為什麼做規劃那麼艱難（含解決辦法）

The brain likes to minimize energy usage because the brain developed at a time when metabolic resources were scarce. So there is a slight discomfort involved in putting effort into thinking, or any other activity that uses metabolic resources.

Picturing something you have not yet seen is going to take a lot of energy and effort. This partly explains why people spend more time thinking about problems (things they have seen) than solutions (things they have never seen). It explains why setting goals feels so hard (it』s hard to envision the future).

Daniel Gilbert』s 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness, dives deeply into the implications of this finding, illustrating how human beings are terrible at estimating emotions in the future, a concept he calls affective forecasting. Gilbert shows how people define how they will feel in the future based more on the way they feel today, instead of correctly assessing the mental state they might be in at a future date. That』s because it』s difficult.

This of course also explains why prioritizing is so hard. Prioritizing involves imagining and then moving around concepts of which you have no direct experience. How can Emily decide whether hiring a new assistant is going to be easier than writing a proposal for a conference? She hasn』t seen either event in actuality, so neither event is in her audience.

What』s more, prioritizing involves every function I mentioned earlier: understanding new ideas, as well as making decisions, remembering, and inhibiting, all at once. It』s like the triathlon of mental tasks.

Like the coding used on the ski slopes for degree of difficulty, there are mental tasks that are green, blue, and black. Prioritizing, at least in a knowledge economy full of conceptual projects, is definitely a black run.

Do it when you are fresh and energized, or you might crash and burn down the hill.

（Your brain at work 7%）

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