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Bust through any Financial Task You’ve Been Dreading with this Simple Tool

If you're dealing with financial difficulties, or want to avoid financial difficulties, then you need to get through a long list of money tasks. But what if you're dreading them? Here's a technique for you to use.

When you first go into business for yourself like I did in early 2013, you don't quite understand all of the dreaded tasks you are going to have to do.

You won't quite understand the dreaded tasks you're going to have to do the first time you go into business for yourself. Click To Tweet

Spoiler alert: at least in the building stages of your business, whatever passion it is that you went into business to begin with because you wanted to do more of it, you probably will do the least amount of. Though this changes as time passes if you work at it.  

Why is that?

Well, because running a biz takes:

  • marketing (not my passion)
  • accounting (fun to deal with money, but not my passion)
  • sales (not my passion)
  • email answering (not my passion)
  • setting up endless tech + getting into a bit of coding for my website (not my passion − thank goodness I found WPCurve)
  • X,Y,Z (not my passions, either)

And if you neglect all that other stuff? Then getting your passion out into the world − writing about personal finance (ding! ding! ding! − my passion) − while helping to sustain your household financially is not going to happen.

You, Along with Most People, are Probably Dreading Some Financial Task

Then I began to think: I'm not alone in having dreaded tasks to complete in order to get to the juicy ones I look forward to.

Especially when it comes to finances.

Most people aren't money nerds like myself, and so they've got a long list of dreaded financial tasks they know they should get done, but just don't want to. Possibly because they're dealing with financial difficulties, and possibly just because most people don't even know where to start.

Like…

:: closing credit card accounts
:: filing your taxes
:: setting up bank account for baby (who may or may not be sporting braces already)
:: calling up customer service to question a charge on your account
:: calling up your bank to ask them to waive a late fee you were charged, based on your previous good behavior
:: etc. X 57

Bust Around these Dreaded Financial Tasks with this Simple Tool

Thanks to a tip from the indomitable Kat Loterzo, I started using this one simple tool to help me get through the yucky tasks I need to do each day in order to gleefully spend more time in the tasks I enjoy:

A timer. And specifically, the one on Tomato-Timer.com.

Seriously − that's it.

The steps look like this:

  1. Set a timer for 25 minutes.
  2. Do it.
  3. Preferably before the timer goes off.

You're Skeptical, I'm Sure

I was skeptical for a long time about whether or not setting up a simple timer for 25 minutes would actually make me get something done that I had been dreading, and in record time.

Especially something I had envisioned would take half a day or more to complete…how could just 25 minutes make a dent?

But I was wrong.

It's called the Pomodoro technique, and it works wonders.

You work in 25 minute increments, the timer beeps, and then you get a 5-minute timed break. You just keep pushing those two buttons, one after the other, as you glide through your dreaded to-do list.

The Proof is In My Biz Accomplishments this Last Year

Using the 25-minute increments of work time and 5-minute increments of break time has led me to up my productivity this last year in a pretty extreme way.

How else could I explain being able to start up my new brand, MoneyProdigy.com where I show how to teach kids about money, while simultaneously raising a 14-month old baby + keeping Frugal Confessions afloat?

No, it's not from neglecting the baby. In case you weren't aware, babies have this intuitive fussiness to indicate whenever you're not paying them enough of your attention − and by baby standards, enough means probably about 90%.

I now even use this method when I'm doing actual writing, the thing that I'm passionate about!

Psst: I just wrote the draft to this blog post in ONE 25-minute increment. Amazing! Next 25-minute increment? Well I might just take over the world.

So how about it? Share below what financial task you've been dreading (i.e. have neglected). Then use this technique and let us know how far you get with it.

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Amanda L Grossman

Personal Finance Writer and CEO at Frugal Confessions, LLC
Amanda L. Grossman is a writer and Certified Financial Education Instructor, Plutus Foundation Grant Recipient, and founder of Frugal Confessions. Over the last 13 years, her money work has helped people with how to save money and how to manage money. She's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger, Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, Business Insider, LifeHacker, Real Simple Magazine, Woman's World, Woman's Day, ABC 13 Houston, Keybank, and more. Read more here or on LinkedIn.