Procrastination - Avoiding Distractions with Pinteresque Pauses

Like a lot of people I have a problem with procrastination.  I have always had it and I have a feeling I'll never completely overcome it.  But it does vary, and I have gone through about 2 years where it has been a really major problem.  So I am trying to do something about it.  I have read quite a bit about it over the last month.  (I meant to do it the month before.)  I have tried out a few suggestions, and I have come up with something that seems to be working at the moment.


I am not sure exactly where this comes from, I think it is a combination of some ideas from Zen Habits and some insight from David Rock.

So the specific problem is that I am easily distracted.  I am particularly easily distracted by the Internet, but an e-mail message appearing on my phone will do it too.  So will remembering a note I was working on a few pages back in the book I am working in.  Even a slight movement at the window is enough.  Oh look!  A squirrel!  Sorry back to the post.

It isn't so bad except that a distraction can lead to a diversion and an hour can vanish in entertaining wandering around the sea of human knowledge without a compass or a destination.

I have tried to train my will power, but it remains resolutely untrainable.  So instead I am trying to avoid distraction not by ignoring it or resisting it, but by acknowledging it and then delaying acting on it.  So when I think, I really should see if anything has happened on the news rather than rushing off to the newspaper online I stop what I am working on and pause.  I think of it as a Pinteresque pause.  (Alan Pinter is a playwright famous for using silence to dramatic effect if you are wondering where I got the name.)   Once I have given the pause long enough to have dramatic effect, I ask myself if I really want to give in to the distraction. I have permission to give in if I want to, but after a 5-10 second pause I find that mostly I don't want to.

I have only deployed this technique in the afternoons at work so far.  I have had a huge problem with time in the afternoon when my energy levels are low and have sometimes lost literally 2 hour solid blocks of time to fiddling about.  I have clawed back at least an hour and probably more on each of the four days I have used this technique.  If it retains its potency I will extend it to other areas of my life.