Last night my son quit on his homework assignment.
I wasn’t sure at first, but it seemed like he hadn’t worked on it long enough to finish. So I asked if he was done.
His response: “I can’t concentrate right now, so I stopped trying.”
Oh boy. Time to be a parent. Time to be a hard ass. So I sent him back to his assignment, which was writing an essay.
I gave him one task: Write a sentence.
Just one sentence. That’s all.
He didn’t know what was going to happen after that, but he agreed that he could write a single sentence. So he went back to work.
After ten minutes, he came to tell me he’d written a sentence.
So, of course, I asked him to write another one. He did, came back, and was asked to write a third.
After writing that one, he caught on, and came back a couple minutes after being asked to write his fourth sentence.
“Did you write the fourth sentence?”, I asked.
“Yes.”
“Ok, go write another one.”
“I already did.”
“You wrote the fifth sentence?”
“Yep!”
“Awesome! Now go write another one.”
At this point I expected some pushback. He was trying to play the game. But it never came.
You see, by trying to play the game, he didn’t notice that the game had played him.
He now had momentum. Inertia.
And he knew it, deep down. So he turned right around and went back to work.
Lots of good lessons here. But the one I want to point out is that when you are having a hard time focusing, you need to break down your plans to the simplest possible steps. Pick the easiest way to move forward, and go do it.
Then pick the easiest next step to take. And do it.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Pretty soon, you’ll have momentum. You won’t want to stop.
So, just keep swimming.
And plan your day, at cueplan.com