Personal Development For Distracted People

  It's a job that never started that takes the longest to finish is an old saying. It's a very true one. I have considerable empirical evidence to back it up. In fact, I was just pondering just how much time I spend not starting things. It's a daily habit for me. The first thing I do when I sit down at my desk in my office every morning is have a cup of tea and catch up with the news. Basically, I delay getting started on a daily basis. So this is a habit I'm going to? end. I've already started. From now on, I only have two choices when I sit down hard work at the beginning of the day. I'll leave a write a blog post like this one – following my 10 minutes and it's done rule. Or I will tackle the most important job on my list. Again, I'll follow the 10 minute rule on it. So from now on and for the rest of my working lifethe first thing I will do every morning will be either write a blog post or work on my most top job.

  A lot of people, including me for many years, live in their inbox. What turns up in it determines the priorities for the day. The length of it indicates the backlog. Replying to and sending emails forms a big part of the day.

  Can I complete a blog post from scratch on my phone without making a noise in 10 minutes! And it looks like the answer is no. It took so long getting the pic uploaded I have no time to write anything meaningful using the phone keyboard. Postscript - I then spent another 10 minutes sorting this rather low value post out because I'd saved it to the wrong blog on my phone. I'd have given up, but scientists always say you should publish negative results.

  I've been getting a lot of satisfaction from writing blog posts, and some other bits of writing, in 10 minutes flat. But can I apply the same strategy to finishing old jobs off? I have loads of things I've started and parked until I have time to finish them off properly. What if I could get them done in 10 minutes? With what I have learned from writing new pieces in 10 minutes I think the trick is to focus on first getting the job in a state where finishing it is possible, and then giving it total concentration until its done. But I need a get out clause here. Some things simply can't be done in ten minutes. So one acceptable outcome is - this is going to take longer than it is worth. Drop it now forever. Another is, this is worth spending more time on. In either case I need to get to the stage of actually dropping it - i.e., delete previous work and forget forever. Or I need to leave it so I can get closer to a ten minute finish than before.