Make Your Desk Tidy.
Clean your desk. And when I say desk, I mean that in the symbolic sense. Wherever you do your work, spend a few minutes to improve something small about it. Make it easy. Spend 1 minute and make an improvement.
I have suffered from awful procrastination in the past. I have managed to overcome it by breaking big tasks down into almost child-like small steps.
Then, the main challenge is putting one’s ego aside. Then doing these small tasks and believe that they will add up to something meaningful. There is also a slight internal embarrassment. As a grown adult, the only way I can achieve things is by breaking them down into almost stupidly small steps.
I wish I was the kind of person who could “get it done” in one swift action. Spend three hours and write a beautiful essay. Tidy the entire house in one afternoon. Be razor-like focussed.
Instead, I delay. I falter. I don’t do the thing that I know I should do. The very things that would give me the results that I see from my work and personal life.
Part of the reason why many people delay is that as soon as they start, then the “thing” itself is concrete. The results may not be as good as you’ve hoped. You’ll disappoint yourself, you will want to give up. Things may take much longer than you assumed. Although, in my experience, I am often surprised how things can get done in a fraction of the time expected — when one is actually doing them.
So if you are struggling with getting things done, then spend a few minutes to tidy up your desk, your working environment.
It’s a small win, and then you will start to wonder what else you can improve. Make fifty or a hundred small improvements like that across every sphere of your life. You’ll notice that things will start to change in a positive way far more rapidly that you would ever have anticipated.
