100 tips or 1 example?
Procrastination isn’t about complexity. It’s about imagination. How a timer helped me beat anxiety and finally do the “small” tasks I’ve been putting off for weeks (or years).
Have you ever faced tasks that felt like:
“Not now.”
“After the deadline.”
“Next Monday, for sure.”
Like:
Updating the Jira status.
Sending that final candidate email.
Finishing a report for your manager.
Finally closing that tab with notes that were meant to become documentation.
In reality, each of these tasks takes 3 to 12 minutes.
But we postpone them for weeks.
Or months. Or, in my case - a whole year.
And guess what?
The task I finally did today - the one I had avoided for a year - took me 6 minutes. Six!!!
🧠 Procrastination isn’t laziness. It’s magnified anxiety.
Recently, I came across a TikTok channel by Christi Newrutzen (@christinewrutzen), where she simply timed herself doing the tasks she had been putting off for months or years. No productivity books. No new systems. No coaching.
Just a timer.
We all have those examples:
Sending an important email - 6 minutes
Filling out a visa form - 9 minutes
Organizing cables and gear - 30 minutes
Deleting that “temporary” desktop folder - 4 minutes
Writing a short LinkedIn summary - 11 minutes
Sound familiar? Same here.
And that’s when it hit me:
Especially in tech, we love data. Frameworks. Systems. But sometimes… we don’t need another plan. We just need a timer.
Sometimes you don’t need to hear “it’s not that scary” a hundred times.
You just need to see - once - that it actually isn’t.
⏱️ Data > Drama
Procrastination lives in foggy logic:
“It’ll take half a day.”
“I’m not in the right mindset yet.”
“It’s too complex - I need to prepare.”
But the timer? It’s my new anti-anxiety tool.
I’m a chronic procrastinator myself - partly due to my ADHD and analysis paralysis.
Once the timer starts ticking, the panic loses its power.
Suddenly, the monster-task is just a small to-do with a timebox.
✅ Want to try it today?
Pick one task you’ve been putting off all week.
Start a timer - on your phone, Toggl, Notion, whatever works.
Do the task. No polishing, no overthinking. Just finish it.
Log how long it took.
You’ll likely be shocked.
Not by the time.
But by how small the task felt once the anxiety was removed.
🚀 A technical mindset for mental overload
For engineers, recruiters, and managers working in high-complexity, high-interruption environments - this isn’t just a productivity tip.
This is mental hygiene.
You don’t always need to solve big structural problems.
Sometimes you just need to fix the tiny bug - the one your brain turned into a Q4 OKR.
📌 In closing:
Not every task needs motivation. Sometimes it just needs an example.
You don’t always need willpower. Sometimes - just a timer.
Not all change starts with a bold move. Often, it starts with a 6-minute action you’ve delayed for a year.
🔍 What’s one tiny task you’ve been putting off?
Comment or share - I dare you to time it.