4 Ways to Get Back to Work When You (Really) Don’t Want to

You know you need to work, but you really don’t want to. Millions of distractions—some worthier than others—compete for your time and attention. How do you drown out the voice of procrastination?

Here are four ways that will get you working again, even when you’d rather be doing anything else.

1 Reward Yourself

In Key of Knowledge, prolific author Nora Roberts writes: “There’s no reward without work, no victory without effort, no battle won without risk.” The converse is also true. Why work without a reward? Why put forth effort without a purpose? Likely, your job has some intrinsic value. Of Nora Robert’s 200 published novels, most of them fall into the suspense or romance genres. Thousands of people use her stories to escape from reality, to relax, or to entertain themselves. How does your job help the world? How does it benefit you personally? When you are typing a document at work, do you think about how the task will ultimately fund your child’s college education, for example? With a little thought, you can likely find that your job adds value to your life in various ways.

According to ASuccessfulWoman.com, you may do your job because of “the desire to control [your] financial destiny, the need for autonomy, or perhaps the belief that [your] service or product will potentially enhance the current marketplace.” Why stop there? The same website encourages you to create your own rewards for a job well done. You’ll be motivated to work harder if you know something good will come at the end of it.

2 Make It Fun

Do you enjoy things more when you are alone or with friends? If you like solitude, why not get to the office early on your first days back? The office will be quiet, and you will have time to get yourself organized before your day starts. Tidy up your desk and make a list of what you want to accomplish. Then, you can either work in silence or listen to some tunes before your coworkers start stopping by.

If you’re a social butterfly, invite your colleagues to join you. You can work together in a shared space or flex your collective imaginations in a brainstorming session. Be honest, though, about whether your friends will disrupt your productivity. If you think they will, schedule a group lunch or go out for drinks after work.

3 Ease Yourself In

In video games, the lowest level is usually the easiest one. As you advance, you gain experience and the challenges increase. When you return from a break, you can’t always expect to pick up exactly where you left off. Instead, look at your to-do list. Are there a few important tasks that you can quickly or easily get out of the way? Clearing away these tasks can free your mind from worry so you can concentrate on the difficult work. Besides, marking even short, simple tasks as “complete” will make you feel a sense of accomplishment.

Do all your assignments seem equally overwhelming? Find out why. Are you afraid of failure? Do you feel incompetent? Do you have all the knowledge necessary to be successful? MindBodyGreen suggests addressing the source of your resistance, and “leaning in” like a surfer: “Just like surfing a big wave — once you’re in it, there are only two choices — either lean in, make the drop, and do your best to surf the wave, or wipe out miserably. You might wipe out either way — but . . . “Let’s do this!” . . . feels more empowering than “Oh no!””

4 Make It Doable

If you focus on everything you have to do, you might start to feel stressed. Instead, break large projects into small chunks. You can organize your time into chunks. For example, you might set a timer and commit to working for fifteen minutes. When the alarm sounds, briefly turn your attention to something less demanding, such as answering an email or filing documents. After a few minutes, restart the timer and do it all again. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish in fifteen-minute intervals.

Not all tasks lend to chunking by time. Instead, try the step-by-step method. Consider whether you have to complete the steps of the task in order. Would it be more efficient to juggle the sections around and compile everything at the end? For a writing project, for instance, perhaps you want to print out a copy before you proofread. Some writers claim to catch more errors on paper than on a computer screen.

Regardless of how you organize your tasks, don’t forget to include brief breaks from intense activity. Using this method, you will find yourself on the last step before you know it.

Every task presents unique challenges, so it might help to do a little research about how you can get over a slump in your particular profession. To illustrate, writers can research how to overcome writer’s block and build some of the methods learned into their to-do list.

Do you have work to do right now? If you were reading this article as a form of procrastination, it’s time to put it away and put your nose to the grindstone. If you think of a reward and a way to make the task fun, break tasks down into small chunks, and start easy, it won’t even seem so bad. You can do it!

The Rise of the Helping Verb

You hire a fashion consultant to help you redesign your wardrobe. He tells you to get rid of your most recently acquired shoes. You gasp in surprise because you bought the shoes only a couple of days ago. All the celebrities are wearing them. How can they not be fashionable? You may ask the same thing about helping verbs. Aren’t they always in fashion? The short answer is no. New words are always emerging. All types of words, not just verbs, shift in meaning or become obsolete. For example, consider the case of thee and thou. These words were standard a few generations ago. Today, the pronoun whom is in danger of falling completely out of use. Dictionaries eliminate dozens of words every year to make room for new additions. Language is like a living thing, growing and adjusting to changing circumstances. In particular, the use of helping verbs is changing at a remarkable pace. What are some of the major trends and why are they occurring? Here is the story of the helping verb.

Auxiliary means “giving support or serving as an aid.” An auxiliary verb, then, is another name for a helping verb. So, these verbs help, or support, the main verb in the sentence. The three most common auxiliary verbs, to be, to do, and to have, are not experiencing much change. They are called the primary helping verbs. All three of them can serve as main verbs, but they perform special duties when used as helping verbs. Briefly, here is an overview of these popular verbs and their function.

Forms of to be often help the main verb express tense. Forms of to do appear in negative statements, questions, and emphatic statements. To do also helps speakers and writers avoid repetition by standing in for the main verb. The last of the primary helping verbs is to have. When you want to say that a particular action occurred at some earlier time, you use the past perfect tense with the aid of a form of to have: She had already eaten all the pizza when the movers arrived.

Let’s look at the rest of the auxiliary verbs. The modal verbs express ideas such as ability, uncertainty, necessity, and permission. In fact, the term modal means “noting or pertaining to mood.” Some of the modal verbs perform extra duty; they have more than one meaning. Let’s briefly look at how modals function.

Could and can express ability: Jim can bench press 150 pounds. Lina could run faster if she trained with a marathon coach. You can use may and might to represent possibilities: It looks like it might rain today. It may rain tomorrow. Modals such as must express necessity: I must listen more closely next time. Finally, may is also used for permission: You may go outside after you put your toys away.

Did the last example sound a little formal to you? Years ago, using may was the most common way to request or grant permission to do something. Nowadays, people are more likely to use can: Can I go outside after I put my toys away? One case study compared the use of can and may in personal letters. In letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, can mostly expressed “personal ability,” or what people were able to do. Because may could convey both personal ability and permission, some phrases were rather ambiguous, as in one historical example: “I begg [sic] of you to let Mrs. Warren send me word when I may attend you.” By the twentieth century, may hadn’t just become scarcer—its definition had narrowed, too. In the letters examined in the case study, it nearly always referred to possibility: “I may come over…”

To be clear, need to and going to are semi-modal verbs. True modal verbs don’t have an infinitive form or a past tense form. They never end in -ed or -ing. Semi-modal verbs sometimes act like main verbs and other times they function like modal verbs. Other modals that seem to be in flux are “might,” and “have to.” In the past, the verb must usually expressed necessity: I must run faster if I want to catch the train. Presently, people are more likely to talk about necessity with going to, have to, or need to: I am going to have to run faster if I want to catch the train. Ann needs to order some mealworms for her lizard.

In the old letters and in new documents, must hasn’t varied much in frequency, but it has expanded in meaning. In the earliest of the letters, must communicated personal obligation and not much else. Over time, writers began to use must to talk about other things. You can view seven definitions on Dictionary.com that show its broadened nuances. Which term replaced must? In the letters, it was “have to.” In everyday speech, “have got to” may be used. Must might have gone out of style as a way to convey necessity, but it is still completely in vogue in modern vocabulary.

In any case, it’s extremely difficult to detect grammatical trends within a few decades. Language is unpredictable. The article “Current change in the modal system of English” explains: “A change measured over a shorter period of thirty years or so, however, will not necessarily be completed in the time period, and it is impossible to know how, when, or even if a particular change will complete.” What’s more, the experts don’t agree on how each instance of the modals should be defined. The same article mentions studies by Jennifer Coates and Geoffrey Leech: “Coates (1983) states that have to and have got to are infrequent as epistemic modals and Leech (2003) claims that must is one of a few modals not becoming monosemous [limited to one meaning].”

So what’s the verdict? Should you throw out the declining helping verbs along with your faux-crocodile plaid loafers? Not so fast. While the data do conclude so far that the frequency of must declined between the 1960s and the 1990s, one of its freshest replacements, have got to, is going out of fashion as fast as it came into fashion. There may be a resurgence of must for expressing necessity, or some other way to express the idea of necessity may emerge. The point is, you can’t predict how fast or to what extent language will change over time. It is much easier to look back at the trends after several centuries have passed. If that’s the case, it will be the job of your great, great-grandchildren to figure out the fate of the helping verbs and fashion fads.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

It’s that time of year again. The days grow longer and the sunshine is determined to scorch. The parks fill up with children while picnics spread out in red and white gingham patches. The dog begs to go outside as we put away our heavy coats, hanging them neatly in closets. Long pants give way to shorts as coconut-scented oils fill the air with their perfume. It’s summer.

What phrases and books best evoke those fiery months? If someone bottled the essence of this golden growing season, what would it look like? It’s difficult to choose the best summer words, but let’s look at a few of our current contenders. Some are old, some are new, and some might surprise you.

Shakespeare: It’s impossible for me to think of summer without the Bard showing up. Sonnet 18, in addition to being the perfect love poem, encapsulates the summer months with unequaled, poetic grace. “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; / And every fair from fair sometime declines.” Could there be a better description of the summer sun as it pales in comparison to the author’s love? Shakespeare’s poetic brilliance reminds the reader to appreciate each golden day. “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” Summer won’t last, so enjoy it now.

Dandelion Wine: Arguably Ray Bradbury’s most famous book, Dandelion Wine reflects the beauty of summer like a calm blue lake reflects the sky. With star-bright passages that shimmer off the page, it is impossible to read the novel without traveling back to the best summers of our youth. Bradbury’s masterpiece is crafted of short vignettes, all centered on the Spaulding family and their summer rituals. Do yourself a favor and make it your own yearly ritual. Read it during those first June days, or in July, and you’ll be well equipped for the months to follow. “Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Nora Roberts: Roberts’ volumes fly off the bookstore shelves and seem to fit the profile of perfect summer reading material. The engaging plots, interesting characters, and heavy romance can quickly tick away the hot hours of July. And Roberts is no stranger to writing about summer. She whipped this one up, and it’s spot on: “There was nothing like a Saturday – unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball.”

Tuck Everlasting: Summer is a wonderful time to reacquaint yourself with those beautiful books from your childhood. Natalie Babbitt’s tale of immortality and the dangers it poses offers this sparkling gem about summer: “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

Passages that reference the summer season dot the literary landscape like wildflowers. The warmer months are a time of complex joys and freedoms, mixed in with sweat and hotdogs. Some of the greatest writers have tried to snare that magic onto a page. Henry James captured it most simply: “Summer afternoon – Summer afternoon… the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Can you think of a better way to sing the praises of summer? Share in the comments.

Does what you read influence how you write?

The Grammarly team is growing quickly, which means that we’re writing a lot of job descriptions to help us recruit top talent. One recent job post stated: “Salary will be commensurate with experience.”

Commensurate . . . commensurate . . . commensurate . . .

Perhaps you know what that word means; you may even understand how to use it in the context of a sentence. However, if you are like me, you have no idea how to actually say it aloud.

(In case you’re interested, here’s how.)

My inability to pronounce the word “commensurate” is a great example of how reading has made me a better writer. By reading others’ written job descriptions, I’ve learned specific text structures and language that I am now able to transfer to my own writing.

Today is National Reading Day, an annual event encouraging children to read. Although Grammarly is focused on improving English writing globally, reading is a topic that is dear to our hearts. After all, reading and writing are inextricably entwined.

Research has found that when children read extensively they become better writers. Additionally, reading provides young people with prior knowledge that they can use in their stories. Even professional writers understand the importance of reading others’ work. Here are the favorite books of some of our favorite writers:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [. . .] the story of Francie Nolan struggling up in a tenement slum through the cracks in the pavement to reach the sun. It may be the best book I’ve ever read about poverty, parenthood, the immigrant experience, and just about everything else. My firstborn daughter is named Francie Nolan.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

The Music Room, by Dennis McFarland

“I love this book because it is a haunting, touching, and beautifully written story about a deeply flawed family. I also love it because it was put into my hands more than 20 years ago by a young woman who said to me: ‘You must read this book.’ Did I ask that young woman to marry me because of McFarland’s book? That might be overstating things. But sometimes when someone changes your life by handing you a great book, she might be there to change your life in other ways as well.”

—Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

What do you think? Does what you read influence how you write?

Today, Grammarly is launching our 2^nd Annual Scholarship for Exceptional Writing, and we’re interested in your feedback.

For a chance to win a $1,000 scholarship, we’re inviting students to write a short essay responding to one of the questions below, and submit to scholarship@grammarly.com before February 24, 2014 at noon PT.

• How are reading and writing interconnected?
• How has reading improved the way you write?

Please see additional scholarship rules here. We’ll leave you with the thoughts of Robin Kimmerer: “With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”

Happy National Reading Day, writers.