You want to Win? Get organized!

Use the STING method to stop procrastinating

There's been a number of writings on overcoming procrastination, with a tidy summary at Recap: Turning procrastination into action. However, one technique that I hadn't heard of was presented last week during an on-campus seminar ("Developing organization skills to be more effective in the workplace"). It's called the "STING" method of addressing procrastination, and it's an acronym that stands for:

S - Select one task.
T - Time yourself.
I - Ignore everything else.
N - No breaks.
G - Give yourself a reward.

In my case I applied it to a programming task that I've been avoiding for almost two months. I set the timer for one hour (3 x 20 minute increments worked well), quit my email program and browser, and closed my office door. The beauty of it is ... it worked! Friday and today I was able to put in enough hours to get that piece working (using Test-driven development, of course). Actually, it was better than that - I was able to get enough momentum to keep going a while; very satisfying. Oh, the reward? Chocolate! Bah! Give me a beer!