365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success

—Raymond Chandler

 

118

If you’re struggling to get to work, give yourself two options: for the

next several hours you can work or do nothing.

Entertaining  yourself  with  your  smartphone,  social  media,  Internet,

talking, listening to music or anything else that serves as a distraction isn’t

allowed.  You  can  walk  around  the  room,  sit,  look  out  of  the  window,  or

stare at the monitor, but you can’t do anything more exciting than that.

This technique gives you a license to goof off, but since you can’t do

anything remotely interesting, sooner or later you’ll probably get to work.

And that’s the purpose of this trick: you aren’t forcing yourself to work, and

hence,  there’s  no  resistance  that  you  need  to  overcome.  If  you  spend  an

hour bored out of your mind, even the most despised task you need to do

will be a relief.

---