Power Through

Are you avoiding reading or writing? Has procrastination taken over? Try a power hour.

I first heard about the "power hour" as a time management strategy and procrastination buster about a year ago. As I recall, it was described to me as a way of completing tasks that you really don't like. You commit to working on a particular task for one hour and at the end of the hour, you can choose whether you continue or not. And if you decide that you're done like dinner, it's a guilt free ending because you were hyper-productive for an hour. I thought this was a great approach for my most hated cleaning tasks (aka all of them).

I really hate cleaning – washing dishes, vacuuming, dusting. Consequently, I avoid it like the plague. The result of this procrastination is that I just end up with a bigger job to tackle – more dishes, more dust, more recyclables to struggle with. Then it becomes overwhelming, which makes it even more difficult for me to get started and I start feeling bad about the situation. To break the cycle, I commit to a power hour. I’ll clean as much as I can in a one hour period and when the hour is up, I’ll do other things I enjoy doing without feeling any guilt. But sometimes I find that I end up cleaning for several hours because once I start and see improvements, I become more motivated to continue. 

Of course, the power hour can be applied to other types of work, including your writing project. Here's one description of how it works.

You could do a power hour of reading, a power hour of planning (preparing an outline), a power hour of writing, a power hour of editing, a power hour of typing your bibliography in the appropriate citation style... you get the picture. You can do a power hour of anything. And then go about the rest of your day guilt-free.

So, if you're overwhelmed by your project or feeling guilty about your lack of progress, why not try committing to one power hour each day? You'll get something done that moves you closer to your goal and for the other 23 hours of the day, you can enjoy life without having to beat yourself up.

Have you done a power hour?