The quest to increase productivity and stop procrastinating is seemingly never ending. We all struggle in one fashion or another to accomplish everything we need to. And like so many struggles in life, how we think about, and thus approach tasks greatly impacts our results.

As I sought to restructure my thinking, I discovered that flipping my thought process about the enormity of tasks was liberating. I learned I could reduce my procrastination and increase my productivity by first mentally reframing all I needed to accomplish into more manageable parts. To help guide me in this, I discovered three very empowering concepts: David Allen’s Two Minute Rule, James Clear’s Optimal vs Needed, and Martha Beck’s “turtle steps”. In this episode, I outline each of them for you and how they can help us all to procrastinate less and accomplish more.

“If you just decide that, ‘If it’s taking me less than 2 minutes, I’m just gonna do it. No questions. No debate. No decision making…’ It frees up all that energy for things that you do need to think about… This is the beauty of making one decision that then frees you up from making all these other little decisions… decisions that create so much mental overwhelm and mental fatigue for us.” – Dr. Sara Dill

What You’ll Learn

• The Two Minute Rule
• Standardize before you optimize
• “Turtle steps”
• Freeing up willpower and decision energy

Contact Info and Recommended Resources

Books:

Getting Things Done by David Allen

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Articles:

The Power of Imperfect Starts by James Clear

Do Less, Fail More by Martha Beck

Podcast Episodes:

• How to Beat Burnout
• How to Drop Your Manual
• Thought Work: The Most Important Work You Can Ever Do
• Believing New Things

Connect with Sara Dill, MD, The Doctor’s Coach

• Website: saradill.com
• Work with me: saradill.com/coaching
• I read all my own email and I’d love to hear from you! Please write to me at sara@saradill.com.
• Get a FREE consultation with Sara! Sign up here: saradill.com/schedule
• Get Dr. Dill’s book