Chapter 13
Beating the Clock
Several years ago I decided to write a book on a subject I was passionate about: social anxiety for teens. I’d never written a book before, and when I researched how to get published I found out that to get a book contract I’d need to write a book proposal. But every time I sat down to write one, I felt overwhelmed. I changed it this way and that. I’d put it aside for a week and then come back to it. It took me a full year to write that proposal.
Happily, it caught the interest of a publisher and I got a book contract, complete with a series of deadlines for producing the manuscript. Every time I sat down to write, I felt all the familiar anxieties about getting it right, but thinking about the approaching deadline inspired me to let it flow. I ended up writing the entire book in the same amount of time it took to write the proposal!
As most of us have experienced, a ticking clock in the background can inspire us and help us focus. When your back is to the wall and you have nothing more to lose, you can sometimes do amazing things. It is evidence of the human spirit and when it happens, it certainly makes a great story. In fact, it’s a central theme of the story of many procrastinators: It’s the only way I can get things done.
Unfortunately, last-minute heroics have a downside. There is the long period of mounting worry and guilt that leads up to the deadline, time that could have been devoted to doing a better job than can be managed in the final hours when you are rushed, sleep deprived, and ill prepared. If only you could eliminate that painful escalation of the pressure. If only some of that last-minute inspiration that a deadline provides could be tapped into sooner, before the ax is about to fall.
It can. There is no reason you cannot create your own pressure-filled deadlines to help you focus on your doables. In fact, this is an essential tool for the procrastinator. I call it Beat the Clock. It’s named after an old TV show where contestants were challenged to perform tasks while time was counted down on a large sixty-second clock. The show repeatedly demonstrated that any task can be made more motivating, as well as more entertaining, with an arbitrary time limit.
Create your own pressure-filled deadlines to help you focus.
Beat the Clock has two simple components: a firm start time and a firm end time. These are decided on in advance so that while you’re working on the task you don’t have to think at all about how long to spend on it. All your attention can be focused on what you’re doing, and what you’re feeling while you’re doing it. No matter how frustrating, irritating, or boring the task is to you, you know there’ll be an end to it.
Let’s look at how Tyler’s attitude about mowing the lawn changed when he turned it into a Beat the Clock challenge. Tyler hated to the mow the lawn, but his freedom was tied to the task. He would lose his car privileges if he did not do his chores. He estimated that the task could be done in as little as thirty minutes. So one Saturday morning after breakfast he pulled out the mower and set the timer on his phone for thirty minutes. Once the seconds started flashing away on the screen, Tyler felt himself rising to the challenge. He finished in twenty-eight minutes and twelve seconds. The next time the grass needed cutting, Tyler had a personal best to beat!
Here’s why this worked: before Tyler attached his own personal goal to the task, mowing the lawn felt like a way for someone else—his father—to control him. It was his father’s idea of what needed to be done, not his. Now, instead of simply following his father’s orders, Tyler was playing his own game. By allotting only thirty minutes to the task, he was mastering it rather than letting it master him. As a bonus, he was also clearing more free time for activities that were important to him.
Now let’s look at what Beat the Clock can do for perfectionists. As you will recall, Jordan had a Shakespeare paper to write, which he had divided into doables. The first on the list was to choose a character for a point of view. Choosing anything presented challenges for Jordan, and this choice was no exception. Which character would be best? Could it be a minor character or must it be a central one? A woman or a man? There were so many variables. Jordan could go in circles indefinitely with a decision like this, putting off his decision until a day or two before the paper was due.
For perfectionists, who think they shouldn’t start on anything unless they know they will do it correctly, or for anyone having difficulty get started, it’s best to begin with a short work session. It helps take the emphasis off the outcome, tricking the mind into lowering its expectations. For Jordan, I suggested a special variation of the Beat the Clock tool that I call the Five-Minute Jump-Start. I set the timer on my watch for five minutes and asked him, “Okay, how about you choose that character right now?”
“Now?” Jordan asked, shifting in his chair uncomfortably. “I don’t feel all that clearheaded today. I was up late last night.”
1. Set the timer for five minutes.
2. Do as much as you can in that time, not paying any attention to the quality of your work.
3. Pat yourself on the back for getting started!
I knew, of course, that Jordan was avoiding the task. He would never feel clearheaded enough for the job. We took a few minutes to review his root belief: I am willing to make mistakes. We reviewed how he would ride the wave of whatever feelings came up. I reminded him, “It’s just five minutes.”
Jordan sighed and shrugged. “I think I can manage that,” he said.
After five minutes, the timer went off and Jordan looked up from his book. “Okay, I’ve decided,” he said, looking a little shaky. Naturally, he wasn’t certain his choice was a good one. But now that he was acting as if he was willing to make mistakes, he felt okay about it. He was surprised how good it felt to get even this small thing done. For the perfectionist, Beat the Clock not only helps you get started, but it also keeps you from second-guessing everything you do.
The Five-Minute Jump-Start works great for starting all kinds of tasks—reading a book, planning a trip, even for the biggest most important challenges, like researching and choosing a college. The most fuel is burned getting a plane off the ground. Once you are airborne with a task, you’ll have momentum, and your destination will feel more doable.
Warriors and rebels can also benefit from Beat the Clock time limits. Emily’s room cleaning doable list was a perfect candidate for this tool. Rather than leaving her doables open-ended, she set a ten-minute limit for each one. If she didn’t finish within ten minutes, she took a half-hour break before resuming the task, once again with a ten-minute time limit.
Because chores themselves weren’t motivating for Emily, her motivation became the expectation of the free time awaiting her after the ten minutes of task time was up. With her doable completed, she could enjoy the things—gaming, chatting, or other distractions—guilt free, without being haunted by feelings of shame when she remembered her messy room. Emily was still bored and irritated with her room-cleaning doables, but never for more than ten minutes at a time. Like most of my clients who procrastinate, Emily could almost always ride the wave for ten minutes. And the more ten-minute sessions she racked up, the easier it became.
Sometimes when you play variations of Beat the Clock, you’ll find yourself getting absorbed in the task. When you set a timer and create an external framework, you are less easily distracted, and more likely to become focused and motivated. If you find yourself wanting to work longer on a task than you planned, good! But I encourage you to continue to honor the time limit you’ve set, at least for a while. Stop and acknowledge what you’ve accomplished. This is not to assess the volume or quality of your work, but simply to acknowledge the fact that you applied yourself for the period of time you committed yourself to. This is a victory, an experience that will blaze new neurological pathways in your brain, pathways that support your new beliefs—I am willing to make mistakes, I don’t have to feel motivated, I don’t need to be in control.
By sticking with your Beat the Clock time limit, you will also be preventing burnout. If you keep working until you are done, even if you feel motivated, you can become physically, mentally, and emotionally depleted. It can color your experience, making the next doable more imposing. It can also reaffirm the idea we must never stop working unless everything is done, which can turn any task into drudgery.
The more you play Beat the Clock, the more natural it will feel to use it as an antiprocrastination tool. If you have a smartphone that accepts voice commands, you’ll find it’s a snap to pull it out and say, “Set my timer for ten minutes.”
Your smartphone won’t only help you beat the clock, but it can help you beat the calendar, too. Read on and find out another great way to put today’s technology to work for you!