I spent an hour thinking about what I was going to write today, and got nowhere.

Then I looked at the clock and realised that if I didn’t get it sorted out, and quickly, I wasn’t going to eat.

Suddenly it was all done, in about ten minutes.

If you’re tired or if you’re feeling a bit down, little tasks can take forever.

So a useful strategy (which I forgot yesterday) can be to give yourself an artificial deadline.

Say to yourself ‘I’m going to have done X by 9 o’clock’.

In fact I sometimes use the countdown timer on my phone for this very reason.

In advertising I was often racing against the clock to meet a deadline.

So if you’re struggling to get something done and it just isn’t happening, set a deadline of your own.

There. That’s better. I got it done, and ate some lunch too.