You Can Beat Procrastination in 10 Minutes
By: Renata Gomes
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Writing, Self, Productivity

You Can Beat Procrastination in 10 Minutes

Using time constraints to become more productive.

Procrastination is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest challenge for daily productivity. Everyone struggles with it to some degree or another, and if taken to an extreme, procrastination can completely paralyze your life.

While some people might have to turn to therapy to understand and overcome the deep seated reasons for their extreme procrastination, most people can beat it on a daily basis using a combination of discipline, willpower and a few simple exercises.

Notice inspiration and motivation aren’t part of that procrastination-busting combo. That’s because inspiration and motivation are harder resources to come by than discipline and willpower. Inspiration and motivation are flakey and untrainable; discipline and willpower, however, are the exact opposite.

Contrary to what most people believe, time constraints are incredibly effective strategies to beat procrastination, strengthen willpower and reinforce discipline.

Time constraints are useful because the more time you allow yourself to finish a task, the more you’ll procrastinate and the longer you’ll take. This phenomenon is effectively described by the Parkinson’s law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

This means, of course, that a simple task will become incredibly complex the more time you allow yourself to do it. A task that would normally take you three hours will suddenly expand to take over your entire week — if you give yourself a week to do it.

The Parkinson’s law is, of course, more of a funny saying than a scientifically proven law. It’s a lot closer to Murphy’s law than to Newton’s laws of physics, but it’s main tenet resonates because, joke or not, deep down you know Parkinson is right.

That’s why time constraints are so useful to beating procrastination and becoming more productive: when you restrict the time you have to do a given task, you have to get it done. No excuses. Just think of all the work you’ve always done last-minute, the famous inspiration provided by the pressure of an approaching deadline.

Both self-imposed and external deadlines are helpful to boost productivity, but if you’d like to beat procrastination on your own, one day at a time, all you need are 10 minutes.

The 10 minutes exercise is an effective creative writing technique that can be adapted to all kinds of work, as well as to solving problems in your personal life.

The exercise is simple: set a timer for 10 minutes and just get started. All you have to do is make yourself work for those 10 minutes.

If it’s a writing project, you have to write for 10 minutes. It doesn’t have to be good, you just have to get it done. If you’re trying to get your work day started, make your 10 minutes about answering emails, or returning phone calls, or drafting a few lines of the next project you have coming up.

Again, it doesn’t have to be good work. You just have to make yourself do it for 10 minutes.

No looking at your phone, no open a new tab on your browser to check the latest news or Twitter. Exclusively work.

Once the 10 minutes are up, you’re free to do whatever you want. But here’s the beauty of this exercise: once time is up, you’re going to be on such a roll you won’t want to stop what you’re doing. You’ll just keep going.

10 minutes are all it takes to get warm up your engines for the day, and from then all, it’s all momentum. The 10 minutes exercise is great because it isn’t daunting. It’s not asking you to have a productive day from morning to evening, all it’s asking is that you sit your butt on a chair and get something done for 10 quick minutes.

“I can do 10 minutes,” you’ll think. And before you’ll know it, it will have been an hour. Trust me.

This exercise wasn’t my idea. I first learned about it in a creative writing class, and I’ve seen it replicated and talked about in all sorts of places. It’s tricky to tell who first came up with it. My guess? A frustrated writer who couldn’t figure out how to fill a blank page until she realized all she had to do is get started.

That’s all you have to do as well, get started.

The pomodoro technique is a very popular productivity strategy.