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Matthew Eaton's avatar

Go with your gut. Sometimes you just have no fire for the thing you are working on and no matter how many times you try, starting and stopping seems to be the name of the game today. Instead of continuing to force yourself, go do something else easy and simple. Go for a walk. Wash dishes without music or podcasts on. Sit on the couch for 15 minutes without stimulation. Often this is enough to reset the brain and can give you a chance to look at your situation from a different perspective as well as give you a new found spot of energy to do it.

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Gail Overstreet's avatar

A few approaches that help my easily distracted brain:

--Listening to "Binaural beats" ambient music while working (search YouTube). Helps with focus.

--Using a huge water bottle, filled the night before, with the *minimum I need to drink that day.

--Using the Bookmarks Toolbar in my browser to organize current/relevant items. Example: created a "Daily" folder for my morning routine. It contains direct links to movement, contemplation pages, and a couple more. Just click on the folder, then "open all in tabs"

--As artificial as it may seem - creating little "rewards". eg, the other day, I had to do something unpleasant that I was resisting - but I powered thru it because the "reward" was a movie I wanted to watch.

--Using podcasts as time-containers. Putting on wireless headphones, then aiming to scrub the bathroom, organize my office, etc *before the end of the podcast (typically an hour) . Makes time fly AND I learn something!

--Determining whether to approach a task "by time" or "by task". Sometimes, it's difficult to assess how much time something will take. So I allow a by-task approach: I'll buckle down until it's done.

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