Get yourself a round tuit for Christmas!

Back to Articles

When I was a kid, the card shops used to sell a “round tuit”. For all those jobs you’ll do when you get a “round tuit”. I thought it was such a laugh.

Maybe they still sell them. Maybe you need one.

Maybe you plan to write the great novel. Or train for the triathlon. Perhaps it’s cleaning out the spare room, or getting the tax done. Whatever it is, try some of these techniques on it.

• Ask if it is important enough
  
  My mate John has put his PhD on hold because he says the birth of his baby daughter and being with her in her first few years was more important. Before you even start giving yourself a hard time about not writing your equivalent to his thesis, ask yourself if it’s important enough? Check out where your time is going – often this is because the things you’re spending your time on are in fact more important.
  

• Work out how it serves you to wait
  
  

  Peter discovered that he left his tax to the last moment because he’d build up such a sense of urgency that he did it quickly. If you delay cleaning out the spare room your mother in law can’t visit. Not training for the triathlon means you’ll never know if you were any good, and you can pretend you were.

  All of our actions serve us in some way. When you know how procrastinating serves you, you can either be happy, and recognise it’s OK, or you can give yourself the advantage some other way (e.g. fill the spare room with a Jacuzzi or a train set).

• Tie it to a value
  
  About 5 years ago I was listening to a radio program. An architect suggested that the state of your home reflects the state of your life and who you truly are. I looked at my own home, and started fixing the staircase which was half finished for 12 years, and painted the second half of the back fence (left for 2 years). When you link the outcome of your procrastination to something important to you (identity, in my case, but it could also be wealth, happiness, order, love, any concept you think is important), things happen magically!

• Bribe yourself
  
  Linking to a value is like giving yourself a non-concrete reward. You can also bribe yourself (when I write the first draft of my book, I’ll go to Fiji, or have a massage). You may not like bribery in others, and you may respond to it yourself!

• Imagine the worst
  
  And if bribery isn’t your style, consider punishment. Take your lack of action to the nth degree, and imagine it causing terrible problems for you. You don’t pick up the phone and call that unhappy client now, in a year you have no business at all. You don’t do your tax now, the ATO hits you with fines which mean you go into overdraft, putting strain on your client relationships. You argue with a client, you lose 50% of your business, you have no income, you have to sell your home… you get the picture. Imagine the worst. Catastrophise. Notice if that moves you to do it!

• Chunk it small
  
  However you’ve motivated yourself, it’s easier if you chunk it small. Whenever my lounge room gets so cluttered I can’t find my keys, I take just one thing upstairs with me every time I walk upstairs. Writing articles and books, I always start with just the headings. I’ll write 100 words, that’s all. Sometimes I do just that. Sometimes I feel so buoyed by that, I continue for a while. When I sat down to write a 100,000 word books on consulting, I sat down for one hour only. One hour on. One hour off. I have now written several, and a number of 10,000 word books (shorter, but just as prone to procrastination).
  

• Use the Godiva Chocolate Pattern
  
  

  If all else fails, there’s a handy little mental pattern called the Godiva Chocolate Pattern. It’s high level weirdness, and some of my clients swear by it!

  In your mind, imagine a task you need to do. One you’ve been putting off. Now make a second image, of something you really love (Chocolate is what many people use, hence the name Godiva Chocolate Pattern). Cover the task image with the good image. Really get into the good image. Remind yourself how good it is, how much you love it, intensify your feelings around that image.

  Then, in your mind’s eye, scratch at the centre of the good image, so you can just begin to see the task behind it. As soon as you see it, close the hole up again, and remember how good you feel about the good image.

  Do this again, five times, each time scratching at the centre of the good image until you see the task image, each time revealing a little more of the task, each time going back to the good image, and reminding yourself how good it is.

  When you’ve done it faithfully five times, notice how the task you’ve been procrastinating on is not so unattractive now. It may not be as good as chocolate, but it may be easier to begin.

There it is, 7 strategies for getting a round tuit for Christmas. Do enjoy the sense of accomplishment when you do get a round to it!

Go to www.consultantsconsultant.com.au to find out more.

Cindy Tonkin is the Consultants' Consultant and author of "The Australian Consultant's Guide - setting up and running your consultancy business profitably and painlessly".

Cindy trains and consults to consultants and managers to work with their personalities, to be more persuasive, influential and effective. Her latest release "Consulting Mastery - when ability is not enough" answers the perplexing question of why incredibly talented people can limp along in the consulting game and others with far less talent make it big. It examines the "ability myth", and gives some clear strategies for changing the way you think about your consulting talent and your business.

To purchase your copy hot off the press with a 10% discount, go to www.consultantsconsultant.com.au/onlineshop.htm quoting TMN as the source of the introduction and advise TMN same on enquiries@themosnetwork.com.au

We would like to advise TMN has always adopted strict privacy principles, by keeping all client and database details secure and not disclosing any of this information to any party without prior permission.