If you subscribe to my newsletter(which you absolutely should subscribe to), I mentioned how swamped I had been with work the last couple of weeks. I also mentioned that all I thought I knew about productivity etc went down the drain. The key to finding the balance with my entirely jumbled up schedule had been procrastination.
Procrastination is the real demon.
Merlin Mann has a procrastination antidote called the (10+2)*5 and it’s working for me. It’s not as complex as it looks or sounds but here is what it means:
Work for ten minutes with single-minded focus on moving toward completion on a single task. 10 minutes!
After ten minutes of concentrated, fully focused work, take a two minutes break. You can drink some coffee, crack a dry joke, check your Snapchat, return that call etc. When the two minutes is over, get back to working on the next task on your list(or you could continue the previous task).
Do this five times.
Here are the extra methods around this that I also follow:
- If you finish a task before the 10 minutes is over, just go ahead with the 2 minutes break then get back to your 10 minutes rep.
- Don’t skip breaks!!
- Do not cheat on your breaks. Just take the breaks
Like I have stressed in earlier posts, HighLifer articles and tips detail principles that work for me. This works for me. I make a few variations here and there as my procrastination levels drop(and inner motivation increases).
I fight this demon every day. I’m certainly going to try this one out.
Nice work, keep it up.