The Pomodoro Technique. This is how I get most anything done.
The deal is to break activity into discrete segments, 25 minutes of ‘work’, 10 minutes of downtime.
It helps cut the anxiety because instead of sitting there overthinking for hours about what is upcoming, your timer schedule leads to other things getting done.
You can even set a cycle where your ‘work’ is worrying about something upcoming but there is a HARD stop at 25 mins then you have to go do something unrelated.
At first it was easy to miss the end of a cycle and just fall back into old patterns, then I got a physical old-school egg timer and have been training myself that on the bell ding, which is very different than any of my phone notifications (it is important to me that the sound is unique) and it acts as a helpful ‘thought terminating cliche’ for whatever I am hyperfocused on at the time.
To be clear, not all of my day is structured in Pomodoro cycles, just the parts where I need to be productive.
It may not be perfect, may not work for you, but has worked for me very well.
The Pomodoro Technique. This is how I get most anything done.
The deal is to break activity into discrete segments, 25 minutes of ‘work’, 10 minutes of downtime.
It helps cut the anxiety because instead of sitting there overthinking for hours about what is upcoming, your timer schedule leads to other things getting done.
You can even set a cycle where your ‘work’ is worrying about something upcoming but there is a HARD stop at 25 mins then you have to go do something unrelated.
At first it was easy to miss the end of a cycle and just fall back into old patterns, then I got a physical old-school egg timer and have been training myself that on the bell ding, which is very different than any of my phone notifications (it is important to me that the sound is unique) and it acts as a helpful ‘thought terminating cliche’ for whatever I am hyperfocused on at the time.
To be clear, not all of my day is structured in Pomodoro cycles, just the parts where I need to be productive.
It may not be perfect, may not work for you, but has worked for me very well.