How to Make Getting Started Ridiculously Easy
We all have tasks that we never get around to doing. This simple trick will beat the biggest hurdle: getting started.
Research shows that progress—no matter how small—can be a huge motivator to help us keep going.
A simple hack is to make getting started ridiculously easy.
Your goal is to just get started. Often starting a task is the biggest hurdle.
My favorite trick for getting into a task I'm dreading is to start with the mindset.
I start by just thinking about the task for a while until I'm drawn in and can’t help working on it.
If it’s a writing task, I might pull up the draft I need to edit and just sit and read over it.
Soon I’ll find myself changing a word here and there, or fixing typos.
Then I’ll think of a whole sentence I want to add.
And suddenly I’m well into the task, without really pushing myself to do so.
If it helps, use a timer.
Set it for just 5 or 10 minutes and while the timer is running you don’t have to work, but you can’t do anything else.
You have to sit with your work, even if you don’t get started.
Personally, I’d rather work than do nothing at all, so I wouldn’t even last five minutes before this trick made me get started.