Sometimes I'll look at an item on there and not even remember what I'm supposed to do. The other day, I noticed a note that said "Jenn conf." Um? I know six Jennifers, four of whom I might actually need to do something with or for. Did I have a conference? Did I need to confirm something? Finally, I remembered that I needed to send my hubby's cousin a confirmation card. Woohoo, my memory serves me again! Well, except that the card is still sitting on my desk, unwritten. I'll do it tomorrow. It's on the Stickies.
But if there's one thing that can cure my procrastination, it's a time crunch -- maybe because I've been working on crazy deadlines for the past 12 years. Which could explain my newfound obsession with this site, which I read about in Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Workweek (awesome book!) about three years ago and, um, have been meaning to check out ever since.
The site is http://e.ggtimer.com/, and it's nothing fancy -- you type in a time limit, it counts down and beeps when time's up. It's really loud. A few minutes ago, I did a demo for hubby. I set it for 30 seconds, started clicking around the web and managed to get so distracted that when the timer went off -- again, 30 whopping seconds later -- I jumped out of my chair.
But anyway. I've found two fun ways to use it:
1) to limit my FB stalking. I set it for 10 minutes, and when it beeps, I log off. Haha, just kidding. I reset it for another ten minutes. But just like the snooze button on my alarm clock, it eventually guilts me into getting up and doing something productive.
2) racing myself. I've been picking annoying tasks on my to-do list and saying, "Can I get this done in 5 minutes?" Some things I can do in five minutes: follow up on old invoices, check my wireless statement, make a pork roast.
Who knows what boring things I'll accomplish tomorrow!
I've been using this to write papers and it's been way better! It makes me conscious of the amount of time I'm spending on facebook instead of writing so that I'm not wondering why my paper is taking so long. I have to imagine that college must have been way more productive before facebook. Unless you people entertained yourselves with Fresh Prince of Bel Air and/or scrunchies?
ReplyDeleteHaha...I'm just seeing this now. I didn't go to college in 1990! Sheesh! But college was the first place I ever used the internet, so that was bad timing. Procrastination was a mix of Napster, AOL Instant Messenger, and pasting animated GIFs into a "web page." Bouncing moose graphic? Yes please!
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