Procrastination - Busting Techniques
1. Do it NOW !
The harder and more distasteful a task is, the better it is to do it immediately. Dr. Michael Bernard calls this “The Knock-Out Technique”. Or as the author Ernest Hemingway said, “no matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”
2. The Salami Technique The author Edwin Bliss in Doing It Nowcompares thinking about a difficult task with looking at a large uncut salami.
“It’s a huge, crusty, greasy, unappetising chunk; you don’t feel you can get your teeth into it. But when you cut it into thin slices, you transform it into something quite different. Those thin slices are inviting; they make your mouth water, and after you’ve sampled one slice you tend to reach for another.”
An so it is with tasks. Break them down into smaller and manageable segments.
Allison Roe, the New Zealand marathon runner, and winner of the 1981 Boston and New York marathons, has said:
“I never thought of it as running 42 km. That would have been too daunting. I’d never have finished. I used to break it down into 10 km segments. Anyone can run 10 km.
So I’d run one, then imagine I was starting again on another. Halfway was a major psychological point too. It’s always very heartening to be past halfway.”
And once started, as with achieving goals, it is one step at a time until the task has been completed.
3. Be Canny Most procrastinators put off the hardest, most awkward, most unpleasant tasks – and leave them till last – secretly hoping that by doing so they won’t have to do them at all. BUT these won’t usually go away.
Try the opposite technique – start them FIRST, when you’re freshest, and get them out of the way. When I am dining out and my hostess serves tomatoes on my plate, I eat them first (along with something else to help disguise the taste) because I do not enjoy eating tomatoes. However, once finished, I can tuck into the rest of the meal with relish and savour the tastes (meat, potatoes, beans and so one) because I’ve got the hardest part (eating tomatoes) out of the way.
So: if you’ve got a fiendish essay topic or assignment to do, or an almost impossible economics problem – START your study session with it. By starting, you’re well along the way and even if you don’t finish in the one go, it will be easier to come back to later.
|  Use your eyesAs if tomorrow You would be struck blind. Hear the music of voices, The song of the bird, As if tomorrow You would be struck deaf. Touch each object As if tomorrow Your sense of touch would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, Taste with relish each morsel, As if tomorrow You could neither smell Nor taste again.  Helen Keller |
