How to Stop Avoiding Big Tasks, Using an Easy 20-Second Trick

A major reason procrastinators avoid starting big tasks is the fear that they’ll run out of time just when they start getting somewhere.

This fear makes big tasks seem like they require big stretches of free time – three, four, or even six free hours — so that you don’t get interrupted right when your efforts start paying off.

This leads straight to procrastination, especially on big, important tasks. You will naturally wait to deal with it until you “have more time,” which of course you never will, especially if you’re putting other things off too.

We can’t fix every reason you procrastinate, but we can basically eliminate this problem, using a simple tactic that takes about 20 seconds, a few times a day.

Eliminating the “Where was I?” tax

Imagine you were reading a novel, but bookmarks hadn’t been invented yet.

Every time you wanted to continue reading, you’d have to rediscover where you left off. You’d have to open to random passages to check if you’ve read that part yet, zeroing in on the exact place you got to when you put it down.

Only once you complete this tedious “Where was I?” ritual can you begin the actual work of reading, which also takes effort and focus.

Without the ability to mark your place, it’s likely you’d read much less. You’d gravitate towards activities without such a high restarting cost. Quick, easy stuff like answering emails and reacting to things.

Or – you could do what people probably did almost immediately upon the invention of the book: invent the bookmark. Make a simple device that eliminates the restarting cost.

Bookmarks eliminate the “Where was I” tax from the reading experience nearly perfectly. But for some reason, we barely use them for continuing other big tasks, even though they’re often even more complex, and therefore harder to resume without retracing your steps.

Have you ever taken a lengthy break in the middle of sorting out your taxes, organizing the garage, or learning a new inventory system? You almost have to run through the whole thing again to figure out what’s next. It’s very tempting to get back to it “later,” or avoid beginning in the first place.

You don’t need six free hours to tackle something big

In my experience, this trouble with resuming tasks is especially serious with ADHDers. ADHD makes it hard to sustain clear intentions throughout the duration of a complex task. Losing momentum often means losing all sense of what should happen next.

This is why ADHDers have so many unfinished projects, and often assume they need three to six free hours to tackle a big task. They’re afraid to leave it halfway because resuming later is so hard to get your mind around.

If the cost of figuring out where you were seems too high, you put it off, and the cost only grows from there.

Use physical bookmarks for everything

You can avoid the “Where was I” tax by using a physical, paper bookmark when you leave off any task. Studying, writing, building, organizing, researching – all can be bookmarked.

It works basically the same way as a book. You use a physical piece of paper to mark your place in the task. A sticky note is ideal.

However, instead of marking your place by sticking it between a book’s pages, you write on your bookmark the very first thing you should do when you resume the task.

Make sure the word NEXT is on it in big letters.

Any next step that will get you doing the thing again is fine:

• Reread Angela’s email about the new policy
• Gather all my lecture notes and sort by date
• Do question 8 in the exercises section
• Read this whitepaper and write down my questions

Make the next step so clear that you don’t have to think about what you meant. It doesn’t need to be the only thing you can do next, just something. The rest of it will come back to you once you’re working again.

Then stick the bookmark right onto the materials of the task: the relevant folder, the notes, the computer monitor, the toolbox, the door of the garage. Stick it anywhere you’ll see it when it’s time to resume. Use tape if you think it will come off.

Now you’ve got a handle to grab. (Remember our truism from the 3 Secret Weapons guide: procrastination happens when you don’t have a handle to grab.)

This way you don’t have to try to wrangle the whole project in your mind just to figure out where the hell you left off. The task doesn’t look so daunting on your list, because the next step is right freaking there.

I call this tactic the Anywhere Bookmark. Bookmark any task, not just the reading of books. Eliminate a major cause of procrastination by getting rid of the “Where was I?” tax.

Bookmark every task when you leave off in the middle. It takes ten or twenty seconds to identify and write down a suitable next step, and could easily make the difference between dispatching it speedily and not doing it at all.  

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