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by sockopen 3640 days ago
Personally, I break things down into the tiniest possible steps and then feel guilty for being too lazy to do that and usually end up doing it.

Example with doing the dishes: - Stand up. - Walk towards sink. - etc...

I usually cannot justify being too lazy to stand up... or walk towards a sink... etc... if I leave it as one "large" task, I have a hundred excuses.

4 comments

Try the two-minute rule!

If the task will take you less than two minute to complete, just shut up and go do it.

I've used it to really lockdown my chore times.

Holy shit, you can stand up! When I lie down on the couch, I have a tough time being motivated to get up. Even to go to bed. I've fallen asleep on the couch so many times.
This works for me in some kinds of tasks. Sometimes when I don't feel like changing the plastic bags in the bathroom tray [1], thinking "ok, let me just remove this bag. I can put a new one (2nd half of the task) later." puts me in motion and I usually do the complete (rather stupid) task easily.

[1] Its a brazilian thing, we can't throw our shit paper in the toilet.

> [1] Its a brazilian thing, we can't throw our shit paper in the toilet.

Why ? Is it cultural or technical ?

I've found it in quite a few countries. AFAIK it's a technical thing, the toilet paper can cause problems with pipes and/or water processing.
GTD has a lot of useful advice like this (have a concrete next step for each task), even if you don't follow the system comprehensively.