Overcome procrastination with speed tasking

Experiment with setting time limits to improve your productivity

Whirlwind with book and clock with a slice cut out

Do you spend too long getting into tasks and then rush to finish?

Whilst it is important to plan enough time to complete tasks, that doesn’t mean you must use it all in one go.

If we take a small slice of the time available, we can set ourselves a task to complete with intense focus and higher speed.

Our brains will find a way to do it. This first attempt might be a little rough and messy, but it can provide a useful foundation to build upon.

These high intensity periods of working, speed-tasking, are an effective way to kick-start a study session or a first draft of a paragraph in an assignment.

If you tend to labour over such tasks, speed-tasking can save time by forcing you to finish and review your work earlier. This will hopefully reduce the pressure of getting started because you've only invested a relatively small amount of time up until that point.

Sometimes you'll find that you will have achieved most of what you wanted to in that shorter period of time.

Illustration of placing time limits on tasks

To begin, begin.

William Wordsworth

Stop dilly-dallying

Have a go at a …

60 second ‘to-do’ list
60 second study session plan
2 minute essay plan
3 minute information search
3 minute attempt at generating ideas for a project
3 minute introduction or conclusion
5 minute draft essay

Set a timer and get going. See how much you can get done in the time.

Read your rapid response. Be prepared for some weak or odd aspects to such a quick plan. Delete anything you don’t want to keep. Identify the gems in what you have produced and work on those in more detail.

Repeat the challenge. See whether different ideas or phrases emerge.

Focus on something else for a while. Give your brain time to incubate the ideas it was working on for the speed task.

Look again at what you produced. After a break, the potential flaws will stand out more, giving you something to work on to take the task forward.

How could speed-tasking help you in your studies? Record your thoughts in the box alongside.