Procrastination
November 10th 2009 -
I have been doing less than an hour a day for the last several days. I managed an hour on Sunday – drawing up storyboards – but otherwise it’s been more like an average of half an hour a day. The problem is mainly that my procrastination is in overdrive.
Part of the other reason for the problem is that I’m not very good at obeying what my past-self has ordered me to do. The “x minutes a day” vow can work – somewhat, sometimes – if I’ve set up a good history and don’t want to break the trend, but that requires that I get to that point *and* it’s tremendously fragile. As soon as the trend is broken, it’s broken for good. But I persist in this method, just because it’s the best of a bad lot of techniques.
Bribing myself with rewards, I’ve discovered, is even worse.
The best technique is, of course, sitting down, not allowing myself any distractions, and doing it. That almost always works. It’s just getting *to* that point that’s difficult (it’s generally a sub-technique for when I’ve already built up enough determination/guilt/stubbornness to acknowledge that yes, it is now time to do the thing that I ‘want’ to do).
Anyone got any additional techniques that are doing them any good? Alternately, does anyone know how to suck the lifeforce out of Mr Morgan-Mar and transplant it into living human subjects without destroying them?
On the bright side, I have been sticking to my “1 litre of water a day” thing. That one’s easy.
Kate Says:
November 10th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I’ve been using the kitchen timer. You can write a hell of a lot in 20 minutes if you don’t constantly wander off onto the Internet!
Jen Says:
November 11th, 2009 at 5:49 am
ooops.. I’m procrastinating just reading this.. don’t ask me!
Dave Says:
November 12th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Ooh, that’s a good one.
But other than idly imagining myself using Kate’s technique, I am definitely the wrong person to ask. I could procrastinate for my country. No, scratch that, I could SAVE THE EARTH FROM THE ALIENS OF THE OVERACHIEVEMENT GALAXY BY STUNNING THEM WITH MY SUPERHUMAN DISPLAYS OF THIS EARTH THING WE CALL PROCRASTINATION UNTIL THEY DIE FROM IT.
But the kitchen timer idea’s a pretty good one.
Jenny Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Find something you want to do even less and then make it your number one priority….suddenly the jobs you haven’t been doing get done as an excuse not to do your new one.
For example, my office is now clean (for certain descriptions of clean) for the first time in a year….my exams are however, not marked. But I’m also setting up to do some research, so the exams are now underway. (research is fun, planning is not)