If you have been stressing about that one or two little tasks that you have been delaying for weeks or months or even years, you have landed on the right page. Sometimes what happens is that there is a task that needs to be done, a task that’s not much time consuming but it’s not urgent but still needs to be done. For example, you have prepared a report or a paper and you need to address those comments  from your supervisor or line manager or reviewer. But you keep procrastinating because you are already fed up with that piece of work, or its not urgent, or it seems daunting to go back to that work again which you might have already forgotten how you wrote that piece of work in the first place. Let me explain with an example, you wrote a thesis after a long and hardworking journey, you submitted, you passed and you are now busy in your job. During that time you wrote a research a paper and its with your supervisor for comments. Now you are busy with your job and already drowned in your work commitments but then you also receive those comments back from your supervisor. And you see all those red markings and comments. You just not want to even look at it. Weeks and weeks pass, its always in the back of your head, you want to do it because you would like to get that paper published which might help with your current job or might improve your CV. But then again because its not urgent and its annoying, so you keep going back to it but then not do anything about it. Something similar happened to me.

I wrote this first draft of research paper for my last project and sent it to my line manager. The comments came after a long time exactly after a year. They sent me right on the last working day before Christmas holidays.. I know how cruel just to ruin my holidays. No communication from them for about a year and then BAM, just before the holidays when I was just becoming happy about the holidays whilst busy with my new project, I receive this email and guess what I was not happy… I opened it I skimmed through it, I saw lots of red and comments on every page and I didn’t like it. I closed the document. That was a MISTAKE.

I was not going to do that work because it was my time to take break during the holidays but it stayed on my mind. It felt like a big task and I was feeling overwhelmed. Well holidays passed, and then I decided to tackle so I decided to go through it properly and see what are the comments, I don’t know for some reason it still felt overwhelming and hard. I wasn’t able to get much done except just ‘accepted’ the changes my supervisor made. Most of the things that felt overwhelming were actually just some paragraphs that my supervisor moved from one part to another that’s why it felt as if it was a lot because it was in red. And also there were some sections that they added and there was nothing for me to do. But as I was looking at it as a whole and stressing out to see that so much red whereas in reality those parts did not require my action except to ‘Accept ‘ it.  Anyways I was still delaying it because it was not urgent but it was always at the back of my head. Days passed into weeks and then weeks into months. I kept making timetables to deal with it but I kept failing. Then I was about to start a new project and I knew my workload was going to increase soon. One day out of frustration, whilst my Chatgpt page was open I just all took it out and ‘talked’ about it to Chatgpt. I then asked it to make a plan for me to get over this task. I had already counted how many comments I had to address. So I entered that information in Chatgpt i.e. how many comments are there and in what time frame I would like to complete it. I also mentioned how many hours a week I work. So Chatgpt made a plan for me according to the free time I could have after my work and family commitments. It gave me a very nice plan and starting with very simple jobs to do such as, go through it, see how many are minor, moderate and major comments, and also then gave me a plan to spread it out over a week. I noted that plan with me and then I tried to follow it. As the work was broken down into small chunks, I tried to follow it as it is. I started with very simple tasks like only going through the document, I had already ‘accepted’ the changes so didn’t have to do that step. I then categorised the comments into minor, major, moderate. I started to address the minor ones which didn’t require much work. Then went ahead with moderate and finally major. All I had to do was just follow the plan given to my by chatgpt. It turned out to be not that time consuming or hard only because I was not looking to get the whole document done. But just aiming for one task at a time. I am not going to lie, I may have done it in two weeks instead of one, I don’t remember properly but still it was job that had been pending for nearly a year. And you knoww hat finally I was able to get that comments done. Aaahhh what a relief it was! I wanted to hug chatgpt for that. And I would also like to mention that there was a comment which I was not getting like what do they want me to do. It was a comment about Abstract, I pasted that comment and the related section in chatgpt, and it did clarify me and made it easier for me to understand. And yes you know I was finally able to get that task done. It felt good because the first draft was there and I actually did want to publish that paper, I didn’t want to waste that work. So it actually felt good. I was then finally able to send that revised draft to my line manager and guess when did I send it to her….. exactly after one year in December right before holidays.. 😀 I did get an email that they ‘ll look into it in the new year. I haven’t received any comments yet but lets see….

My personal experience of when getting stuck in a task and that becomes pending for so long I finally got it done with the help of AI not for the content but for making a plan for me. For more tips and tricks on overcoming procrastination, check out my other blogs. You have got this!