There is now a Level Zero

I have struggled to do my work recently. I would much rather read. Or watch a movie. Or play cards. Or board games. Or Wii Bowling. Or fold laundry.

Yes, fold laundry. It's that bad.

Even when I know I should work, I look at the task at hand and think that it's gonna take SOOOO long or I have to upstairs to do that or something similarly pathetic. Which invokes a round of self-loathing--but ironically, that's not enough to get me to work, either.

I have chosen to tackle the misperception about time. And it works. I simply set aside a short time to do work. Depending on the task, it can range from five to twenty minutes. If I'm having trouble starting an article, I force myself to work for five minutes. Usually by the end of five minutes I'm into it and willing to keep going. For studying, I do twenty minutes. Wherever I am at the end of twenty minutes, I stop. That is my reward for doing the twenty minutes.

Doing this repeatedly over the course of a day nets an impressive amount of work. Today I studied for an hour and forty minutes: five twenty-minute shifts. I also finished an article I was working on in two five minute shifts that both turned into twenty-to-thirty minute shifts.

This tells me that the way I perceive the time necessary to complete a task and the opportunity cost of going ahead and working right now are, shall we say, inadequate. That's being kind. Really, they're destructive.

I have to stop. I only allotted five minutes for this.