7 unusual tricks to combat procrastination

1. Letters to yourself

One handy feature of modern email is deferred sending. With its help, we can write motivational letters to ourselves and send them straight to the future.

How it works? Let's imagine that another wave of procrastination hits us. And instead of doing business, we look at pictures in public or watch on YouTube how the talkative porcupine eats a pumpkin. At this point, we receive the following email:

Such messages act like a cold shower: we immediately close the video with the porcupine and grab to work. These letters do not just motivate: they help to remember and return to the state in which we were set for deeds.

So that messages from the past do not lose their magical power, it is important not to create them according to one template, but write in a new way every time. Tell yourself tomorrow about plans for this day, about your dreams and hopes, give advice and warn against troubles. At the same time, try not so much to shame yourself as to inspire.

2. Overlapping work

After you've completed the task, don't rush to take a break right away. Before you go on vacation, start a new business. If you plan to do away with dirty dishes, put them in the sink and turn on the water. If you are going to write - start a text editor and write the first sentence.

When the work has begun, it is more difficult for us to forget about it and be distracted by extraneous activities. Especially if we have done something that can no longer be ignored. Agree, it is difficult to dive headlong into social networks if there is a vacuum cleaner in the middle of the room and looks at us with a mute reproach.

3. Control of breaks

Coffee breaks, smoke breaks and parties at Klondike often become the very black hole where all plans for the day fail. To avoid this, it is necessary to tightly control the duration of the break. And here two tools come to our aid:

Timer. With him, everything is simple: set the time allotted for rest, and after the hated signal, return to work.
Check list. Breaks can be scheduled in the same way as other activities. For example:

During rest, it is important to maintain a working spirit and avoid too vivid impressions. If something else grabs our attention, then it will be more difficult to return to the main lesson. This is especially unpleasant if the work requires concentration.

4. Reports

Try to write reports on the work done, on the problems encountered and on what you plan to do next several times a day. For example:

This kind of “bureaucracy” helps you stay mindful, stay motivated, and get less distracted.

How often do you need to write such reports? It depends on your work rhythm and how you feel. Someone needs to report to themselves three times a day, while someone needs to control themselves every 15 minutes. By the way, this technique goes well with the Pomodoro technique.

5. Continuous chain

The Don’t Break The Chain method usually serves to reinforce good habits. But it turned out to be great for controlling working hours. It looks like this:

Everything is simple here. Have you worked half an hour or an hour? Draw a nice red cross on the plate.

First, it will allow you to immediately see the results of your work. And secondly, it will be a pity for us to be distracted from work and break such a wonderful chain.

But this method has one pitfall. Suppose that for some reason we did break the series of crosses. At this moment, we are tempted to say: "The barn is burnt down - burn and hut!" - and go to YouTube to watch cats. To prevent self-sabotage, you can simply draw a sad smiley at the gap:

Although this chain is wrong, it still looks complete and does not make you want to quit.

Do not forget to reserve lunch and rest time on the plate.

6. Clip planning

Sometimes in a day you need to complete several large tasks at once, and such that the mere thought of these "elephants" becomes bad. If this is the case, try breaking up the tasks into small chunks and doing them in circles.

Suppose that today we need to clean the windows in our apartment, prepare a report and carry out our daily activities. Let's make a schedule:

This planning has three advantages at once:

Because things move quickly, like scenes in a video clip, they don't have time to disgust us.
Due to the alternation of different activities, we are less tired and stay clear for longer.
At the end of the day, we have no projects left that we never got around to.

Here it is important to find a middle ground and correctly distribute tasks: the "pieces" should not be too large or too small. In my experience, their optimal duration is about half an hour.

7. Looking at the ball

This is the most powerful and at the same time the most difficult technique, it is necessary to feel it. The idea is this: you need to do the work in ultra-short sections of 3 to 10 seconds, focusing on moving to the next step.

If, for example, we got out for a run, then we should strive to complete one segment of the distance and start a new one. And if we wash our plate now, we try to get to the next plate.

If you've ever played tennis, try to remember how you felt. During the game, we hardly think about the result, or about the opponent, or about the upcoming sets. We simply react to the movement of the ball by striving to hit it correctly.

The technique helps to work stress-free and easily enter a state of flow. In this case, procrastination over us is powerless, because we ourselves find it difficult to break away from work.

Learning to "look at the ball" takes some experimentation. But as soon as you catch the wave, the work starts to argue by itself.

Conclusion

You can and should be creative when performing these techniques. For example, letters to yourself can become more atmospheric if you write them on paper and send them in a real envelope. And to create a continuous chain, it is often more convenient to use not a piece of paper, but spreadsheets. Customize your techniques and don't be afraid to experiment.

Successful fight against procrastination!