Recently, my daughter asked me to help my granddaughter Julia, age 6, to help her with a drill sheet of math problems. Julia knew how to do the math but a page full of problems was daunting.

At first she tackled the page eagerly. She showed me how she liked to do the easy ones first. She skipped around and solved quite a few of them.

Then she needed to do the rest, which were more difficult. She looked and looked and then sighed.

“Try just one more,” I said.

“It’s too hard,” she whined.

And I just couldn’t coax her to do even one more problem.

“Let’s put on a timer,” I suggested.

“No, not a timer,” she pleaded.

“Let’s just try it, if you don’t finish, no big deal,” I replied.

So I set the timer with a generous allotment of time: ten minutes.

Once the timer started, Julia focused on her worksheet like a laser beam. She whipped through one problem after another and finished quickly. She didn’t even make a mistake.

That got me to thinking about why it’s so difficult for folks to get around to tasks to improve web content on their websites.

Typically, unless there’s a sale, there’s simply no urgency. So you procrastinate.

Maybe a deadline will help.

Why not try putting on a timer? Set it generously and see what happens. Bet you’ll be very pleasantly surprised.

Easy Web Tip #235: If you don’t have a deadline for a project to improve web content, create one.