'Scary hour' might be the productivity hack you've been waiting for
Get it done
If you find yourself putting off completing tasks no matter how hard you try to motivate yourself, the 'scary hour' trend could be the secret to unlocking your productivity.
Motivation can be hard to find. If you’re anything like me, you can have six tasks all due in the next hour and still feel unable to drag yourself from your bed to your desk to finish them. I’ve tried taking regular breaks, bribing myself with chocolate rewards, writing in planners, even painting my nails before sitting down at my computer so I literally cannot do anything else. Yet procrastination still sneaks in every time.
People online claim to have found the solution to our inability to commit to even the most menial tasks by tackling all of their to-do lists in just 60 minutes.
Dubbed ‘scary hour’, users are picking a time of day, setting 60-minute timers for themselves and doing all of the tasks they’ve been putting off in one go.
What is 'scary hour'?
In a video with over one million views, creator Laur shared “the only reason anyone in [her] life thinks she is a functioning adult”.
“At some point in your day – I never do it at the same time every day – you set a timer for one hour and in that hour you only do things that you’ve been avoiding because of anxiety”, she explained.
Other creators are documenting their own scary hours spent cleaning their rooms, folding laundry, buying groceries, washing their cars or answering their texts.
How does the productivity hack work?
According to Medium, our brains work best by focusing on tasks for short periods of time, and intensely focusing for more than 90 minutes can lead to burnout and struggles to focus, so a 60-minute burst of productivity is definitely long enough.
An hour is long enough to check off several tasks, but short enough that it doesn’t feel daunting. You also don’t have to black out hours of your day or move plans, you can finish all of your anxiety-inducing jobs in the same amount of time you would dedicate to a gym session.
How to plan your own scary hour
Write it all down
Your mental to-do list can seem neverending. Being able to visualise what you need to do helps you build a plan of attack.
Remove temptations
Put your phone in the other room and turn off your TV. Set aside anything you can see yourself using to procrastinate, even if it’s another task you need to do. Focus on the jobs that feel impossible to do – you can come back to everything else after your 60 minutes is up.
Ease in
An hour of jobs can feel overwhelming and drive you to procrastinate. If you want to start slow, challenge yourself with a 15 or 20-minute timer and build up to the hour.
Pat yourself on the back
Even if you only get through three out of 10 things you’ve been avoiding, you’ve still shortened your to-do list. Give yourself a break, a chocolate or a walk after your scary hour as a reward for doing hard things.
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Originally published as 'Scary hour' might be the productivity hack you've been waiting for
