Beating Procrastination:
Part 3 — Tricking the Brain

🎓AI Study Tutor

Your brain is like a dog that responds to treats. If you tell a dog to do a trick but don't give it a treat until three weeks later, it won't learn the trick. Your brain works exactly the same way.

The Dopamine Hit 🍬

When you finish a task, your brain releases a chemical called dopamine, which feels good. If you only feel good when the entire huge project is done, you will starve your brain of dopamine, and you will quit.

💡 The Power of Crossing Things Out

Breaking a big project into tiny steps lets you cross things out constantly. Every time you draw a line through a task, you give your brain a little hit of dopamine that fuels you for the next step.

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Action Steps

Follow this recipe to get your dopamine hits.

1Slicing It Up

Take a large assignment and write it on a piece of paper.
Draw lines underneath it, breaking the big assignment into 5 tiny, ridiculous pieces (e.g., "Find 1 source," "Write introductory sentence").

2Getting the Treat

Cross out the first tiny piece the moment you finish it with a thick black marker.
Give yourself a physical reward—like eating a piece of chocolate or doing 10 pushups—after crossing it out.

Next: Part 4 — Engineering Your Environment ↗

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