101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom For Living a Better Life
. 2016. Mariner
Books.

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12
the
KNOWING-DOING GAP: 
why we 
AVOID DOING 
WHAT’S BEST FOR US, 
and how to
CONQUER 
RESISTANCE 
FOR GOOD
The ancient Greeks called it Akrasia, the Zen Buddhists call it
resistance, you and I call it procrastination, every productivity guru
on the Internet calls it being “stuck.” Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert
Sutton call it the “knowing-doing gap,” or the experience of knowing
the best thing to do, but doing something else anyway
6
.
Common sense tells us that if we put another hour into novel
writing each night, ate better, woke earlier, chose affirmative
thoughts, spoke honestly and connected more genuinely, we’d live
better lives. But the real question, and the real work, is not
understanding what’s good for us, but why we choose otherwise.
Understanding the fabric of resistance is the only way we can
unstitch it.
There are many reasons we self-sabotage, and most of them have
something to do with comfort. Modern society (innovation, culture,
wealth, success) is designed to convince us that a “good life” is one
that is most comfortable, or able to provide us with a sense of being
pain-free and secure. This is pretty directly related to the fact that
human beings are hardwired to seek comfort, which translates to us
as survival—we’re physiologically designed that way. It only makes
sense that in our more fully actualized intellectual and emotional
lives, we’d want the same.
Moving yourself past resistance is a matter of shifting your
perception of comfort. It’s about considering the alternative. It’s
altering your mindset to focus on the discomfort you will face if you

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don’t do the thing in front of you, as opposed to the discomfort you
will face if you do.
If left unchecked, the knowing-doing gap will leave you a shell of
the person you intended to be. It will wreck your most intimate,
passionate relationships, keep you from the kind of daily productivity
required to achieve any goal worth working toward. It will keep you in
a manic state of indecision (do I, or don’t I? Which feeling do I let
guide me?). You have to take control for yourself, and you can do so
by considering the big picture. The alternative. The way your life will
be if you don’t do this thing.
How will you quantifiably measure this year? What will you have
done? How many hours will you have wasted? If you had to live
today—or any average day—on repeat for the rest of your life, where
would you end up? What would you accomplish? How happy would
you be? What relationships will you have fostered? Will you be
looking back knowing you likely damn well missed out on what could
have been the love of your life because you weren’t “ready?” What
about the hours you could have been playing music or writing or
painting or whatever-ing? Where will those have gone?
You will never be ready for the things that matter, and waiting to
feel ready before you start acting is how the knowing-doing gap
widens. It’s uncomfortable to work, to stretch the capacity of your
tolerance, to be vulnerable with someone you care deeply about, but
it is never more comfortable than going your whole life without the
things you really want.
Anxiety builds in our idle hours. Fear and resistance thrive when
we’re avoiding the work. Most things aren’t as hard or as trying as
we chalk them up to be. They’re ultimately fun and rewarding and
expressions of who we really are. That’s why we want them. Taking
small steps will remind you that this is true. It will soothe you in a
way that just thinking about taking action never will. It’s easier to act
your way into a new way of thinking rather than think your way into a
new way of acting, so do one little thing today and let the momentum
build.
And thank whatever force within you that knows there’s something
bigger for you—the one that’s pushing you to be comfortable with
less.

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6 Pfeffer, Jeffrey.