Procrastinating through work

I need to do two big, hairy, scary work tasks. One is important and scary (unknown outcome), the other is hard (unknown input quantity, unknown outcome).

Instead I have been working all morning finishing off the less important, less scary tasks from the todo list.

I am procrastinating—escaping work by working on other stuff.


For some reason, I’m also quite scared of both those tasks. And the procrastinating is only increasing the anxiety and fear.


Update 2 hours later:

I’ve dived into the second task—the hard one. Three things helped take the plunge:

  1. I took a break. Walked a bit, watched an episode of friends, had tea.
  2. I finished all other tasks I could have done before this one (see above)
  3. I broke down the hard task into smaller bits, and targeted the smallest but most central piece. It’s still hard, but each individual piece is more manageable.

Just finished the small, core bit. Now a short walk, then a go at the non-core but bigger, trap-strewn bits.

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