Guest Post Introduction:
Ladies and Gentlemen! I want to introduce you to Zen Conqueror, a dear friend of mine who is an exceptional writer and thinker. Zen shares his ideas and wisdom on Discipline, Mental Toughness, and psychology, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to have him here on my blog.
Zen wrote an incredible article on conquering procrastination, so buckle up, prepare your notebook and take notes during the wild ride.
Without further ado, the stage is yours Zen:
βProcrastinationβ, The silent killer of hopes and dreams. For different reasons, people will avoid and/or put off even the most critical tasks in their life. Instead of handling them in the present, they let the future deal with their problems. This is usually at the cost of increased stress or failure to execute.
Let me ask you this, When have you ever pushed something off until the last second and ended up being glad that you did? When have you ever said to yourself βBoy, Iβm sure glad I wasted all that time I could have usedβ?
Odds are, probably never. But simply saying βStop doing thatβ doesnβt help most people, so here are 8 tactics to help you battle against procrastination.
1. Preparation
One of the biggest reasons people procrastinate is because they have a hard time breaking inertia. There is an amount of βfrictionβ that is involved in transitioning from rest to action that has to be overcome. This is where most people get stuck, they over-exaggerate in their minds how much effort is required to take action.
Even if itβs something as simple as putting on gym clothes and heading out the door. Because once the person has made it this far, thereβs a 99% chance theyβre going to make it to the gym. But instead, they canβt get past the βperceivedβ mountain theyβre staring up at that is the friction of getting started.
With all this being said, the best thing we can do is to reduce the friction required to get started. And the easiest way to do that is to prepare in advance.
This can look like lying out your gym clothes the night before so that all you have to do in the morning is get up and put on the clothes. Or, another example would be meal prepping for the week in advance so that you donβt have to prepare your meals every single day. However you choose to approach this, just remember: An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of stress.
2. Avoid Perfection
News flash: Perfection doesnβt exist and youβre only wasting your time aiming for it.
Donβt be the person who spends your entire life waiting for the perfect moment that will never come. Stop being so afraid of screwing up. In fact, start screwing up as much as possible. Youβll reach your goals and learn a lot more in a shorter amount of time than you ever would waiting for the perfect opportunity.
Ask a novice how many times theyβve messed up and theyβll be able to give you an exact number. Ask a master and theyβll tell you theyβve stopped counting. Hereβs the truth: Even if perfect was attainable, it wouldnβt be by waiting for it, it would be from messing up and learning from the mistake over and over again.
3. Fix Your Environment
This is in the same realm as preparation but on a wider scale. Because no one, and I mean no one, is immune to their environment. We have evolved to be very in tune with the environment that weβre in, itβs one of the reasons weβve survived as a species this far.
When your external world is a mess, so is your internal world. Set up your environment in a fashion that enhances your ability to perform the work you need to do. Clean your desk, tidy your home, organize your files, etc. This will accomplish two things. First, youβll gain a lot more mental clarity because your environment isnβt such a mess. Second, itβll make it a lot easier to physically do that work that you need to do (Have you ever tried to write an article with a cluttered desk? I personally cannot stand it). And you know what both of these help with? Bingo. They reduce the friction required to break inertia.
4. Prioritization
Trying to do 100 things at once will often result in nothing being accomplished. And even if something is accomplished, itβs probably with subpar effort. Not to mention the fact that multitasking doesnβt even actually exist. You read that right, our brains cannot multitask. What people call multitasking is actually our brain having to switch back and forth between tasks, which it is not inherently good at doing. This is one of the major reasons for procrastination.
This is why itβs much better to focus on one task simultaneously. Not only will your results be better, but youβll also probably accomplish your list of things to do faster than if you tried to do everything at once. Because it takes our brain a bit to βwarm upβ to a new task every time it has to switch its focus. This is only exacerbated when trying to multitask because every time it switches tasks itβs forced to go through that lag of βwarming upβ again.
5. Use The 5-Minute Rule
Another thing that contributes to the βmountainβ of friction keeping a person from taking action is the intimidation of how much work theyβre going to have to do. Instead of worrying about taking the first step, theyβre already imagining the entire journey. This is where the 5-minute rule can be useful to destroy procrastination.
When thereβs something you need to do, but youβre wanting to put it off, just commit 5 minutes to it. Once the 5 minutes are up if you still fill like quitting then you can give yourself permission to stop and try again later. But the caveat is that for the 5 minutes, you have to give your full effort towards the task youβre wanting to do. Re-using the example of going to the gym, committing to getting up, putting on your clothes, and getting in your car. If you still feel like not going at that point, youβre free to quit.
6. Forgive Yourself
Feelings of regret are a waste of time and only hold you back. Yeah, youβve procrastinated in the past, and youβll probably do it again. Remember, no one is perfect. Stop identifying with past mistakes. Youβve procrastinated, but thereβs no reason you have to be a procrastinator.
I preach daily about building discipline and putting in the work, does that mean I never have my lazy moment? Nope, I still have days where I’m the epitome of laziness, but do I let that hold me back and define me? Hell no. I learn my lesson, let it go, and make sure I do better next time. Youβre not a robot, youβre a human being. Remember that whenever you feel guilty about procrastination.
7. Introspection
We all have different reasons that the friction that results in procrastination shows up. And each reason may require a different approach to make it past the friction. Using the gym example again, you may not have a hard time going to the gym because youβre lazy, but because youβre embarrassed to work out around other people.
If thatβs the case, you could start working out at home or going to a less crowded gym. The point is you need to figure out why it is that youβre procrastinating so that you can figure out what you need to do to reduce the friction thatβs keeping you from taking action. Building awareness is a skill that seems to be lost in our modern again, but with practice and a lot of paying attention to how you feel and think, you can start to figure out what it is thatβs holding you back.
8. Have An Accountability Partner
You are more likely to fulfill a promise or obligation if you make a public statement about it. This is taking advantage of our evolutionarily innate desire to be publicly accepted, which most of the time does more harm than good, but this is an instance where it is useful. And where an advantage can be claimed, make sure you do so.
So, find someone you trust that you wouldnβt want to let down and tell them about your goals. Tell them to hold you accountable and make sure you follow through with it, doing this makes you way more likely to follow through.
Thanks for reading.
If you found value in this post and would like more from me, you can find me on Twitter at @ZenConqueror
As always, thank you for reading!
I’m pretty sure that by now you have a wide range of tools in your possession to completely obliterate procrastination, and I sincerely thank Zen for providing us with such a powerful article.
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Yours,
Limitless Reader