Study Prof

Procrastination; the Big Bad Wolf in our fairy tale life. The Godzilla in our own personal Tokyo. Put off that slavering, monstrous task and it only gets bigger and badder. As the behemoth bloats so does your anxiety, your shame, and your desire to find a hole to hide in … anything to avoid the red-eyed, demon task. That means yet more procrastination, and soon you find yourself quivering under the bed in the fetal position. Not good times.

What you need, my friend, is an erstwhile hero who can slay the beast, or at least kick it in the shins and give it a wedgie. Enter our hero, the mini-goal. Here’s how it works. Set yourself a laughably small David of a goal that will at least hurl a wee pebble at that Goliath of a task looming over you. Your mini-goal should be an easy first step, something that takes ten minutes or less to accomplish. It should be something you can’t possibly fail at. Example: The evil twenty-page research paper is huffing and puffing at your door. Hours of library research followed by days of writing and rewriting hangs over you like the claw of Mothra. Mini-goal to the rescue. “I’ll look up one likely research source at the library. I mean, how hard is it to lay my hands on one measly source in the next ten minutes?” You’ll soon find yourself out of the fetal position and browsing the library shelves. In short, NOT procrastinating.

Where do Mini-Goal’s Super Powers Come From?

A mini-goal takes the behemoth task and chips off a tiny tasklet. That makes it easy to get started, and getting started means you’re no longer procrastinating. Further more, poking that yellow-fanged task in the eye with a mini-goal makes you realize it can be defeated starting you on the road to kicking it’s gargantuan booty back to the pit from whence it came.

Mini-Goals Come in Three Different Flavors

• Timed Mini-Goals – Bust out that rarely-used timer feature on your cell phone or digital watch and set a simple time limit. I do this with my kids around the house. Instead of taking on the massive, hairy task of cleaning the whole house, we do a ten-minute cleaning sprint. Everyone jumps right in and cleans like gang-busters for ten minutes. Short. Simple. Easily doable. I do it Please log in or sign up to read the rest of this content. Find out more.
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