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Make the first move small enough to be almost silly. Open the document and type the date. Put the trainers by the door. Everything after that is cheaper.
Nearly all the cost of a task sits at the entrance, so that is where your design effort should go. Decide the first physical action the night before, and make it something you could do half asleep and in a bad mood. If it still requires a decision, it is too big.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We shall show you the easy way (Quran 87:8). The easy way in is offered as help, not held against you as a lesser effort.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The large meta-analysis of procrastination found that how unpleasant a task feels is among the strongest predictors of putting it off. Shrinking the first step aims straight at that, since a two minute version of a job is far less unpleasant than the whole of it. The analysis identified predictors rather than testing this as a remedy.
Steel P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: a meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Getting in is the expensive part, and staying in is not.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
If it has been on the list a year and nothing has moved, consider that you may have already decided. Saying so costs a good deal less than carrying it for another year.
If you cannot say yes and cannot say no, look for the smaller version. Not the course, one module. Not every week, once a month.
Next time you tell yourself you will remember it, ask what you would bet on that. A month's rent, for or against. The answer usually arrives before you have finished asking.