PROCRASTINATION SERIES (1/5)

Trick your own "robot" into something really easy to begin a difficult task.

 

 

Sometimes I have my coaching clients just put three big open garbage bags on their chaotic garage and do nothing. Of course, on the following session they tell me they've done a fair amount of cleaning up, almost automatically! When there's something evident and easy in front of us, the robot can't resist it.

 

Trick your own "robot" into something really easy to begin the task. The start is typically the point of highest resistance. Do that tiny little thing, not with the feeling that you are tricking yourself, but with the feeling that it's the only thing you're going to do. You have to feel the "closure" of the action - the easy success and finish line - so it moves you effortlessly.

 

This could be something like: make the first page of the Power Point of your presentation, or write the subject of the difficult e-mail you want to write, put a word at google and press search, get yourself out in the street, before you even decide where you're going, schedule a meeting even before you decide how to tackle it, pick the phone and click the number even before you decide how to manage the conversation, ...

 

 

Once I had a client that never had time to exercise. At a moment of our coaching program, I asked if he would have at least 10min inside the gym. He said he did, and do we agreed that next day he would go to the gym taking his gym bag, would get inside, change clothes, do nothing for 10 seconds, change again to regular clothes, and come back to the office. He thought that was an easy experiment, and that it would fit his 10min limit, no problem. On that day, he exercised for 1 hour... everything else on his schedule just magically sorted its way around it.