Have a Do What You Avoid Party for 10 Minutes
What is that one annoying item that rolls around on your to-do list from week to week? Fixing a seam on your favorite shirt? Clear the table? Sending mail in a month?
You can probably do this in just 10 minutes. And if you have a buddy to work with, you may finally stop avoiding the task.
This tip comes from OkieSpaceQueen on Twitter, who shared the productivity power of a 10-minute session spent on just one task that you avoid.
As seen in Twitter posts, Lifehacker Health Magazine Senior Editor Beth Skorecki was impressed. But I live alone and I was skeptical. At first I thought that burglary depends on the fact that someone lives in the same house with you and solves problems separately, but together, under the double pressure of time and cohabitation. “It makes me want a roommate for about … 10 minutes,” I remarked. “Then they can go.”
But Beth suggested a 10-minute timer session via text message, and before we knew about it, Beth, Va, and I set the time on the Lifehacker calendar to check it out.
At the end of the hour, we greeted Slack, set timers on our smartphones, and got to work. I put the duvet cover back on top of the duvet on my queen bed – not a big deal, but I put it off for years if you will. Virginia wrote a letter that she avoided. And Beth won the Most Productive Work award for cleaning her whole damn desk.
Beth did ask for more time after 10 minutes had elapsed so that she could clean up a few things and finish the assignment. And that’s probably the biggest benefit of a 10-minute assignment, if you think about it. Once you see how much you can do in 10 minutes, you start doing other things that you can do in just a couple of moments.
I avoid the duvet cover because of my assumption that the fight takes 20 minutes, when in fact it took me only seven. I looked around my bedroom, shrugged, and began removing clean linen from the basket to put it away. I didn’t have time to do everything in the remaining minutes, but I did a dent in a pile.
It’s so foolish to think that we need to network in this way, if not with those who live in our own homes, for small tasks. But if you’re struggling with tasks that have grown in the time you think it will take to complete them, start with 10 minutes and see how far you go. You can probably cross a task off your list once and for all.