I’m a complete cynic whenever I hear the word hack, but seriously these 2 Easy Procrastination Hacks could be the difference between you and I procrastinating on the good work forever! Or just getting down to do it. And I road tested them – they work!
When I decided to write my book, at first the idea was great. Brainstorming the content and structures all seemed to be going well. But then I had to sit and write the thing. Just when I had a million and one other distractions. I mean Luca hadn’t been born when I started, but I had two kids under 7. And the thought of committing a couple of hours was impossible.
I just kept clock watching until there wasn’t the time before school pick up or my next meeting.
The Problem with Procrastination
The problem is procrastination takes on many forms and wastes so much time. It’s like I became obsessed with figuring out, what is the problem with our motivation? It’s not like you don’t want the reward that comes with achieving your goals.
Hey a beach ready body and plenty of passive income would be awesome, so what’s the problem?
You can get the most overwhelming sense of dread from doing just the very thing that will bring you everything you ever wanted. It’s like seeing a meeting in your diary with the CEO of the company you worked for and knowing it was not going to be good or fun.
That’s why I like this hack to beat procrastination. It takes like 30 seconds to decide and just minutes to be in the zone.
2 Easy Procrastination Hacks
- Commit to doing just 2 minutes of work or
- Reduce the time until it seems less of a big deal
Option 1 Commit to doing just 2 minutes
Why this works? Because 2 minutes seems easy. There is literally no argument against it. Even with 3 kids it’s doable. You just have to do this for 2 minutes. Even the kids will agree to 2 minutes if they can then do what they want after.
But it works because it gets over the starting resistance. And often with momentum we just carry on for much longer. In fact my workouts started like this and then I started to enjoy it so much, once the dopamine and serotonin was flowing, I’d just keep going.
Option 2 – Reduce the time until it seems less of BIG Deal
You know how they always say to have a time block. Well that 2 hour writing slot felt like a long hard slog. Even seeing it in my calendar. So the hack is reduce this until it seems like no big deal.
Shall we change my writing slot to 1 hour? No still way.. too .. long
What about half an hour? Better but still seems long.
Ok what about 15 minutes? Sure that’s easy.
Done!
Want more hacks?
It’s like al these little tricks move us gently into the activity we’ve been avoiding. I feel like we need a toolkit of these so every time I have a new life hack, I’m going to share if right here in this section.
