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I had some time recently to dig into the bottom of my procrastination list, but I had a rough time motivating myself to actually do the things. I decided to be my own parent and start taking away privileges in order to get things done. I normally allow myself a few small, sugary treats per day, and I’ve used my favorite treat (chocolate peanut butter cups) as an incentive to do a particular weekly task. This time I added the regular treats (mini muffins and coffee flavored sugar milk) to the incentive list. Here’s where it went wrong…
Most of the “tasks” on my list were in fact, projects. There was no way I would be able to do a single project in one sitting, since they often required the participation of another person or an entity to do part of the work. For instance, the first project on my list was distributing an audiobook, using an aggregate distributor. I hit a stumbling block when the platform gave me some technical issues and I had to send an email to their tech department and wait for a response. I wasn’t able to get my sugar fix or dopamine in a timely manner. On the plus side I was able to detox my body from sugar for a few days.
I looked at the list for some other tasks that would be quicker and found that there were none. They all involved multiple steps, including research, making decisions, and some sort of follow through. I read James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits” a few months ago. Although I don’t remember many specifics, my main takeaway (according to the spreadsheet I keep of the books I read) is that “smaller habits will help you improve 1% at a time”. If this works for habits, it can certainly work for projects, especially if I use my beloved mini muffins as a sugary incentive.
I went through my list and broke the projects down into actual tasks. For many of them, the first step was “find a youtube video to teach me how to do ____”.Breaking the projects down into small tasks turned out to be the game changer I needed. I plowed through many more items on my procrastination list because my hunger for muffins gave me the incentive to get a real start on the projects, and took away the daunting part of thinking about finishing the whole thing.
I’ll continue to use this strategy whenever I find myself overwhelmed with the amount of projects and tasks on my to-do list.
Thanks for reading!
Rebecca H. Lee
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