[ghaff]

Both those ideas appear is some form in David Allen's GTD (Getting Things Done). I'm not a particularly big fan overall--I don't much care for systems. But some of his individual ideas include:

- the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists.

- breaking down complex projects into discrete small concrete tasks.

Both are good ideas which do help me.

One thing about procrastination that often seems to be overlooked though is procrastinating about things that really do need to get done sooner or later (If I don't do the expense report, no one else is going to do it for me.) versus procrastinating about doing some project or making some plans because there's a voice questioning whether you really need to or want to do this project at all.

Now, I suppose in the latter case, a hyper-organized person would create an action item to "get more information" or something along those lines. But sometimes letting ideas just sit and percolate in a future projects queue works OK too.

[dazc]

- the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists.

This seems so obvious now I've read it. When I think of how many small tasks I've never got around to doing it's embarrassing.

[hboon]

> the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists.

A small, but important part of GTD: there is a concept of a "capture system". As soon as there's something that's a TODO or task to be done and you are working on something, put it into your capture system, be it a text file, a TODO app, etc. Process the capture system regularly, filing the items into projects (can be as simple as separate TODO lists). So here's the key difference to what you mentioned: only now while you are filing, do you do those tasks that take 5 (or 2) minutes or less.

As a developer who works on my laptop most of the time, I have a global keyboard shortcut that brings up a prompt with textbox that lets me quickly something (appended to a text file) and go back to work without disrupting my flow.

[marai2]

Though I've had the GTD book sitting in my bookshelf (unread) for a few years, I finally read about GTD on a blog just yesterday :-) And that was the one of the things I tried out yesterday. If a task takes around 2 minutes, just do it. And suddenly I felt like I had a productive day. I got many such small tasks done that were just sitting there in the back of my mind causing cognitive load.

[mryan]

The idea of a book that could solve your procrastination problems sitting unread on a shelf is an amusing irony. And I say this as someone who has multiple procrastination books on my shelves. :-)

[agumonkey]

often, no matter how stupidly simple a task is, I'll goo full meta and reflect on how to do it properly, the solve all these problem on paper by reflecting on how to do them properly, hey, time to take cook dinner and the garbage out !

[tonmoy]

Pondering about the task isn't really procrastination. In fact some of the most productive people I have seen in my life do exactly that.

[ghaff]

Yes, but there's a fine line between pondering a task or doing "research" and procrastination. I do a lot of writing of various sorts and an editor of mine had the saying that "writing is discovery." By which he meant that, to a significant degree, you have to just get into some tasks before you can know how to complete them.

[agumonkey]

I feel this way when doing sports. Often the desire isn't there, the sensations only come back after 15 minutes in.

[agumonkey]

I understand and agree, but when nothing ever progresses, not even your understanding, it's not good. A `while true {}` in disguise