I tend to think of my procrastination not as avoiding important work, but work that is of unknown difficulty. If I don't know how hard something is to do, then I can't predict how long it would take. I could budget 15 minutes for it and it could end up taking 4 hours.
That so very rarely ever actually happens, but that is the feeling I get when I stare at my TODO list. The solution is often to create a task just for analyzing the complexity of another task, to be able to break it up into sub tasks.
For example: "do taxes" might be broken into "find receipts", "print forms", "fill out form 1 worksheet", "complete form 1", "mail form 1", etc. The more detailed I can get it, the more space it takes in the TODO list, the more it blocks out other things, and the more it keeps the TODO list from stagnating--which is an important component of motivation for me.
That so very rarely ever actually happens, but that is the feeling I get when I stare at my TODO list. The solution is often to create a task just for analyzing the complexity of another task, to be able to break it up into sub tasks.
For example: "do taxes" might be broken into "find receipts", "print forms", "fill out form 1 worksheet", "complete form 1", "mail form 1", etc. The more detailed I can get it, the more space it takes in the TODO list, the more it blocks out other things, and the more it keeps the TODO list from stagnating--which is an important component of motivation for me.