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A Timer Is Helping Quiet My Annoying Inner Judge
I can do just about anything if I know I only have to do it for five minutes
Every single day, at some point during the day, I set a timer — sometimes for 40 minutes, sometimes for 20, sometimes for five. And it’s not because I’m really into baking. It’s because I’m conning myself into doing all the things on my to-do list that I’d otherwise procrastinate.
Basically, I’m manipulating myself like a hamster trainer. I’ve learned through a lot of hard lessons and introspection that my strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa. I’m incredibly Type A and what I call a completionist — I will finish what I start, no matter what. I also have perfectionist tendencies and a hypervocal inner judge who is an absolute asshole. Together, these things mean that I can be incredibly productive under the right circumstances. Under the wrong circumstances, however, they mean that I can be rigid, uncompromising, insistent on sticking with things I don’t want to be doing in the first place, and unwilling or afraid to start things that are big or scary or ambitious.
When I’m in a bad headspace, I think things like:
- “You don’t have time to do this perfectly, so just do nothing.”
- “This idea is probably shit, so why try?”
