Another frequently-useful technique for dealing with procrastination is the “How do you eat an elephant?” method. The answer is simple: One bite at a time.

It’s pretty straightforward. If the reason you’re procrastinating is that the problem seems overwhelmingly large or complicated, cut the problem into smaller pieces. If those are still too big, no problem — slice each piece into smaller pieces. Keep doing that until it’s easier to do the pieces than to keep cutting them. (This is also known as the “salami technique.”)

I have twice had friends who needed to clear out or reorganize a room that was overstuffed with things, but the task seemed overwhelming.

“Can you work on it for 30 minutes?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Okay, ten minutes? Just one box, or just five pieces of paper?”

“Maybe.”

“One minute?”

“Well, yes, of course.”

Okay. Do that. At the end of the minute, you can do one more minute, or you can declare victory for today and save the next minute of cleanup for tomorrow. Make sure you stop before it gets to be a chore. And every minute that you make any progress is one bite of the elephant. Some links about procrastination:

https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/3-tricks-to-start-working-despite-not-feeling-like-it

https://time.com/3663897/4-steps-stop-procrastination/

https://time.com/4232649/awesome-life/

https://www.martynemko.com/articles/light-your-fire-matchbox-ways-get-motivated_id1596 (and several other articles at martynemko.com)

As a practically professional procrastinator, I’ve learned some techniques for dealing with this.

One of the main reasons I procrastinate some things is because I’m not sure how to deal with them. For example, filling out an insurance form where I had a special case that wasn’t covered by the usual paperwork.

I finally decided that whoever gets the paperwork would be an expert and would know better than I did how to handle the situation. So I filled out the parts I could, included a note about my special situation, and sent it off. A few days later they called me, we discussed it, and I only needed to fax over a page of other documentation. Problem solved! (Except for finding a way to fax it… apparently faxes would be handled immediately but an emailed scan of the document would take at least a week. Didn’t make sense but whatever.)

I call this the “Other Person’s Problem” procrastination technique.The internet has a ton of stuff on procrastination; apparently it’s a common problem. Here’s one link to analysing and dealing with it: https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/how-to-stop-procrastinating-by-using-the-fogg-behavior-model. I also used this as my 2020 New Years resolution: “Procrastinate later! What’s the rush?”