When browsing the web I came across this post by Robert Blum. It sounds so simple and then I realised: I had done this before! One day, some years ago I decided to get through a large backlog of magazines. Something like 2 years’ worth of monthly computer magazines. Starting on the first it took me an hour to get half way, each article seemed to be interesting.
I half heartedly set a goal to finish the pile by that evening, but I wouldn’t accomplish that by reading everything. So I decided to finish the task in about half an hour. Immediately the focus changed. I took a whole different approach, first checking the table of contents and then only reading the most interesting articles. Later I only created my own ToC of articles I might want to read later on. I must confess I never did.

The whole task took more than the half hour I decided on, but as it was too small a timeframe to completely read all magazines, it forced me to take a different approach and that was the real intention.

This is more or less what Robert did as well and now that I remembered, I better use it for all my stuck, overwhelming and enormous tasks that are in my open loops list.

The idea is to trick your brain into a sense of urgency by setting the time frame too short for the task at hand. It is more or less the opposite of "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." [C. Northcote Parkinson, 1958]
It doesn’t really matter that you will not be able to finish in time, it forces you to pick strategies that will at least make you finish faster than the strategies you’ve chosen when there was “unlimited time” available.