Just do it… for five minutes.

Once the time is up, you either would give up or continue your task to completion. Either way, you had progress.

One thing that works is finding ways to make achieving small tasks part of your routine. I have a to-do list and in my lunch break at work I often pick off one or two things and decide okay, that’s what I’ll do when I get home. And so that way the selecting of the tasks and the doing of the tasks are things that have their own specific times and the decision is already made.

What also works is to create some external motivation.

I might not feel like cleaning the house, for example, but if I have friends coming over then I’ll enthusiastically clean everything because I want it to be nice for them.

And so sometimes I intentionally weaponise that by inviting a friend over just to give myself that extrinsic motivation.

I’m not very good at not procrastinating, but I started to do things for “future me” and when I realize “omg I don’t have to do this cause it’s already done”, I thank past me.

And when I end up having to do things last minute and in a rush, I tell past me that they have been right all along and that I should have let them do their thing.

I found that I would procrastinate less when I was thankful for myself for doing things earlier.

I’ll save this post for later to read

I never solved it, but I realized earlier that I can play to my strengths instead of fighting my nature. Does this irritate, confuse and inconvenience myself and others sometimes ? Yes

But it has allowed me to do a lot of stuff and be truer to myself over many years. I am less of a conformist , and totally shaped my life and career for this to be an advantage .

I used a Filofax before 16. Not that I needed it, but I liked it and felt very organised. Not sure if my mom is to blame, she was a financial accountant, so always did things very carefully and accurately.

Let’s not start about uni, where getting laid and smoking funny things was more important than being organised, but when I started working, I tried a lot of techniques.

I read something somewhere which I find quite fitting:

• If you only have few tasks, anything might do. Keep them in mind, scribble them on a piece of paper. No need to prioritise them, because priority is instantly clear when looking at the few tasks.
• if you’ve got more than just a few tasks then you need to write them on a to do list. With more and more tasks, you need to put them into some kind of order. Ordering the tasks by priority is most often a good idea.
• If you have a lot of tasks and you juggle a lot of projects then you need something even bigger,which may be a system like GTD. This way, you can prioritise projects, individual tasks and also tasks not belonging to any project.

This helps me to avoid procrastination.

I still use the techniques above, depending on my current workload.

Man, Lemmy sure is good at not answering (just) “later” like Reddit would repeatedly. It’s a weird level of restraint for the internet.

• Pomodoro timers (hit a keybinding, a 25min timer will start. Within that time, do something productive. After that time, you can do a 5min “break”. Then probably start the next timer. You can also adjust the timings of course)
• Treat the thing you want to do instead of your task as the thing you can do as the reward after having done the task first (kind of a gamification mechanism maybe)
• Develop a habit of always doing something productive (from your backlog) each day, unless you’re sick or so
• If the task seems so big or hard that you don’t even start, split it in parts. You rarely have to do everything at once. Splitting it into parts also allows you to not over-exert yourself, so you’ll have more time for the things you’d rather want to do afterwards

Decide to pocrastinate later after you did all the things.

No really, if there is something to do, do it immediately. You store tasks in the later and you only exist in the now, so later is never now. There is only now and you need to decide to procrastinate later.

Don’t justify why you can’t do it now. “I should wait until…” Naw, unless it is impossible to do because you need to shave the yak, do it now. No, it won’t be better to do it at 4:00, 4:15, 4:30 or whatever nice increment of time. Do the shit at 3:53.

You decide when to do something, procrastination is deciding not to do something. Make the very real conscious decision to do the thing now. It isn’t easy, you will have to catch yourself slipping, and you will have to learn the habit.

I sit and think about it for a while, become distracted with a shiny object, then come back to it later/right before it is due.

I trust future me to take care of it because I have an insane belief that he will be more responsible than I am. Bastard keeps proving me wrong.

At one time, I got one of those small appointment books that office supply stores sell. Writing down a list of things to do and then crossing them off gave me a tiny dopamine kick that was desirable enough to keep going. There’s apparently some science about writing being more effective for this than doing it on your phone. Dunno, but worth checking.

Counterintuitively, I try to do less. If I have 5 things to do today and can’t motivate myself to get started, I push all but 1 or 2 off until later. Then I know a nice, log break is waiting for me for the rest of the day if I finish those things. At that point, getting the one or two things done feels worthwhile, and it feels like there’s a reward for me at the end (goofing off guilt-free).

I mean, I wasn’t going to get all 5 things done today because I’m a procrastinator. But if I accept that and make the workload much lighter, can get a little done.

I stopped trying to do optional things.

I try to divide up the task into so small bits that it seems ridiculous. Tasks you can do in 5 min. Do it, take break if needed (or not, if you feel you’re getting in the flow). Do take a break after you notice getting tired (even if you still feel motivated).

I create routines. Try to establish habits of doing a certain thing at a certain time. The key is to start, even if you get yourself to do it for only a few minutes at first, and then over time you can build up and do more. The key is to make sure you start each day consistently. I often put a recurring calendar reminder at first that nags me to do the thing, and then as I start forming a habit I get rid of it.