13145: Using Scary Hours To Get Stuff Done

Raw transcript:

I think I’ve run across one of the
potentially most effective ways of
helping you get stuff done but one of
the weirdest names for a way to help you
get stuff done that I’ve come across in
a long time let’s talk about scary hour
when we continue with this episode of
the vo Heroes podcast
if you Google the phrase scary hour
s-c-a-r-y-h-o-u-r scary hour
you’ll come across tons and tons and
tons of Articles promoting this as the
newest most awesome productivity hack a
couple of Articles saying This is BS
don’t pay any attention to this don’t do
this do this instead which
I guess you know whatever floats your
boat but
I looked at it and it it struck me as
something that could be useful
especially if you are an inveterate
procrastinator and when you look at your
to-do list you just go uh
what am I gonna do
um what scary hour is is pretty
straightforward it’s basically setting
aside
an hour to do all those things that
you’ve been avoiding it’s taking
advantage of what I call casting a focus
on what you have to do uh we often tend
to think that we have a manageable to-do
list when we often don’t have a
manageable to-do list because everything
is scattered everywhere everything is so
voluminous you’ve got a whole bunch of
things to do here and a whole bunch of
things to do here and a whole bunch of
things to do here the Ivy Lee method
that I use helps me Focus those things
into
priorities that that first three events
of the day the first three tasks that I
do every day that’s on my index cards
so scary hour is another version of that
what it is though is a very weird name
and it can be a little off-putting why
would somebody want to engage in scary
hour I don’t even like scary movies why
would I want to do a scary hour uh but
what it’s basically saying is face your
fears face the things that you are
repulsed by that you’re resistant to
that you can’t seem to get around to
that seem onerous or seem impossible
just gather them together and say I’m
going to spend an hour doing just these
things
now the people that promote scary hour
there’s a tick tocker who’s talked a lot
about it she’s pretty famous she’s been
um the subject of articles about it
there’s articles in mainstream magazines
like Better Homes and Gardens uh as well
as typical uh you know Tech uh blogs and
so on and what they’ve concentrated on
is kind of a version of what used to be
called aversion therapy you know they
used to try and uh help smokers quit
smoking by just blowing smoke at them
over and over and over again the thing
that they they hate the most uh or love
the most but what you’re doing is you’re
putting yourself in a position to say
okay I’m gonna face my fears I’m gonna
face my my least happy place and just
for an hour I’m gonna do it and you know
it’s possible that it will work
um the articles that have said scary
hour why do scary hour
kind of point to other ways of focusing
your attention and I think often uh
productivity hacks like scary hour are
designed to help you focus
if you can focus you may not need scary
hour but if you need a way to say shine
a spotlight on the things that you need
to get done setting aside an hour
uh I wouldn’t do it every day I would do
it every so often and try to get in the
habit of being more organized about your
priorities and the ivy league method can
help you with that Google it if you
haven’t seen it if you haven’t seen the
video that I did here on the podcast
about it or listen to the video uh just
search if you’re on viewheroes.com
search for Ivy Lee Ivy l e e and you’ll
see how I
kind of avoid scary hours is this
something that helps is this something
that you’ve faced do you have a whole
stack of stuff sitting on your desk that
you just can’t get to because it just
seems daunting let me know in the
comments below I’d really appreciate it
hit the like button if you like what
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combined if you want to forward this to
an actor or a voice talent that you
think just might benefit from scary
hours or just being a little bit more
focused go ahead and grab the URL for
this podcast episode and send it on I’m
David H Lawrence the 17th I thank you so
much for watching and for listening and
I will see you in the next episode of
the vo Heroes podcast

(from YouTube)