I’ll Time You.
I’m the youngest in my family, and I used to envy my friends with little brothers and sisters to order around. It was remarkable how they could give them inane tasks (some invented just to get rid of them for a while), and send the little ones dashing off to make them a sandwich, find the frisbee in the garage, or get the Barbies from the basement with a simple phrase: “I’ll time you.”
I’ve been using the same phrase on myself lately, when it comes to getting things done. But rather than simply setting a stopwatch, I set a specific amount of time for a task. It’s helpful when I’m faced with a blank page, and too many ideas (or assignments). Sometimes the fear of committing to the wrong one can result in total paralysis. And certainly exploring no ideas is worse than trying out the wrong idea. So I set a timer. Okay, I’ll give this one 26 minutes. See where it goes. I won’t stop writing, I won’t re-evaluate, delete, edit, or go online (NO!) until the timer goes off. And then I’ll see where I am.
I’ve used this technique for writing entire pieces, parceling them out into little “baby steps.” (What About Bob? may have been comedy to you, but it was self-help to me.) Okay, for 30 minutes I’ll write about the history of latex fetishism, and that will eventually turn into a paragraph that provides context — even if right now it’s a mess and I have no idea how it will fit into the story. It’s what my dad refers to as, “Do something, anything.” (This paralysis is hereditary, and not limited to writing, it would seem.) Deciding can be deathly painful, but telling yourself you’re only giving something a certain amount of time — at least for starters — will at least get you started.
Try it. I’ll time you.
