The effective way to kick your own ass (tm)

[karanguni]

I am exhausted to the point of wanting to break things; work was fantastically bad today, and boss comes back tomorrow with what will likely be a cannister of whoop-ass, so I am going to stay up late tonight doing a Hundred Thousand Productive Things, but first

Comments

[aikonamika]

Since I'm rather badly ADD (even with the help of meds), I have a few routines. Clearing my desk/workspace of all distractions helps, as well as making sure to close out of internet browsers plus whatever else I might have open on my computer at the time other than what I need to work on, if it's a writing thing. Basically, eliminate whatever distractions I can. I've also got a few medidation routines that help me calm my mind down and shut it up a little bit.

Then I take a timer of some sort - usually an alarm clock, though just having a clock in a place where I can watch helps to, and I get to work for a certain amount of time. Usually half an hour to forty-five minutes. When that time is over, I give myself permission to take a break and go do something short and entertaining, for about fifteen minutes to half an hour. Then I get back to work, and repeat that pattern. Of course, if I'm in a groove, I'll just keep going with whatever it is until I fall out of said groove, and then I take my break and get back to work.

I also try to set short-term interim goals to make things seem a lot more achievable. Okay, maybe I have to write a twenty-page paper in one day (because I apparently procrastinated until that's all the time I had left). That's a huge, overwhelming task. Instead, I'll look on it this way: I have one hour to write two pages. Now that's not hard at all, at least not for me. I can usually do three to four pages in an hour, depending on the quality, but two's enough to ask for now. And those little collections of two pages can build up very quickly, until I'm looking in surprise at the fact that I have a twenty-page paper in less than ten hours.

That sort of pattern works for other projects too. I determine a very small step that's necessary, and focus just on that, and once it's done, determine the next small step. It keeps me from panicking, which I tend to do far too often. ^^;;

[karanguni]

Small goals are hugely useful! 8D I do that too when it comes to crunch time for huge projects that require concentration. It's as though if you step back and looked at how much you have to do you'd end up screaming, so you break it all down and snipe it off bit by bit... :D