Tracy Pham

Have you ever dreamed of being an artist on stage in front of hundreds of people, singing your songs? Or have you dreamed of making a living as an artist, but something keeps stopping you?

My goal was always to become a musician, but I was 24 before I ever sang in front of anyone. So why didn’t I start earlier?

I would later learn that I was stuck in a cycle called the avoidance loop. This is a concept in neuroscience and psychology that explains why we don’t do the things we want to do, even when they’re important to us. So why does this happen, and what can we do about it?

The Avoidance Loop

When you have something important to do, like performing at your first open mic, writing your first original song, or finishing an album, and you think about actually doing it, your brain generates negative emotions. These can include self-doubt, anxiety, overwhelm, and fear that the result won’t be good enough.

Your brain wants to escape those negative emotions, so you do other things instead, like cleaning your room, scrolling on your phone, or singing cover songs, to feel like you’re still working toward your goal. Suddenly, the negative feeling goes away and you feel relief. That relief becomes a reward.

The more this pattern is repeated, the more automatic it becomes, and eventually you get stuck in the avoidance loop.

Avoidance loop: Difficult task → dread and avoid the task → feel relief → repeat

Every time you go through this loop, you are physically strengthening the neural pathway for procrastination. What you repeat, you become. Procrastination becomes your default behaviour, and your discipline weakens, similar to a muscle you stop using.

How the Brain Disguises Fear

Perfectionism

People who score higher in perfectionism are often bigger procrastinators. Perfectionism makes you afraid that your result won’t be good enough, which prevents you from starting in the first place.

More perfectionistic musicians release fewer songs than their less perfectionistic peers, even when they have similar talent and skill levels. Perfectionism keeps you from starting, so you never have the chance to fall short.

Productive Procrastination

You’re still doing something – researching, watching videos about music theory, or singing covers – but it’s often for short-term relief.

A difficult task that overwhelms you gets replaced by a more comfortable task that carries less risk of judgment or failure. Instead of finishing a song (writing the melody and lyrics or completing the production), you learn more music theory, obsess over your vocal range, or work on songs for other people instead of your own.

But the actual difficult task hasn’t been touched, and you haven’t moved closer to your goal.

You’re not avoiding the task itself, you’re avoiding how you think the task will make you feel.

When you finally start doing it, you often realize that the dread of starting was much worse than the doing itself.

How to Break the Loop

The good news is that you can break out of the avoidance loop simply by starting.

Name the Emotion

When you notice yourself procrastinating or avoiding something, identify the emotion you’re experiencing.

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Anxious? Afraid the result won’t be good enough?

Naming the emotion is often enough to shift you from an emotional mindset into a more rational one.

Make the Task Stupidly Small

What is the smallest possible action you can take to make a little progress?

For example, don’t tell yourself you have to write an entire song tonight. Instead, make the goal: Open my Notes app and write for 10 minutes.

The dread is usually much worse than the doing. You’re not avoiding the task, you’re avoiding how you think the task is going to make you feel.

Interrupt Negative Self-Talk

Before you start, set rules for yourself.

Tell yourself: “I will not allow myself to speak negatively about what I’m doing or how I sound. If I catch myself doing it, I will interrupt that thought with a more positive one.”

Say to yourself: “I can sing a melody in these 10 minutes. I will sing a melody,” instead of, “I can’t do this.”

Stop Avoiding, and Start Doing The Thing

Today, I’m doing what I always wanted to do by working as a full-time vocal teacher and musician. I’m writing songs weekly to pitch for film and TV after landing a Hallmark placement, performing, and sharing my creativity with the world.

But I still avoid my dreams in other ways. One big example is that I still need to finish and release my first EP, something that scares me and feels like the most vulnerable thing that I can do.

Maybe you’re waiting for your self-doubt and perfectionism to disappear, but I’m here to tell you that they may never fully go away, but it gets easier the more you do it.

I have to break out of my avoidance loop constantly, and it always starts the same way: by spending just 10 minutes moving toward the goal.