To my ears "Courage to tackle the unpleasant" has the ring of bounds known ahead of time. Chore X will be unpleasant. How unpleasant? Between 4 Ughs and 7 Ughs.

To my ears "Courage to tackle the unpleasant" has the ring of bounds known ahead of time. Chore X will be unpleasant. How unpleasant? Between 4 Ughs and 7 Ughs. Maybe 8 Ughs. So I know why I'm procrastinating, I don't want to tackle a 4 Ugh chore right now. But I can plan. Tomorrow morning I'll be up for tackling a 10 Ugh chore, I can plan to do it then. Sometimes we don't know the upper bound. The article mentions religious doubts, which can escalate to nihilism and despair. One cannot plan for that. No-one says: I'm too tired for nihilism and despair this evening, I'll do it tomorrow morning. Abyss? The examples in the article have a feel of a scarily large upper bound, which we are putting off estimating. But we could estimate it, realize that we are not at the abyss, we are just facing a tough choice, and get on with it.