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Don't let procrastination hinder your goals. Steps to stop procrastinating...
“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” ―Charles Dickens
Every time you think about doing something that you feel unmotivated or too lazy to get it done, you just grab your phone and start endless hours of scrolling until you forget about what you were supposed to do?
Procrastination is a form of Stress relief. You procrastinate because the things you know you should be doing get you stressed, so you do anything else just to distract yourself and avoid doing them.
The causes of procrastination
- Lack of Organization: You lack an action plan for getting things done. You feel lazy or lost because you haven’t organized yourself, so you don’t know where to start or what to do next and this makes you feel like you have a million things pending.
- Lack of Knowledge: You haven’t learned or informed yourself on how to get things done so you feel lazy about doing them because you feel it is going to take forever or it would be a waste of time.
- Fear: You fear the results of getting those things done won’t be what you expect them to be. These fears may have to do with failure, embarrassment, or negative results.
- Boredness: Sometimes you just feel it is going to be boring so you put it off.
Types of procrastinators
To stop procrastinating you must first identify what kind of procrastinator you are:
- The fearful: You fear negative results or failure. You feel that you won't succeed so you don't even try it.
- The perfectionist: This one is also related to fear but instead of not trying you do the opposite, you want it to be so perfect that you never finish it.
- The over-doer: Or the blind-doer as I like to call it. You commit yourself to so many tasks that you are always busy and you can't see which tasks are the important ones to achieve your goals.
- The last-minute-doer: You believe you perform better under pressure so you always leave things for the last minute in order to feel that pressure. This usually results in poor quality outcomes which are, most of the times, equal to not actually finishing them.
- The fantasizer: You think you are going to achieve your goals by some kind of divine intervention, that universe will provide and pieces will fall into place by themselves without you having to work hard for it.
- The defier: Someone else imposed it so you just won't do it to make that person feel or notice that you are not happy with it.
Collar procrastination
These are my personal steps or requirements to stop procrastinating:
- Don't be a lazy son of a...
Here it goes:
- Acquire the necessary knowledge: If you don't know how to get it done, learn it, acquire the skills for it. Lack of knowledge is lack of desire. Invest time in preparing yourself for it.
- Make an action plan: Don't go forward blindly. Don't get out of bed and start your day with whatever task comes to your mind that morning. Write down all your tasks, sort them by order of importance, divide them into days-weeks-months. Make a beautiful calendar 📆 for prosperity.
- Failure is the mother of success: If you fear failure you will not get far. No one ever got far without failing. If you don't try you will never know. Focus on effort not results, hard work will always take you there eventually. Fall down once, stand up twice.
- Little things make big things happen: In your path towards success you will encounter many little annoying tasks which will be a pain in "you know where". You will have to force yourself to do these little tasks in order to achieve the bigger goal. Always remind yourself that this part of the process is where many others fail and can be the difference in winning or losing.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go...: This is a very effective exercise proven by science which involves your prefrontal cortex lobe. I won't write all the scientific explanations because it is boring but trust me, it works. Every time you feel you are about to procrastinate count down from 5 to 1 and immediately after that proceed to your task. Counting causes a distraction in your brain that drives away your laziness.
Conclusion
Procrastination is a form of Stress relief. You procrastinate because the things you know you should be doing get you stressed, so you do anything else just to distract yourself and avoid doing them.
To avoid procrastinating you must first identify which type of procastinator are you and then proceed to make all the necessary steps in order to complete your tasks: acquire all the necessary knowledge, make and action plan and don't fear failure.