The “It or Nothing” Productivity Hack
When you tell yourself you have to do a task, every other option in the world is available for procrastination.
Most days it won‘t matter as you‘ll hunker down and get the work done.
But on a bad day, you‘re likely to hop around through whatever your favorite procrastination vices are.
This simple hack eliminates that.
It‘s very simple.
Here‘s how it works:
You choose a task that you are supposed to do and give yourself two options: you can do the task, or you can stare at the task and do nothing.
Doing nothing creates an alternative, but a very boring one that has no stimulation.
There‘s a very common progression that people often follow.
The first few days they don‘t actually do much but eventually, everyone always gets bored and ends up just doing the work.
Give it a try.
Set aside a certain amount of time each day, choose a really important task, and then dedicate that time to doing the task or doing nothing.
If you end up doing nothing, don‘t feel bad.
After all, it‘s one of the permitted activities.
Even if you spend a whole month doing nothing, that‘s fine.
I doubt it will happen, though.
In every case, I‘ve seen people end up doing more work than they would have otherwise, even if they do have a few days of nothing.