Divide and conquer

To give you an idea of how the divide-by-two rule worked for me, I’ll use an example of something I dread every year: Taxes.

Sitting down and filling out my yearly tax forms is painful - I’m sure many can relate to this. In fact, it’s the one thing that is sure to get put on the back-burner for as long as possible. Each year is the same: procrastinate until the end of April, and then pull an all-nighter to try and beat the deadline.

This is negative motivation – effective, but too extreme. Yet, for most of my life, I have been driven to accomplish unpleasant tasks because I wanted to avoid pain – not gain pleasure.

I decided to put my new strategy to work.

My taxes were moderate in terms of difficulty. I didn’t need an accountant, but it still took me a good portion of one evening to complete. I hated sorting slips and receipts and relying on the memories of a year ago to make sure everything was accurate. In short, it took a lot of time because everything had to be perfect.

The worst part was that I usually broke even on the final total, so there was also no financial reward – No carrot to reward a job well done.

So looking at the task in its entirety, one could easily be overwhelmed with the amount of work that needed to be done. Dividing by two meant that I might complete only the rough version and save the final draft for another night. Still too much – I divided by two again. Now I was only to sort the receipts and complete half the tax form. That wasn’t bad, but I still divided again and this time I was left sorting receipts and just organizing the various tax forms. That was perfect.

So I started out with a clear idea of exactly how much work I would do. I felt pretty good because I would be done in no time – no sweat.

After sorting the receipts and forms, I felt as though, somehow, I had not done enough – but I left it at that because, had my sub-conscience known that my real intent was to do more than was planned, I would feel overwhelmed before starting the job. So I really did have to make myself believe that what I set out to do would be accomplished and nothing more - If that makes any sense whatsoever.

The next night I worked on another fraction of the task – only, this time, I did continue on, and before I knew it, I had completed the entire job. The secret was to START – once I got up off the couch and dug into something, completing it wasn’t so difficult.

The only way this method works is by leaving your options open in terms of completing your task. Don’t beat yourself up if all you do is what you set out to do. It sure does beat doing nothing while you worry about a fast approaching deadline.

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