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Program D-7313
Someone has said that “Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.” Well, here’s a good way to approach a hard job:
Break your job up into small pieces. I’m amazed at how many people have never learned this little trick, because it works so well. If you do one little piece today, and one tomorrow, and one the next day, before you know it, it’s done.
Some years ago when I had my house up for sale, I realized that I had to clean up that basement because people were going to be coming through and looking at it. So finally I set a schedule in my head that I would do one hour a night until it was done. Once I started, I finished in one night. It was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. And of course, I felt very good about myself once it was done.
When I think about the hours I sat on the sofa saying, “I’ve got to clean that basement soon,” dreading it, imagining it to be much worse than it was, I realize again how procrastination robs you of time, energy, and clear thinking. The longer you procrastinate, the worse the job seems. If you will learn to break the job into small pieces, it will be a giant step forward in getting rid of this bad habit of putting things off.
Here’s another really good way to address what looks like a hard thing or a big thing: Start a job in the middle. Many of us procrastinate because we don’t know how to start. You don’t have to start every job at the beginning and work to the end. I’ve learned that once you get started, it begins to happen. I think this is particularly helpful with mental jobs, like writing or planning or analyzing.
Remember that your beginning doesn’t have to be perfect—you can go back and improve it later; nor do you have to approach a job from the top to the bottom. Use gimmicks like this to simply get you started, because getting started is often what causes us to procrastinate.