How to face your fears and get that task done

Now, more than ever, how we choose to pass our day is under scrutiny. We are all living under the same restrictions and (if you follow social media) a kind of competition has set in - who can be the most productive?

This is not necessarily a negative thing, in fact it’s natural, writes our expert, Gareth Fox.

We make competition, no matter our situation, in order to create a hierarchy, and those further up the ranks take the juiciest cuts first - the greater the effort the greater the reward.

If social media is anything to go by, everyone is doing everything, and we are all at the high end of the productivity scale. But what and who is at the other end?

For some of the people who have contacted me, it is taking a little longer to establish a daily routine.

They simply don’t know how, having gone directly from education to professional life; creating their own structure is completely foreign to them.

In this case, what I advise is to write a list of things you would like to do (which are possible to do) within a day. Include all necessary activities: eating, working (if you can), washing and sleeping.

Add start and finish times for each activity,and do as many as you can. Be reasonable with expectations; if you pencil in two hours of sport, but can only complete 20 minutes, you will have the tendency to feel like a failure.

Instead, schedule 20 minutes of sport and congratulate yourself for completing the task. You may not complete everything on the list, but you will complete some - and if you congratulate yourself after ever success, then you will feel great.

For others, the problem runs deeper. “I would like to use my time to write a book … learn the guitar … start a blog … make my own fitness video, but inside I’m really scared it won’t be good enough. And the fear of judgement and rejection is so bad, I will never do it.”