Navy SEAL training is brutally demanding, involving waking soldiers up to gunfire on a Sunday and forcing them to exercise, jump in cold water, and go without sleep until Friday. Tuesday of Hell Week is considered the hardest part because soldiers are extremely tired by then, having had little sleep since Sunday, and are not even halfway through the grueling training. Many soldiers start feeling sorry for themselves and thinking about quitting on Tuesday. However, focusing just on completing each small task one at a time, without thinking about how far they still have to go, is an effective tactic for getting through Tuesday and weakening the perceived barriers that cause procrastination and laziness.

1. Lessons from
SEAL training
How to weaken the perceived barriers that cause
procrastination and laziness.
The SEALs – an acronym for Sea, Air and Land forces – are a small,
elite military force created in 1962.... Navy SEAL training takes more
than a year, and it's brutally demanding.
Best part of Hell Week (SEAL training) is Tuesday.????
At face value, it’s a bizarre choice.

2. Hell Week involves waking soldiers up to gunfire on a Sunday
and forcing them to exercise, jump in cold water, and go
without sleep until Friday.
A gargantuan challenge by any measure.
But why Tuesday?
Sunday, you are woken up to machinegun fire.
All through the night you run, you carry rafts, you get yelled at.
You jump in freezing water. You shiver. You eat.
Monday morning, it continues.
The cold water, exercise, grueling log lifts, runs into the waves.
There are constant mentally challenging exercises with specific
instructions that, when not followed with precision, result in
punishment exercises.
All through Monday afternoon this continues.
It then rolls into Monday night.
On and through the night, as other people sleep in their warm
bed, you shiver, your arms burn, your back hurts, your legs
begin to feel like stiff boards from the running.
This mashup of misery has become your reality.
Tuesday rolls around.
You are legit tired, more tired than you’ve ever been.
You do some mental calendar notes.
I am this tired now. We aren’t even halfway done. Friday is a
long, long way away.
And I am so, so tired.
On Tuesday, the task in front of you looks impossible.
Guys start feeling sorry for themselves. They start thinking
about how hard it all is, how much it hurts, how tired they are.
There is a lot of bell ringing (quitting) on Tuesday.
The tactic my dad and others used?
Focus on each exercise, one drill at a time.

3. Don’t look any further than that. Don’t think about Friday, don’t
think about tomorrow, don’t think about an hour from now.
Just stay in the now. One small task at a time.
You can extend this to many of the most common things we all
struggle with:
Gym: just focus on putting your shoes on. One foot. Then the
other foot. See how that goes.
After that, get your keys and get in your car. Then just focus on
starting the car, driving, getting to the gym.
Studying: just go sit at your desk. Open the book and see what
happens.
Read a sentence or two. See how it goes. Then a paragraph.
If you can narrow your field of vision down to just a few
moments ahead of you, you can lower the mental weight of the
obstacle.
This tactic is wickedly effective at weakening the perceived
barriers that cause procrastination and laziness.
Jayadeva de Silva for Humantalents International