14th
The 3-step procrastination fight.
Like other humans (and some authors), I struggle with procrastination. Some tasks sit around for weeks before I finally get my act together and do them. These are rarely particularly difficult or frightening tasks — but whenever I think about doing them, I find myself thinking about something else straight away.
“I have to write a proposal for that book idea…
… but first, I’d beter check for new posts on Google Reader. It’s essential research.”
I can usually get around procrastination by breaking the task down into 3 smaller tasks to do one after the other. Having the task broken into smaller steps usually reveals a really obvious ‘next action’ that will break the cycle of putting off.
When it doesn’t, I can do one step each day and know that I’ll have finished the task much sooner than if I had kept on putting it off.