On the path to greatness, there will be 100 overcomings.
I will chronicle my attempts to overcome procrastination. My technique is to start small, really small.
My favorite post in the series is #3 Dealing with a Bunch of Crap.
==================
To help my students have the motivation to write there final papers in English, I committed to writing one as well. I had a reasonable plan of action: I would stay late on Friday and start the paper. Or failing that, I would go eat an early dinner and start the paper.
So . . . of course . . . there I was midnight on Sunday, feeling really pissed off and not at all wanting to start a paper. . . "What kind of madness is this", I thought, "I'm a grown up, I retired from being a student. I wrote all the paper I need to write." It felt in that moment as though it were the most uninteresting task in the world. (All of this should help me feel sympathy for my students -- which was part of the point of the exercise).
So I busted out pretty much all of my techniques, including a new one. I want to first explain that new technique.
I read about it in Poder Sin Limites por Tony Robbins (ie it was Tony Robbin's Unlimited Power, which I'm reading in Spanish (go million word challenge!) Anyway, I'm hazy on it, because, you know, other language, but I reckon Robbins was pointing out that your imagination uses all of your senses, and that you have the power to do some really cool manipulation. For example, you can take any image and just make it brighter in your mind's eye. You can make it louder. Try it.
So, when you feel that dread toward working you are seeing something. Take that image, which is probably already a dull image, and dim the heck out of it, and in your imagination implode it, kind of like crumbling a piece of paper. Shove that imagine off to the side. Replace it with a bright, vivid image of you doing the first step of the task, or even better yet, of you being in a flow state doing the work. . . Repeat this about 6 times in rapid succession. Crush the old image, push it to the side, see the vibrant image that you know the work can be. And for some reason, Tony Robbins wants to you say something dorky while you do this. In the Spanish translation it's Zuuumbaaa! (Yeah, I didn't really do that step; my wife was sleeping.)
Still, that was the initial push I needed, even though I was already tired and cranky. I also pre-warded myself the way I do, playing some music, eating some ice cream while doing the first step (my weekend are my free days again -- and I did not live up to the no sugar challenge).
After that, predictably, the work got done, and it turned out to be really fun work.
