It takes as long as it takes

I just discovered an important skill.

If you're doing basic, hindbrain work, such as sorting mail or something similar, your brain is likely to fire at some point and go "What are you doing? You're wasting your valuable time! This has to go faster!", causing a sense of dread and anxiety to rise up and threaten to engulf you.

If that happens to me, I'll end up doing a botch job of the tedious work, and start working aimlessly on something "more important" to make myself feel good.

That is, that's what I used to do. Now I tell my brain to STFU, adding "The work is proceeding at the right speed. You don't have to do everything as fast as humanly possible. This is going to take a couple of hours, but then it'll be done, and the world will not have ended because I took so long".

It helps, believe me.