LimbicNutrition Weblog

From 43 Folders comes a superb Procrastination hack: (10+2)*5

Itís called ì(10+2)*5î and hereís why:

* 10 - Work for ten minutes with single-minded focus on moving toward completion on a single task. Ten minutes, and thatís all youíre allowed to do is work, work, work. No cheating, because (DING!) you actually get a break when youíre doneÖ
* 2 - After ten minutes of sweaty, dedicated work you get a 2-minute break to do whatever you wantódrink coffee, read 5ives, call your bookie, whatever. When the two minutes are up, itís back to work on the next task on your list. This is important.
* *5 - Youíre going to iterate this four more times for a total of one hourís working/breaking

It really works brilliantly.

I use spb Time on my iPaq sitting in its cradle as my timer. It has 5 times so you can set you 10 minute, 2 minute and 1 hour timers to run together and still have two spares.

I found that using timers and chunking generally are the best productivity hacks for the easily distracted.

You might also try Temptation Blocker software which is ingenious.