The coffee trick

I still have time.
This is one of the mindsets I work on leaving behind.
I still have time. It's ok if I don't do anything today.
But if I say this today, what stops me from saying it tomorrow? What stops me from repeating it until I don't have any time left?

I struggle with procrastination. A lot. But over time, I have become better at handling it.
This article is about one of the tricks I use for that.

The mindset of "I still have time" is tricky. Because in some sense, it's also super useful.
If you are convinced that you have no time left to focus on one thing, you might tend to jump from one shiny idea to the next. I know I did.
Believing you have enough time to try different things in your life gives you space to focus on a few things right now.
But you still have to have a sense of urgency about it.

My current approach to this is a daily productivity session. Each morning I work for three hours on one task I decide on the day before.
This session lasts for three hours. If I complete these three hours, I count the day as a success.

The psychological effects of this are immeasurable.
On great days, it creates momentum for the rest of the day to keep working.
On bad days, when I don't feel like doing anything, I still worked for three hours.

But then, there are horrible days. On these days, even working for 30 minutes feels like an impossibility.
To handle them, I came up with the coffee trick.
It goes like this: If I want to stop working before the three hours are over, I will make myself a cup of coffee and continue to work for 10 more minutes.

Yes, it's that simple. Underwhelming, I know.
So, why does it work? Well, I love drinking coffee. It's delicious. But it's also a performance-enhancing drug.

This is not to say that you should stop drinking coffee.
In my opinion, talking about drugs should be done with more nuance. I just see them as tools.
They can be great for all kinds of things. But just as you can murder someone with a hammer, they also can be misused.
If you enjoy drinking your morning cup of coffee, it doesn't create any longterm problems, and you can afford it, I don't see how this addiction is a problem.
I simply decided to use it in a different way.

I see coffee as my last resort.
I remember how it feels like when I stop drinking the habitual morning cup.
And I don't ever want to go back to be addicted to it only because it tastes great.
But I also remember the nights of nonstop writing to finish a 3 months paper due at the end of the week, enabled by the rush of caffeine.
If I am behind a deadline, I will without any hesitation use it to power myself up.

When I feel the need to stop working before my productivity session is over, I require myself to drink a cup of coffee first.
This is a signal to ask myself if the task I am working on really is worthy of my last resort. And actually, it's never that bad. So I keep working.
Since I started using this trick I've never actually made myself a cup of coffee.

Beating procrastination will always be a work in progress.
It will never be easy, and if some tricks stop working I will experiment with other ways.
I embrace this struggle. I'm here for the longterm.