simplest method to start

seeing results right away. I am

Álvaro, I am an industrial engineer

specializing in organization. Let's

begin.

In 1973, a consultant named Alan Lakin

published a book that set the standard

in the world of productivity. Lakin

was a student at Harvard; he had been

hired by IBM to improve their

productivity. President Bill

Clinton quoted him on the first page of

his autobiography. His message: "If

you learn to manage your time better,

you will do the things you want to do." What

was that book? How to control your

time and your life? It sold over 3

million copies, and millions of

people who read it still didn't

do the things they wanted to do. The

problem was that everyone

was asking how to better organize their

time, but no one was asking why

no one was starting to do it. And that is the

real root of the problem. The

answer was in a

New York laboratory, Josep Ledou. Nothing in his

history suggested that he would

become one of the

most influential neuroscientists of the

century. He is a member of the United States

National Academy of Sciences

. He directs the Emotional Brain Institute

at New

York University. His work on how the brain

processes fear and anxiety has

definitively transformed the

treatment of people who

suffer from it worldwide. But none of

that is the most important thing for what I'm

going to tell you now. Ledou was

looking for the answer to this question:

how does the brain learn to be afraid or

anxious about something? And at that

moment in the laboratory, with only three

researchers in the world dedicated to

that line of study, he discovered the

mechanism by which the brain can

activate a flight response before you have

even been able to think about

whether fleeing made sense. I call it the

low road. I'll explain it to you in

normal words. Before this, it was thought that

emotion came after

thought. You thought something and that was what

generated that emotion, but

you discovered that it was the complete opposite.

Negative emotions don't come after

thinking about something, they don't come after the

thought; they come before, and when they come, they

are already making decisions for you. You don't

feel fear, anxiety, or laziness after

thinking that you have to do what you

must do. You feel it before you even

think about it, and that's why the decision

is already made because you didn't even think about it.

So there's no point in knowing how to be

productive when you can't even

decide to be productive. But wait, because there is a

solution, you just don't

know it yet. Ledou published his results in

1996 and compiled them in the

emotional brain. So every time you

sit down to a task and end up

opening your phone without knowing why, it wasn't

a conscious decision,

but rather that you unconsciously saw that

task as a threat and the

escape signal came before you could

even think about running away if it really made

sense at that moment. Simply

by the time you realized it, you were already

avoiding the task, and that's how you get

into the loop. First, an important task appears

. It could be writing a script,

studying for an exam, training, asking for something

awkward, starting a business, anything.

Then a negative emotion appears:

overwhelm, anxiety, doubt, shame, fear

of doing it wrong, of not being up to the task. And

since your brain doesn't want to feel that, it

looks for a quick way out. That's the

low road. So, you pick up your phone,

open Instagram, TikTok, make yourself a

coffee, check your email, do anything but what you

have to do,

and suddenly you no longer have that anxiety, you

no longer feel so much pressure, you are no longer in

front of that thing that made you uncomfortable, and you

feel relief. And that's the trap,

because you learn that when you avoid something

you feel better, and the next time your

brain already knows that avoidance gives it a

quick positive reward. This is the

loop you are in, the

avoidance loop. Difficult task,

uncomfortable emotion, avoidance, relief. So

procrastination isn't a

time problem, the problem is emotional.

You avoid how you think that task will

make you feel. The good news is what

Ledou discovered. If the loop can

also be trained to avoid, then it can

also be trained to start.

But first, I'm going to explain the three

mistakes you should avoid, if you aren't

already making them, to ensure

that the final solution is effective.

Berlin, 1927. Kurt Lewin, one of the

most influential psychologists of his

generation, noticed something in a

cafe near the university, something

that didn't seem right to him. The waiter who

was serving did not have any notes.

However, he remembered every

order from every table perfectly. All without

writing it down, with seven or eight tables at

once, whatever they were. Lewin observed it

for a while and then performed the test. He

asked the waiter about the order from

a table he had just paid for. The

waiter no longer remembered anything. It wasn't

that he had forgotten the details; in

fact, he had completely erased the order

, as if it had never

existed. Lewin mentioned the

observation to one of his best

students. Her name was Bluma. Garnick. She was

26 years old and one of the few

women studying psychology at the

University of Berlin at that time.

What Lewin had noticed about the coffee was

too important to ignore.

Now you'll understand everything. They tested it in the

laboratory. The experiment consisted of

giving participants between 18 and 22

different tasks. Solving puzzles,

modeling clay, doing calculations,

normal tasks without much relevance. But in

half of them he would interrupt them before they

could finish at 10 or 18

so that some tasks would remain

incomplete, and then when they finished he would

ask them to remember everything they had

done. The result: the

interrupted tasks, those that had been left

unfinished, were remembered

approximately 90% better than those

that had already been completed. And the reason

was simply because they were unfinished

. Garnick published his findings in

1927. It was then that the

famous Zake Garnick effect was born. It consists of

this. When you start a task and don't

finish it, the brain opens like an

active computer tab,

what Kur Lewn called a quasi-

necessity. And while the tab is

open, it occupies cognitive space and does not

close until the task is completed.

The waiter remembered the

pending orders because his brain

kept them active. The moment

the bill was paid, that tension was

released and the order disappeared from her

mind. This has an implication that

Cigarnick did not

explicitly publish, but which

David Allen perfectly captured in his

best-selling book Getting Things Done and in

his GTD method, Getting Things Down.

Open files, that is,

unfinished tasks, consume resources, and the

more you have, the harder it is to

concentrate on anything. And that's

the root of the three mistakes I'll

tell you about next. Mistake number one: believing

that you need to feel prepared. The

first mistake is waiting for everything to be

perfect, waiting until you feel like it, waiting for

motivation to strike, for your

head to be clear, for the moment

to be perfect in general. But that

almost never happens. And every day that passes

without doing what you should do, you know it,

and the tab in your head remains open.

And after days, weeks or months without being

resolved, it doesn't weigh the same as one you just

opened recently, it weighs

much more, because the wait,

contrary to what many believe, doesn't

prepare you for that moment you're waiting for. On the

contrary, the longer you wait,

the more noise that unfinished task generates in

your head and the further away the

moment seems when you will feel ready to

face it. Action usually

comes before motivation, not

after. So first you start. Then

the task becomes less scary, then

clarity appears, then

inertia appears, and sometimes, mind you, not always,

motivation appears after starting. But if you wait until you feel

ready to start, you could stay

in the same place for years, because the mind

can always find a reason

not to start. I'm tired today, I'll be

better tomorrow, I start on Monday, I'm not

ready. So. Time passes and you

remain the same, but if you are one of those who has

overcome this first mistake, you may

fall into mistake number two. The

second mistake is perfectionism, and

this is very dangerous because it seems like a

good thing; it seems like you want to do

things right, you seem to have

high standards, you seem demanding. But the

perfectionist is the person with the most

tabs open,

constantly improving projects without testing,

almost finished work, but there are always

some details left. Every idea that you don't

develop because it still has

some loose ends to tie up, is like eyelashes that are

still active. Perfectionism seems like

an unconditional love for quality. The

reality is fear of looking bad. What

is clear is that if you don't start, you won't

fail. If you don't post, nobody judges you.

If you don't believe anyone, they'll see that you're not that

good. So you keep tweaking, you

keep thinking, planning, preparing,

but you don't expose yourself to real life or the

greatest judge there is. To the market, the

invisible hand of Adam Smith. The thing

is, the first time you do something it's

unlikely to be of good quality, but you know

what? There's a solution, because

quality appears after doing

something imperfect many times. Perfectionism

promises to protect you from failure, but it

also protects you from progress. And that

's a toll you decide whether you want to

pay. If your answer is no, I don't want to

pay that toll, I muster up the courage and I do

want to move forward in my life, then be careful

because you might fall into mistake number

three. Productive procrastination.

This is the most difficult to detect

because it doesn't look like procrastination. You're not

lying on the sofa, you're not

doing nothing, you're busy, you

're actually reorganizing your notes, you

're reading a book about what you

want to apply, you're creating your own

system and of course,

since you're doing things, you feel like you're making progress.

But the important question is

this: are you making progress on the task

that really matters to you, or are you

doing other secondary tasks to

avoid the important one? The

important tab, the one that really

matters, is still open. Closing 20

small computer tabs doesn't

free up enough space, and the

real reward comes when you close the

important task. And of course,

sometimes research is necessary, but

often research becomes

not starting at all. And I talk a lot about

how planning is also important,

but only if there is action behind it.

So the third mistake, remember

this. Productive procrastination

gives you a sense of progress without exposing you to the

fear of failure. And that, just like the

previous mistake, leaves you in the same

place. Now you know the loop that

governs your mind every time you want to

do something. You know the three mistakes that

ruin progress for most people who

try it. So only one

thing is missing, the definitive solution to make

starting inevitable. I'll tell you right now

.

For decades it was thought that if you didn't

perform well at your jobs, you

first had to understand yourself

internally, explore your childhood, resolve

your internal conflicts, and only

then, when you studied yourself

emotionally, could you begin to

change. There might have been some truth to that

, but Aaron Beck found

something completely different. Beck was a

doctor, he studied neurology in jail, but

the subject of depression fascinated him

. He trained as a

psychoanalyst, studied Freud, and when

the time came, he made a decision that

made perfect sense for someone like

him. He wanted to demonstrate with real data

that psychoanalysis worked. He designed

experiments, analyzed patients, measured

their dreams, their thoughts, their

reactions, and what he found were not

childhood traumas. He found

negative thoughts that appeared on their

own, almost without the patient

noticing them, and that told him things like, "I

can't, I'm no good at this, it's going to turn out

badly." Beck called this

automatic thoughts. He didn't think of

much either. They are quick,

repetitive, and almost always exaggerated thoughts.

His own colleagues in the profession did not

trust him and rejected his

findings. They told him he

needed more therapy himself, but Beck didn't

stop. He had the data, and what he discovered

next changed everything. Those

thoughts did not occur in reality.

They were simply unconscious predictions.

If a patient said, "I can't

get out of bed and I can't do

anything," Bake would suggest something

ridiculously easy, something minuscule:

get up, go to the kitchen, and make yourself a

coffee. Just to see what would happen.

Most of the time what happened

was much less terrible than the

thought made it seem. The task was still

difficult, yes, for that person,

of course. But the catastrophe that the

brain had fabricated was not real. It

was all in his head, it was like

a movie. And that result, the

morning coffee, however small,

was a new piece of data, real proof that they

could do things they thought were

impossible. In 1977, his therapy was

compared in a clinical trial against

antidepressants of that time. The

result surprised everyone. They were equally

effective. A therapy without pills

that worked just as well as if you used them.

a marvel. Today, the

cognitive behavioral therapy that Beck developed

has more than 2,000 scientific studies

behind it. It is the most studied psychological approach

in history, and what it

discovered I will summarize for you in three steps

so you can start and stop

procrastinating once and for all. The

first step is realizing that you are

in the loop. The next time you

realize you're avoiding something

important, first of all, logically don't

feel bad, don't speak badly to yourself, you're not

a disaster, nor are you lazy, you're

simply not aware of it and you ca

n't stop it right now, so do

n't say anything negative to yourself. So

just stop for a moment and ask yourself the

following questions. What am I

avoiding? Let's say it's a

specific task, I don't know, writing a book.

Okay, now, what emotion is

that same task generating in me? Perhaps you're not

avoiding the simple act of

writing, you're avoiding feeling awkward while

writing, or you're avoiding the effort

of overcoming writer's block. If it's going

to the gym, maybe you're not

avoiding training itself, you're

avoiding feeling physical discomfort.

This might seem silly, but it's very

powerful, because it's not the same to say,

"I can't do this," as to say, "I'm

feeling anxious because I think this

might go wrong." It's not the same to

say, "I'm incapable" as it is to say, "I'm

feeling afraid of what others will say." Putting a

name to the emotion creates distance. The

emotion is still there, but you've

written it down and you're looking at it, and whether you like it or

not, you regain a little bit of control.

When you see it this way, the activity itself ceases to be the

problem, and the

problem becomes the emotion it generates.

The activity is what it is, and the activity

can't be changed, but

the emotion it generates can be changed

if we find the right approach. So let's

move on to step two. Make the task

not just small, but ridiculously small.

We need to reduce friction. Don't

say, "I'm going to write a book," say, "I'm

going to open a warp." Don't say,

"I'm going to train for an hour," say, "I'm going to

put on my sneakers." It's simply about

starting without your brain going

crazy and setting off all the alarms to get you stuck

in a loop. Because, come on

, everyone can put on

sneakers or

open their laptop with

Word. And that's because when You do that, you

start, and what seemed so big, so

enormous, has become something much

more manageable. And I know there's another issue

that causes a lot of friction for many people,

which is organizing

your money properly. It's something that

creates friction, and it's

really important that you do it because it will inevitably give you

more time, help you

make better decisions, and be a

boost to achieving the goals you

set for yourself. So, I'm introducing you to the

tool I created with my partner,

Víctor: Whisper Money, the web app that will

allow you to create a bridge to

Libertar, a finance app

so you know everything about your money

automatically and easily, so you're

encouraged to earn more, spend less on

useless things, and gradually get closer

to your goals with the least

possible friction. I used to use Excel, and

the truth is, the change has been enormous.

Also, by registering, you can join

a free Discord community with

people who share your interests.

You can choose between the free

lifetime plan, where you import

transactions manually, or the

paid plan, which It costs about the price of a coffee, and

everything will be automatic. You can connect

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paid plan isn't available yet, but

we're working on it. So I encourage you to

try it, join the community, and

tell me what you think.

The link is in the description, and here's

the most practical rule in the whole video:

Do ​​it for just 5 minutes. Write anything

, it doesn't matter, just write for those 5 minutes

. Again, the goal isn't to do a

superb job, you don't have to finish

anything, you don't have to prove anything, you

just have to do that task for 5

minutes—5 minutes writing poorly, 5

minutes studying without understanding everything,

5 minutes practicing gently. And believe me,

this rule works because it eliminates all

the pressure of the outcome. And with this,

something incredible happens. Every time

you start a task you've been

avoiding, you're training something much

deeper than productivity. You're

training your identity; you're giving

your brain a new challenge. You

're telling it that you're a person

who starts even if... Don't be lazy. And that

test, repeated enough times—and it's not a

few—will be difficult; otherwise,

everyone would do it, but it

radically changes how you see yourself.

Discipline will become a part of you when

you accumulate enough tests that you can

trust yourself. And that starts with small

acts, like putting on your running shoes.

All it takes is starting for 5

minutes today, another five tomorrow, and

another five the day after, until starting what you

set out to do and making progress becomes second nature

. And now that you know how to start

achieving your dreams, you'll need to know

how to make good decisions to

move forward faster and stay on the right

track. So, here's a

video to learn how to always make

good decisions, based on science.

See you on the other side. Hugs, and until

next time.