Go Somewhere New, Finish Something Old

If you have been working on a long-term project but struggle to finish it, one way to force yourself to see it through is to leave your current environment. It’s not practical for every situation, but it can work when you are too comfortable in the routine of your everyday life. Go to a faraway hill station and work from there for a month. These days, especially in India, you can find places with good internet, three meals a day, on-call services and serene surroundings. Spend the month working on your project. It sounds dramatic, but there is a simple psychological trick behind it: when you remove yourself from your usual environment, your mind has fewer familiar distractions to fall back on. When you first visit such a place, you may wonder how wonderful it would be to live there permanently. But if something becomes permanent, it stops being novel. Even a beautiful, peaceful place eventually becomes ordinary, and serenity comes with its own challenges. That is precisely why a month…