How I Plan to Handle Procrastination in 2023

Oh and welcome back to Substack

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I get a ton of stuff done, but I’m hard on myself for the things that fall by the wayside. I bet you’re the same! Maybe I should go a bit easy given how much I actually get done? Maybe you should cut yourself some slack too?

I do have an idea about how I’m going to procrastinate less in 2023 though, and I thought I’d share it.

The first rule is not to use a ToDo list, and I’ve talked about this before. I use one for processing, as an inbox, but not as a “what I’m going to get done today” box. I’ll use it for gathering stuff to process. To process the list, I’ll put the task in my calendar.

What if the task is big and won’t easily fit into a day? That doesn’t work so well. What if it comes with a deadline? Like the talk I’m giving next week at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge next week?

I know prep for a talk takes multiple sessions. So the way I’ll be handling this is adding an all day entry that gives a countdown for every week ahead I need to prep. I nearly always live in a fortnight view of my calendar, so it will always be prominent.

That prominence will prompt me to write a timed calendar entry at a suitable point, as many times as it takes to get things done.

It’s nice to be back, and you might have noticed I’ve switched back to Substack because Twitter is shutting down Revue.

If you fancy seeing me talk about the old days at the Centre for Computing History next week, feel free to drop by!