I was on a road trip with a very good friend, heading to MOVE IT. We stopped at the services at 7am for a much needed coffee, and that’s when she had a massive “oh sh*t” moment.
So what exactly is an oh sh*t moment? It’s that lightbulb flash where your brain suddenly kicks in and says, argh, I haven’t done something really important.
My Own Oh Sh*t Moments
I’ve had plenty of these myself. Just recently, I realised I’d moved my show dates, only to then realise I hadn’t moved the photographer. That photographer is booked up a full year in advance. Panic doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Or the time I was on holiday and realised, en route, that I hadn’t paid my tax bill, and the deadline was that exact day.
My friend’s oh sh*t moment, the one that started this whole thought, was that she hadn’t submitted a bid for a job worth around £2,000. The deadline was 10am that morning. No laptop, no access to email, and a hundred miles from home.
Why Oh Sh*t Moments Are So Powerful
Here’s what’s genuinely interesting about these moments. In the second that panic hits, your clarity and focus become almost unnervingly accurate. You know exactly what needs to happen, and you know it has to happen right now. Every other distraction gets shut out completely. Your attention narrows onto the one task in front of you, and nothing else. It’s problem solving at its absolute sharpest, and it’s remarkable what you can achieve once your brain locks in like that.
This happens because urgency does something specific to focus. When a deadline suddenly becomes real and immediate, your brain stops weighing up whether a task is interesting, whether you feel like doing it, or whether there’s something easier to do first. All of that mental noise, the stuff that normally fuels procrastination, simply disappears. What’s left is pure, singular attention on the one thing that actually matters in that moment. It’s not that you suddenly gained new abilities. It’s that everything getting in the way of using the abilities you already had has been stripped out.
What If You Could Access That Focus Any Time?
Now imagine applying that same level of clarity and focus to your everyday to-do list, without needing an actual crisis to trigger it. Procrastination would become a thing of the past. You’d get through an enormous amount in a surprisingly short space of time.
Here’s the good news. You don’t need an actual emergency to borrow that level of focus. You can recreate the conditions of an oh sh*t moment deliberately, on your own terms, whenever you choose.
How To Recreate That Focus, Without The Panic
Pick one task, and only one. Not your whole to-do list, not “get through emails today.” One specific task. The narrowness is the whole point, it’s what an oh sh*t moment does naturally, and it’s what makes the focus so powerful.
Set a hard boundary around it. Decide, before you start, that you will not check emails, answer the phone, glance at Facebook, or even nip off for a tea break until that one task is finished. Treat the boundary as non-negotiable, the same way you would if the deadline were genuinely today.
Give yourself an artificial deadline. Part of what makes an oh sh*t moment so effective is the fact that there’s no room to negotiate with the clock. Recreate that. Set a timer. Tell yourself it’s done by 11am, not “at some point today.” A vague deadline lets your brain relax back into old habits. A specific, close deadline keeps that same sharp urgency alive.
Remove the temptation before you start, not during. Put your phone in another room. Close every browser tab that isn’t related to the task. Log out of anything that could pull your attention sideways. An oh sh*t moment works partly because there’s genuinely nowhere else for your attention to go. Build that same environment for yourself on purpose.
Notice how it feels when you finish. That rush of having actually finished something, properly, without half your attention leaking away to five other places, is worth paying attention to. It’s the same feeling you get after surviving an actual oh sh*t moment, and once you’ve felt it without the panic attached, it becomes far easier to choose it again deliberately.
Try It
Try it without the crisis. Borrow the premise of the oh sh*t moment on your own terms. Pick one task. Shut out everything else. Start it, and finish it, without dipping into emails, phone calls, social media, or even a tea break until it’s done.
You’ll genuinely be amazed at what you can achieve.
If you liked this, then why not share it with a friend. While you are here if planning is what you need (Hint Hint) to help get you out of procrastination then head to my shop I have LOTS of planning tools. My Den members affectionately call me ‘The Queen of Planning’ go check it out https://theden.company/product-shop/
