I learned to define “done” more clearly in my personal projects after discovering many unfinished tasks. By checking if a project is truly complete before starting the next one, I avoid accumulating almost-finished work and reduce mental clutter.
Procrastination
The Three Types of Procrastination
I’ve seen over and over that we procrastinate on something because deep down it goes against our core beliefs or because we know it’s a waste of time. I think there is a third type of procrastination: where we procrastinate because at some level we can’t accept the larger meaning of our actions.
Use Random Numbers To Remove Resistance
Random numbers are often used in math-heavy fields like machine learning and cryptography. But random numbers are also a great tool to bust through resistance to tasks that lead to procrastination.
5 Ways To Beat Procrastination
There are many different ways that you can use to beat procrastination. In fact, whole books have been written about ways to get going. Here are the 5 techniques I use most often to get me going:
Podcast Episode 79: Lowering Resistance
One form of procrastination that I fight frequently is what I call Newton Procrastination: a body at rest will remain at rest. It’s the main reason I can’t get moving on things. And the key to fighting this is to make the barrier to motion so small that it takes almost no effort to get past it. We’ll talk about this today in Episode 79: Lowering Resistance.
Procrastination Buster: Relative Difficulty
I struggle with procrastination, especially if the list of items seems overwhelming. But Mark Forster really hit a home run by bringing relative difficulty into it.
Podcast Episode 45: Procrastination
In this episode, we talk about when procrastination is a lack of clarity; approaches to stopping … Podcast Episode 45: ProcrastinationRead more
6 Favorite Ways to Jump Start A Task
Sometimes it is hard to get going. Like a battery left too long inactive in the cold, we can’t get started on what we need to do.
Here are my six favorite ways to jump start a task:
Procrastinating Is Different Than Incubating
Sometimes ideas need time to incubate. We may need to work out details, methods, or even the feasibility of the idea itself.
To the outside person, this can look like procrastination.
But in fact, incubation and procrastination are very different.
How are they different? Here are five ways that procrastinating is different than incubating.