Overcome procrastination with the three-minute rule

Do you often find yourself putting off tasks you'd rather not do? Psychologist Dr Jennifer Wild suggests using what she calls the 'three-minute rule' to help you tackle the problem

The basic premise is this: if you find yourself putting off a task, just do the task for three minutes. The thinking is, that by committing to the task for a much smaller, and more manageable, period of time will make you more amenable to doing the task.

Then, once you've started, most people will continue doing the task for much longer than three minutes or even keep going until its finished.

For example, if you're putting off going for a run you might find it easier to commit to a three-minute run. Then, once you've been running for three minutes you're much more likely to keep going than stop after such a brief time.

It's the anticipation of the unwanted task that drives procrastination, so if you can change that anticipation you might find getting stuff done a little easier.

What methods do you have for overcoming procrastination?

2 comments

Since I retired I have found that procrastination is a problem. When I had weekends to do things there was a limited time and if some things weren't done, such as lawn mowing, another week made a lot of difference to the size of the job. Now another day doesn't seem too bad but adding another day and another day and another day and suddenly the job is quite large. My method now is to write any jobs down and mark next to each a priority with an anticipated schedule. If weather intervenes for outside jobs then I move an inside job up the list. It works for me.

Procrastination has been my friend over the years in fraught situations.

I use the 3-day strategy:

#1 Absorb
#2 Check & evaluate
#3 Decide

In relatively unimportant situations, I just do it as it occurs.

2 comments



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