BE MORE PRODUCTIVE: TAKE A BREAK
If you’re anything like me, you sometimes find yourself holding your head in your hands, groaning, knowing that you’ve got work you have to do but don’t want to do. It’s called procrastination and can be a real nightmare. You feel guilty, because you think to yourself “Well, there are 24 hours in the day and I’ve done precisely… 9 minutes on this job in the last week.” And the longer it goes on, the more intimidating it becomes.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Working – and by that I mean anything from writing your monthly financial report to tidying the house to revising for your maths test – is not hard. It might be time-consuming, tedious, require you to use your brain in ways it finds taxing, but nothing is really hard when we break it down. It’s like going to the dentist, in a way. You lose sleep over it, you worry about it, you dread it. But when it’s over, you think “Wha-? Was that it?”
The most difficult thing is imagining yourself finishing. You’re constantly thinking about how long it’s going to take, how difficult it will be… It’s… it’s just impossible.
But like the joke goes: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Don’t think about finishing; think about starting.
Get started. Get the process working. Doesn’t matter about the quality right now; you can always polish it later. The quality work will follow.
And what’s a good way to make that start? Drum roll, please….
Make A Schedule.
But wait! It’s not the schedule you think. I’m talking about making something that doesn’t include that big, bad job you have to do.
What does it include, then? Here we go: Sleep, meals, cooking, shopping, travel time to and from work. Exercise – don’t forget that – meetings, classes… So far so predictable.
This is what you also have to schedule: guilt-free playtime. And be realistic. If you think an hour of Internet browsing a day is what you’d like to do, mark it down. If you’ve got a favourite TV series you just can’t miss, make sure it’s noted down. It’s okay to play. It's okay to take breaks.
The first thing you’ll notice when you schedule your days and weeks is that there really are not 24 hours in the day. Or rather, 24 hours you can use for work. Realistically schedule everything you do and you’ll soon see how much time you really have to work. This is helpful, because you won’t have unreasonable thoughts of all these dozens of hours you’re wasting any more.
So… when do you get to work on that daunting thing you’ve got to do? Look at your schedule again. Look at all the gaps. That’s when. You haven’t marked down “Work Now” in black-and-white, remember, you deliberately haven’t scheduled your scary thing, so you don’t have the pressure of making a start. What do you have? You have the potential.
Give it a try. Focus on starting. Don’t be too ambitious at the outset; why not focus on completing 15 interruption-free minutes at a time? Do that 15 minutes and then mark it down as completed. Congratulations. You’re 15 minutes closer to getting it done.
The point is that you know you won’t be stuck doing that tricky job of yours for hours, because, hey, you’ve got a chocolate break scheduled for an hour from now. So you have an hour to kill… Hmm.. How’s about starting a bit more of that thing. No pressure, though. You can hold off on the instant gratification, because it’s already marked down, all official, in your daily schedule.
Before too long, you’ll start to get competitive with yourself. Eventually you’ll find yourself saying “Oh lord, I’ve got half an hour of mindless Internet surfing scheduled, but I’d really rather get on with this thing I’ve started”. And that’s fine! The trick is to make your mind think of the playing as mundane and scheduled and the work as something you get to do when you want to. So when you’re working on something and you overlap into scheduled playtime, you can even think about cancelling that 30 minute date with YouTube. How naughty!
Keep a note of how you spend your time for a week or two and you’ll see how you really use the time you have. You’ll notice the way you avoid certain tasks at certain times of the day. That’s incredibly useful, because the more you know about the way you really tick, the more realistically you’ll be able to plan your time.
Give it a try!
You’re very welcome to reprint any of these articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:
Daniel O'Connor is a website, SEO and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted here. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Working – and by that I mean anything from writing your monthly financial report to tidying the house to revising for your maths test – is not hard. It might be time-consuming, tedious, require you to use your brain in ways it finds taxing, but nothing is really hard when we break it down. It’s like going to the dentist, in a way. You lose sleep over it, you worry about it, you dread it. But when it’s over, you think “Wha-? Was that it?”
The most difficult thing is imagining yourself finishing. You’re constantly thinking about how long it’s going to take, how difficult it will be… It’s… it’s just impossible.
But like the joke goes: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Don’t think about finishing; think about starting.
Get started. Get the process working. Doesn’t matter about the quality right now; you can always polish it later. The quality work will follow.
And what’s a good way to make that start? Drum roll, please….
Make A Schedule.
But wait! It’s not the schedule you think. I’m talking about making something that doesn’t include that big, bad job you have to do.
What does it include, then? Here we go: Sleep, meals, cooking, shopping, travel time to and from work. Exercise – don’t forget that – meetings, classes… So far so predictable.
This is what you also have to schedule: guilt-free playtime. And be realistic. If you think an hour of Internet browsing a day is what you’d like to do, mark it down. If you’ve got a favourite TV series you just can’t miss, make sure it’s noted down. It’s okay to play. It's okay to take breaks.
The first thing you’ll notice when you schedule your days and weeks is that there really are not 24 hours in the day. Or rather, 24 hours you can use for work. Realistically schedule everything you do and you’ll soon see how much time you really have to work. This is helpful, because you won’t have unreasonable thoughts of all these dozens of hours you’re wasting any more.
So… when do you get to work on that daunting thing you’ve got to do? Look at your schedule again. Look at all the gaps. That’s when. You haven’t marked down “Work Now” in black-and-white, remember, you deliberately haven’t scheduled your scary thing, so you don’t have the pressure of making a start. What do you have? You have the potential.
Give it a try. Focus on starting. Don’t be too ambitious at the outset; why not focus on completing 15 interruption-free minutes at a time? Do that 15 minutes and then mark it down as completed. Congratulations. You’re 15 minutes closer to getting it done.
The point is that you know you won’t be stuck doing that tricky job of yours for hours, because, hey, you’ve got a chocolate break scheduled for an hour from now. So you have an hour to kill… Hmm.. How’s about starting a bit more of that thing. No pressure, though. You can hold off on the instant gratification, because it’s already marked down, all official, in your daily schedule.
Before too long, you’ll start to get competitive with yourself. Eventually you’ll find yourself saying “Oh lord, I’ve got half an hour of mindless Internet surfing scheduled, but I’d really rather get on with this thing I’ve started”. And that’s fine! The trick is to make your mind think of the playing as mundane and scheduled and the work as something you get to do when you want to. So when you’re working on something and you overlap into scheduled playtime, you can even think about cancelling that 30 minute date with YouTube. How naughty!
Keep a note of how you spend your time for a week or two and you’ll see how you really use the time you have. You’ll notice the way you avoid certain tasks at certain times of the day. That’s incredibly useful, because the more you know about the way you really tick, the more realistically you’ll be able to plan your time.
Give it a try!
You’re very welcome to reprint any of these articles on your website and/or newsletters free of charge, provided:
- you don’t change the article in any way
- you include the writing credit below (including all website links)
Daniel O'Connor is a website, SEO and marketing copywriter using the name Daniboy. He can be contacted here. Visit http://www.daniboy.com for further details of his services.
