In the back of my mind throughout the month of December, I was low-key dreading today.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Today was the due date for my third 6-page paper – on a book comparing four different theological views on the Lord’s Supper.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Not only was the paper daunting, I knew from early in the month that life was going to get extra busy and the majority of my December classwork would still be waiting for me after Christmas day.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I was right. When Sunday came, I still had 350 pages to read and a few smaller assignments … and this paper.<\/p>\n\n\n
Anyway, the good news is that I discovered a new “brain hack” to keep me on track today. I couldn’t get myself started on my paper this morning as much as I tried. It felt very intimidating and my willpower was almost nonexistent. So I tried something I had heard suggested on a podcast recently.<\/p>\n\n\n
I set the alarm on my phone for 33 minutes and 33 seconds and opened my book to start taking notes. When the alarm sounded, I would give myself permission to take some sort of little break.<\/p>\n\n\n
It worked. Whereas I could not force myself to sit down and write an entire paper, I felt almost no resistance to sitting down to work for 33 minutes. When the alarm buzzed, I had accomplished part of my task and that felt good. I got some coffee and scrolled on my phone for a few minutes and then reset my alarm for another 33:33.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
And that’s how my whole day went. One unforeseen advantage was that I soon began to accurately judge how much I could accomplish in 33 minutes and it gave me a better estimate of how much more of my day I would need to devote to the project.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
All in all, the day was not at all unpleasant. I had time to go for a\u00a0 run and even take a short afternoon nap and a leisurely dinner. And the paper got edited and submitted shortly after 9:00 pm.<\/p>\n\n\n
I need not have dreaded December 30th in the least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the back of my mind throughout the month of December, I was low-key dreading today.\u00a0 Today was the due date for my third 6-page paper – on a book comparing four different theological views on the Lord’s Supper.\u00a0 Not only was the paper daunting, I knew from early in the month that life was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8025,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8024\/revisions\/8025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}