4 Simple Tricks I Use To Beat Procrastination At It's Game

I am the worst for putting things off.

Even easy things that I know won't take long and that I've probably done a thousand times before. Like last week when I was trying to write some landing page copy. I wasn't even writing from scratch, we had done this event multiple times before.

But still I procrastinated... for a week with no conceivable reason why.

When this kind of procrastination happens I know I need to go to my toolbox & put myself on autopilot. In this case, I use constraints to get something done in a really short period of time. So I set my constraints:

Choose a specific task. I write down exactly the task I am planning to do and gather everything I need to get it done. This means I can get into flow pretty quickly when I set the timer.

Pomodoro Timer. Talking about timers I love a Pomo timer. Watching that 25 minutes countdown fills me with fire and I just get in and focus. It's not too long a time that I get distracted either.

Binaural Beats. I put on my sound cancelling headphones and get in the flow with some focus frequency beats. If you have not tried binaural beats, it is the easiest way for me to get into some trance like state almost instantly.

And A Reward. I gave myself a 15 minute Twitter break if I could finish the landing page copy in 25 minutes. This also made me less likely to switch to Twitter while the Timer was going.

And can you guess the result? 20 minutes later I had completed the landing page copy and a sense of fulfilment that I hadn't had all week.

Don't let anyone tell you that constraints can't product creativity.