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time management

8. Stop Before You Need To

“Don’t stop me. I’m on a roll.”
Momentum is a wonderful feeling, especially when we’ve got
a lot to do and not much time to do it. An interruption is the last
thing you want when the job is going well. Common sense tells
you to keep working until you’re finished. If you can’t finish the
job in one sitting, you work until you’re exhausted or until you run
into a snag you can’t work your way through.
But it can make a lot more sense to stop before you get too tired
and before you reach a snag.
If you stop because you’re stuck, you carry that “stuckness”
with you until the next work session. You’ll sit back down to the
task and immediately be faced with the same problem that stopped
you previously. And if you give yourself too much time between
work sessions, you’ll build up an aversion to the task, the very
material blocks are made of.
But if you’ve stopped in midstride, sure of the next step you’ll
take, you’ll come back to the job confident and even eager. You
won’t have to waste any time getting back into the groove, because
you won’t have gotten out of it. This is a technique used by many
successful writers, who would have a significant problem starting
up if they hadn’t stopped while “on a roll.”
There is an exception to this “rule” and whether the rule or its
exception applies to you depends on the type of person you are, and
how you tend to work through problems. Most of us just keep punch-
ing until we make a hole in the wall, but some individuals receive
problem-solving inspiration while engaged in activities not directly
related to the task. I knew one fellow who did his best thinking
while running; he’d break from a task when he hit a snag, go for a
run, and by the time he returned he typically had found a solution.
If your mind works in this nontraditional way—like setting a PC to
defrag while you go off and do something else—then don’t tamper
with your system. Encourage it and use it to your advantage.

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