That’s all.
Got a goal you’re having trouble achieving?
See if a timer will help you.
Procrastination.
It’s hard work to write a novel, keep a house clean, make a painting. We don’t like to get started because it commits us to a long process. But most of us can face five minutes of anything.
So, start small.
Write for five minutes. Dust for five minutes. Paint for…well, ok, painting might need larger chunks of time. There’s a lot of prep and a lot of clean-up. But the principle is the same.
If you set a timer, you have an exit strategy. You can begin already knowing that you don’t have to continue for the rest of your life. No matter how horrible the task becomes, there is an end point.
I love timers.
Quite often, when they go off, I am interested and immersed in what I am doing, and I continue on beyond the beep, beep, beep. But I don’t have to, and that can make all the difference between getting started on something or spending another half day on Facebook. (Now, there’s another use for a timer. Use it to limit those time-wasting activities!)
It doesn’t really matter what interval you use in setting the timer. If you can face thirty minutes of housework, go for it. The point is just to go into any task for which you are experiencing reluctance with an escape hatch.
Maybe, when the timer goes off, you’ll want to continue. Maybe not. Either way, you’re some number of minutes closer to your goal.
You can get timers in any dollar store, Radio Shack, grocery store. It’s nice to have several actual physical timers that you can keep in strategic areas of the house and move around as necessary.
Until you lay in a supply, however, you can use this one:
Go ahead.
Start that novel.
Just five minutes.
