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other tricks/ideas/what works for you/how do you do its are welcome OC
1. if you have a job and are male then you know the severe urgency required in getting to work on time with 1 minute to spare so you can clock in "early"
now take a task or hobby that you want to fulfil, such as "going to the gym at a particular time or early enough that you haven't wasted half the day browsing the web and watching random stuff"
now apply the emotional sense of urgency that you apply to "getting to work on time" to this activity.
suddenly you are able to be more focused and to prioritise better. if you can do it for your job then you can do it for this other activity in exactly the same manner.
2. now you have a task or hobby that you just constantly put off, day after day. whenever you think about it you can feel the determination welling but just can't seem to sit down and fucking do it. this weird, unplaceable fear strikes deep in your heart and however much you think about it you can't seem to surpass the fear. instead you procrastinate.
this kinda task could be either going to the gym or it could be doing some written work, studying, whatever you call it.
now when you think about doing this written work/studying, ill bet either it is an open-ended task (that will take many many hours), or you are giving yourself some rather lengthy time period in which to sit down and do a hefty part of the task. eg "i want to do a solid 3 hours of this work (but i still havent done it for weeks and counting!).
okay, so now consider it this way: "i will do 15 minutes of the task, after that i can stop."
suddenly this becomes 4x more emotionally easy to deal with. its nothing to just sit there for 15 minutes and do it!! that unplaceable fear is suddenly a whole lot less, and easier to overcome.
now, at last, you have started a chunk of your task.
i didnt go to the gym for a month, so when i went yesterday, with some unplaceable fear and reluctance in my eyes, i thought "well i only have to go super light and easy anyway, since i am just getting a feel for it again". immediately the concept became much easier to deal with.
so 2 minutes ago when i was thinking about my written work that i need to do, i suddenly tried to apply the same logic. "hell i dont have to do it for 3 hours straight, just 15 minutes, how does that sound"? it sounded a lot better.*
*experimental because i havent done it yet
other tricks/ideas/what works for you/how do you do its are welcome OC
 
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I personally use something similar to the second method. The key is to not be constantly checking the time, set up an alarm but otherwise put away anything that tells you the time (set your computer task bar to auto-hide).
On May 24 2012 16:37 FFGenerations wrote:if you have a job and are male then you know the severe urgency required in getting to work on time with 1 minute to spare so you can clock in "early"
Not exactly on topic but what does being a male have anything to do with having a "severe urgency" to get to work early? =/
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if that first one actually worked we could just apply it to anything and we'd never procrastinate
however the 2nd one is quite useful
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I can't even fulfill the assumptions for #1. I'm a performance management consultant (how ironic is that), I have tons of work, and what am I doing now ? Readings blogs on TL 
I already made a lot of efforts, now I don't have a stream running on my secondary screen while I work.
My own contribution to the thread :
When there is a task I really really don't want to do although I have to, and that I have already delayed for a while, I start feeling guilty and I suddenly stop procrastinating, and I do every other chores or stuff I should do that are not as bad as the original task.
Typical example : I work from home (remember, I'm a consultant supposed to manage performance). Sometimes I have that horrible functional specifications that I have to write, I really really hate to do that. For a while I start watching VODs or movies. Then I start thinking that I suck and I should really stop wasting my time doing useless stuffs. I start by changing the cats litter box, then I water the plants, then I wash the dishes and I come back to my desk. Now that I feel a bit less guilty, I start procrastinating again. Then after a while, I'm like "FUCK THIS" and I tidy and clean and mop the whole apartment (it's a big apartment, and it's totally pointless because I pay a maid to do this). Then I sit at my desk again. I open the Word file. I type a few lines. Then I get my gym carpet and start doing push-ups and abs until I'm dead.
Conclusion : If it's hard for you to workout or clean your apartment, find something even worse to do and you will feel that it's super nice to clean the apartment.
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yayaya
i was thinking the same kinda thing 30 minutes ago:
i was on treadmill and was thinking "okay, i am at the gym, and im still stressing out about how long i should run for. now i should stop worrying about that and instead focus my mind on the next task (my work stuff). "
a consequence of this is that i completely stopped stressing out about being on the treadmill for either 20 or 25 or 27 or 30 minutes and instead everytime my mind slipped i just thought about the anticipation of doing the next thing rather than the worry and reluctance of doing the current thing.
its the same kinda thing that you just described, in a different kinda way. it prompts a sort of mental acceptance and peace within about a task at hand, like it re-focuses your worry and malfeelings.
i think the trick here is not finding something worse/harder to refocus on , but figuring out how to simulate/stimulate/reproduce that re-focus. my head is totally fuzzy right now so thats all i can say on the matter LOL
lol@ streaming at work whilst being a management consultant
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Procrastinators gather! Tomorrow!
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EPT
