How to Stop Procrastinating: a simple Guide to Mastering Difficult Tasks and Breaking the Procrastination Habit

Practice #6: Complete Quick Tasks Immediately
Have you ever procrastinated on a task that doesn’t require much effort,
like cleaning the dishes after a meal, making a phone call, looking up a
phone number, or sending an email? You know it doesn’t take much
effort to complete. Yet you keep putting it off because you’re too busy or
you think you don’t have time to do it.
This often happens because we fail to complete those small, seemingly
unimportant tasks. By ignoring the activities that can be easily resolved,
we build them up in our mind as being tougher than they actually are. On
the other hand, if you learn to take immediate actions on small tasks,
then you’ll prevent them from piling up. There are two strategies that can
help you do this.
First, there is the Two-Minute Rule that David Allen recommends in
Getting Things Done. If you know a task takes only a few minutes, then
do it right away instead of writing it down on your to-do list or swearing
that you’ll do it later.
Whenever you think of something that needs done, ask yourself: “How
long will this take?”
If it’s only a minute or two, then do it right away instead of putting it off.

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You’ll find that doing this consistently will remove much of the negativity
that happens when you have a lengthy list of tasks to complete.
On the other hand, if a task requires more than a few minutes of effort,
then put it on your calendar and schedule time when you can take care of
it.
The second strategy, closely related to the Two-Minute Rule, is to “single-
handle” every task. Think of all the times you’ve opened an email,
realized it required an action that you don’t have time to complete, so you
put it off until later. Then when “later” comes, you open the same
message, read it again, and then remember that the email requires a
follow-up action.
Single-handling can remove the stress created by the small tasks you
procrastinate on because it forces you to complete any task that you start.
The idea here is whenever you begin something, you need to see it to its
conclusion.
Here are a few examples:
Responding to an email when you open it or scheduling the specific
action that’s need to “process” the message.
Rinsing a dish and putting it in the dishwasher after a meal instead
of putting it in the sink.
Discarding junk mail into a recycling bin right when you receive it.
Putting away your clothes after wearing them instead of tossing
them on a chair.
Returning phone calls immediately whenever you receive a voice
mail.
It’s easy to procrastinate when you feel overwhelmed by your daily tasks,
but if you take an extra minute or two to complete a simple action, you’ll
find that it’s easy to eliminate some of the stress that comes from having
a huge list of small tasks.