Category: Procrastination
Here I am, once again, last week I didn’t post and it’s the second time in a row that I post only once every second week, that’s half the productivity I had before. It seems I’m running out of gas and that’s a very bad sign. If we’ve learned anything together is that we must keep on going, and I am the first one that has to show this perseverance and push, so I will. And with that I can start with our post. This week I’d like to talk about how we procrastinate in the most crass way we can, by being completely lazy and oblivious to our future. A quick comment over this, because it seems to have a contradiction in it. We are lazy and don’t do what is good for our future selves, so it seems that we are living the moment, nothing more zen than that, right? Not so fast grasshopper, sometimes we only do what we feel like doing right then, but not because it’s important but because it can give us a strong immediate rush. And then, after that rush we are back where we started, seeking to fill a void we don’t know how to fill or with what, so, we go ahead and look for that rush, and end up binge watching some dull television series, while we eat junk and don’t even get out of our pajamas for the whole weekend, just wasting away. Man what a depressing sight! But, what is a person on the 21st century that has most of the needs met to do? How can I find meaning and purpose? How can I fight that pull from the mundane but colorful world of junk food, junk music, junk TV, junk cinema, junk everything?
This is not a trivial problem for humanity, and it has been with us for a long time. Religious texts have some saying on this although they are more versed on rewarding us later they have some wisdom in them, but you have to sieve it out, and that can be time consuming and dangerous. So I like more to the point texts, like Seneca’s “On the shortness of life” that says “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it” this when life expectancy was a mere 47 years, if you survived childhood that is. So, we see that we have that problem always, we tend to waste our lives, we seek immediate pleasures, we go from one rush to another always ending up feeling empty. You might argue that I’m quoting Seneca, stoicism personified, but what about other ideas? Well, let’s see what the other side has to say, the epicureans, but the real one, I won’t be dragged into the “mud of hedonism”. Our good old friend Epicurus, 300 years before Seneca, stated that pleasure is the greatest good, but not the pleasure given by this rushes, that one prevents us from living a life with the least pain possible, because in the intervals of this pleasurable rushes we sink in horrible pain. I will stop right here with this philosophers because this is not the point here. My intention is getting us to do what is best for us, even when this might not seem like doing it. The contradiction remains seemingly then, we want to live the moment but we can’t live only from one pleasure rush to the next, we must think of the future, but that seems not to be living the moment, so how can I do it? The way we bridge this gap is by realizing that even if the rush is lived in the moment, the time afterwards it is not, when the rush is over we seek a new one, and that is when we are not living in the moment, we want to escape the moment and get that rush once again. We forget ourselves and all around us to seek the rush, in the most extreme cases this is called an addiction and the addict can forgo everything just to get that next rush.
When we do live in the moment we are not searching for our next rush, as a matter of fact we are not searching actively for anything. We are completely self regulated. We do what is that we have to do, right there and then. It sounds impossible and yet it is not. When you live in the moment completely you are still doing your tasks and chores, as well you should, and if that task implies you thinking about the future and making plans, you’ll do them, but you are not wishing that you were somewhere else, you’re just planning what you’ll do on another time. This is a difference that is as big as night and day, as full and empty, as life and death, although not as permanent. When we fail to self regulate we find that not only are we making ourselves miserable by getting this rushes, but also by actively knowing that we are procrastinating on what we should really be doing, we always have a better option than that pursuit of the rush, and we know it, and we feel guilty when we don’t seek it.
We see now that self regulation is important, so what to do to get us to do it? We can use many of the tools we’ve discussed before, setting triggers, being more empathic, reviewing our long term goals periodically so we can more easily bring them to the front of our mind when we feel like slipping, coping with change, embracing it and not fighting it, etc. We can go on and on, but what is really important is our willingness to actively fight and self regulate, as it comes out is an important tool in our box to fight procrastination with. How well do you self regulate? Please comment below or on our facebook page.
The title comes from a quote from the title of Guy Kawasaki’s book because it fits so well to the point I want to make, even though his book is about entrepreneurship and this post, well, is not. Now, what this post is about is getting started. Getting started might seem so simple, and in a way it is, but, at least for us procrastinators, it is the hardest part to get to. Starting means being decided, being committed, being there. As we get ready keep fumbling and stumbling, we might think things twice or thrice, yes, that’s a word, and is important to know words, before thinking them once again, and that’s OK, we can think and plan all we want, but when it’s time to start, we start.
When we start we engage, we build, we produce. By starting we set on a journey, we give our lives some sense, even if the task can seem meaningless or is a lifelong journey. Starting is something we do all the time. Every morning we start a new day, we start a new meal or we start a new commute. We are constantly starting. You might think it’s not the same thing because we are repeating and we know what will happen. In a way you do, although you already know that not two days are the same, similar, but not the same, surprises happen. And let’s use that familiarity with our willingness to start. We don’t even think it twice before going out the door in the morning. Familiarity of what’s to come has diluted the fear or anxiety we might have had before. We know where we’re going, what route we will take, how much time it’ll take and we have it pretty much known. And that can be the same thing for something new we are going to embrace for the first time. How? By using some of many visualization techniques that are available to us. I have already talked a little about visualization in my post “Seeing the future” that you might want to check out. You can then visualize your way into familiarity and that will help reduce your fear. We can overcome all when we start, we can overcome none when we don’t. Starting is getting the ball rolling, we roll and roll and roll when we’ve started, but not when we are yet to do so. Even in physics there is more resistance to start than to keep on moving, what’s called static friction and dynamic friction, it takes less work to keep an object in motion than to put it in motion. We are the same, once we are in motion it takes less work, in this case, willpower, to keep going than what it took us to start moving. What can we do to start then if that is the hardest part? We make up excuses, like the following ones.
The “It’s too late excuse”. We’ve all been there, when we face the excuse that “it’s too late now, why even bother” and unless it physically is too late then any moment is a good one to start.
The “I’ll do it later” excuse. It’s good to wait for the right moment to do something, no use in getting to the office at 2:00 AM or starting preparing for the New Year in the first week of March. But when the time is right, we start.
The “I’m not ready” excuse. This one’s a little trickier because we might not be ready. But we can feel it when we are genuinely not ready and when we are just stalling. When we are getting ready we are eager to start, when we are stalling, we are not.
The “I don’t know why I am doing this” excuse. Again, this one is also a little tricky, because we might not know why we are doing something, we have to figure it out first. Most of the time a valid reason not to do something is when we are being forced to do it by someone who is manipulating us. For all other reasons, we take the Nike stance and “Just do it”
Last but not least, the “I don’t want to do it” excuse. Like the last one this can have some validity, but we can feel it in our gut when it doesn’t, then we can also “Just do it” and start.
Now, starting is easier than doing, we are not committing ourselves to go all the way, just starting. We’ll just start. We’ll only lay the first brick. But we know how this works, and we’ve seen above how much easier it is to go on than to start. Once we start we tend to keep on going, inertia takes over and we go on and on and on until we’re done or until a stronger force stops us. I hope this helps you, remember, just getting started helps you getting to the finish line in a way you didn’t imagine it before. I’d love to read your comments about this and other posts either here or on our Facebook page, and thanks for reading.
This is the third and last post on the Productivity Equivalence. We have worked on the positive elements of the equivalence and now it’s time to work on the negative ones.
PE = Sleep + Diet + Exercise + Meditation/Prayer/Silence – Stress – Distractions
The negative elements are stress and distractions. As I said before you have maybe other feelings and attitudes that you would like to put on the side. Be my guest, please accommodate this equivalence best fits your needs, this is what it is for, so you can have an idea of what is working for you and what is working against you.
- Stress. As we know stress can be very harmful. High levels of cortisol for prolonged periods of time have been known to cause harm to the body. This stress causes also behavior changes that take a toll, most of the time a very heavy one, on our relationships. Some might be saying right now “well, be less stressed, easier said than done” Yes, it’s easy to say, but it’s also easy to do. What’s not easy is to take the right step and make the decision to do it, that’s the hard part. We have to understand that the decisions we make affect the present and the future. What we have from our past cannot be changed, it is done, it is what has brought us to where we are right now. At each present moment we can make decisions that transform our lives, make or not make a phone call, visit or not someone, write or not a story, keep or not a relationship. We have to decide what we want for us right now.If we don’t do it ourselves somebody else will or something else will. So it’s really that easy we have to deal with the stress you have to decide if you want to continue living a stressful life or not. if we decide we want to continue to leave stressful life then we must understand the price but we are willing to pay. we don’t want to live a stressful life and the only way to reduce the stress is to scale down then that is something we have to do. In the end it’s our choice, it is what we want and, as with everything else, we are responsible. I am not advocating that we have to eliminate all stress from our lives, some stress is useful, some stress is necessary. Without stress there is no excitement, no fun, no triumph. We need stress, but as we need water, too much water we drown and die, too little water we dry up and die, we need just enough.
- Distractions. Distractions are those activities that do not help us get closer to our goals. When we procrastinate and don’t do what we have to do we are getting distracted. When we were little and people told us “you can be anything” what they meant was “you can be whatever you set your goals to, and then work your ass off to get them” and distractions are what will keep us from reaching those goals. Some will start saying “you can’t be an NBA player, you’re too short” That’s true, but I can still play basketball, and work for the NBA or an NBA team, or a sportswear company that sells basketball apparel, I can still be all basketball if that’s what I want. But I have to focus on that, all the time. Distractions can take me offcourse in a big way, as would be getting stuck in a job that’s I hate because “I have to pay the bills” and never trying to build an alternate reality and then moving to that, or can take me offcourse in a subtle but constant way, as would be watching two hours of TV every night to “relax”, or wasting ten minutes on Facebook every hour. All those are examples of distractions. One of the most effective tools in our belt against distraction is the ability to focus. Yes, as I said many times before on other posts, being able to focus is one of the abilities we need to develop. The ability to focus and to regain focus quickly if it is lost for a moment is of paramount importance. An example of regaining focus quickly is being able to get back to what’s important seconds after being interrupted by a phone call, and alarm, an impromptu visit from a colleague with an unimportant question. But also being able to focus on long term goals. That focus, that has to be permanent for long periods of time has to deal with other different distractions. You get distracted when you get discouraged, discouraged because you can’t see the result of your labor and after a while you angst and question if the seed you planted will in the end bear the fruits you desire. You get distracted when you see other opportunities pass you by and you wonder if there are making the right choice. You get distracted by your entourage when they question your sanity and the value of what will be gained and instead of pushing you and helping you they want you to stop and hinder you. All of this requires courage yes, but most of all requires focus, and that’s what you have to train for, every single day.
So there you have it, we’ve taken three posts but we have dissected the Productivity Equivalence. As I said before, you might have other parameters you’d like to keep track off for your own version of the equivalence, but if you don’t, feel free to use this one, and for every action that you engage in check where it affects the most, where it puts in and where it puts out and decide on that information if it’s good or bad. As always, I’d love to read your comments on the subject, thank you for reading.
As promised here’s the second part, maybe we’ll have to stretch this out even more, but I think it’s worth it. We saw last time the Productivity Equivalence, this one:
PE = Sleep + Diet + Exercise + Meditation/Prayer/Silence – Stress – Distractions
We talked about the first two components, Sleep and Diet. I’d like to finish with the diet entry fast with this.
Diet, part 2 and ending. When we talk about diet and productivity we also need to talk about our immediate intake of food and drink and our immediate productivity. It’s clear that a three martini lunch on a daily basis not only will destroy our liver in the long run but our productivity that afternoon, as a matter of fact, even if we don’t do it ever again, that afternoon is gone. So, to bring this more down to earth, we need to seek foods that are good for us in the long run, but also we need to have at our disposal foods that can help us immediately. A cup of coffee will help you be more alert, a lunch heavy on fatty food and meat will have the opposite effect, but I am not a dietitian and know nothing about nutrition, just about productivity so go see a specialist before doing anything “crazy”. Seek their help, after all, they have all those student loans to pay, you’ll be helping them too.
Exercise. Another no brainer, wow, all the things we know we should do but somehow, we don’t, we keep putting them off and… you’re right, procrastinate, you’re a smart bunch, that’s why I like you. Now, not only need you to get your weekly cardio, and you need to make muscle, you need to activate your body at the gym if this is something you can afford, there’s more to it. We need to move, upstairs and downstairs, up the hall and down the hall, take periodic walks, stand up as much as you can because, drum roll, latest studies have found that sitting is killing us. Yes, you read it right. Sitting is the new smoking, so they say. The studies are very compelling suggesting your are doing a horrible disservice to your insides by sitting down on a chair, just by doing what seems to be nothing. This is where the standing desks craze comes from, then some smart guy figured out that since he was already standing he might as well do a couple of miles and incorporated a treadmill to the mix and there you go, the treadmill desk was born, and then this guy came with this idea and the “rat race” was finally materialized with this 
hamster wheel desk…
But I digress. Don’t sit down all day, it will kill you, get your body moving and you’ll be better off.
Meditation/Prayer/Silence. Now this is where the juicy part is on this whole Equivalence is. You might say “what does standing still have to do with doing more? You make no sense!” so glad you asked. Meditation, oh sweet meditation. I’m a new but fully convinced convert on the value of meditation. I’ve been doing it on a daily basis for the last 6 months and it has changed my life, or at least my perception of my life. I’m now more calm, less irritable, and those of you who know me know what I mean, am I right? I don’t get angry as I did before, and most of all I’m more aware of my role in my life and that of others. I’m a much better listener also, because I can much better stop listening to my own inner narrator, I have a much better grasp of reality around me. If you don’t like meditation I suggest you give it a try, and then another, at least 6 months of daily practice. I am not kidding, you know you need to slow some things down, mainly in your head, and this will help you, I am positive about that. What’s that? You don’t want to do it even after what you know about it? You’re like a smoker who won’t quit! But OK. Are you religious? Try praying, yes, pray, but don’t enter in a dialog with the supreme being of your choosing, no, just say your prayers, don’t think about them, don’t try to find a meaning, no nothing, while you’re praying just pray, that’s it. What now? You won’t meditate and won’t pray either? Sit in silence then, don’t lay back because you’ll fall asleep, sit, on the floor preferably, and stay in silence. Don’t try to think about your day, or the stuff you have to do, or what you need, or nothing. Silence around you and in you. You’ll need to concentrate on something, use your favorite tree from when you were a kid, concentrate on it. Do it again and again, get distracted? Back to the tree, remembered something? It can wait 5 minutes, back to the tree. Visualize in your head all you can remember from that tree. Do this five to ten minutes everyday for at least 6 months. Your life will change.
Well, there you have it, we’re out of time, and when I say we I mean you, I want to keep this posts as informative but short as possible because I know time is of the essence. Please share this on your Facebook wall if you found it informative, and comment, here or on the social media app of your choosing, have a great day.
Since the last quarter of 2015 I’ve been changing my habits to positively change my life. I’ve changed the way I see time and also what I do with it. All of this to start applying the “Productivity Equivalence” or SE for short.
PE = Sleep + Diet + Exercise + Meditation/Prayer/Silence – Stress – Distractions
This simple equivalence tells you where to put in and were to take out to attain a higher level of productivity. Higher levels of productivity give you more results, whether your goal is being healthier, spending more time with your family, being wealthier. What this means is simple. You can’t get better results by removing where you should be adding and adding where you should be removing. Also, you can’t eliminate any of the components totally, either the good ones or the bad ones. The good ones have minimums you have to try to achieve and the bad ones, no matter how hard you try to eliminate them they find a way to creep up again if you ever take your eye off of them. You can’t, for instance, stop sleeping altogether and use that time to exercise because that would not work, the result would be a lesser PE value than before. And remember, this is only an equivalence, it’s not a complete equation for Productivity, you can think of things missing here that are important to you. You should put them in and evaluate for yourself what is better. I use it as a reminder and as a guide of what to look for if I suddenly notice a drop in my productivity, so I can make an introspective assessment of what might have changed on this equivalency and work on that.
Let’s take a moment now to view the components.
- Sleep. You can tell me “I can’t dream of increasing my sleep time, pun intended, that would reduce my productivity, I need to work, take care of of the kids the house all of that, I can’t afford to sleep” A very common objection to the sleep suggestion. I get it, life is complicated, requires a lot of work and time, you could never sleep more. But here’s the sad part. Sleep deprivation has health and psychological consequences, and the worse part is that even a small deviation from our ideal amount of sleep for a prolonged period can have long term consequences. That being said, an all nighter won’t kill you, but try to make them as few as possible.
- Diet. This one is obvious, we need to eat right, I don’t need to tell you that, again. Now, maybe something you didn’t know is this hypothesis that says that our willpower is like a gas tank, we can use it again and again and again until it’s drained and then we succumb to temptation much easier. What does that mean? That we need to be careful on what we use our willpower. If we have to refrain ourselves from taking a donut instead of a piece of fruit from a platter in a conference, then we will have used some willpower to do that, if we have to choose from taking the elevator instead of the stairs then again, willpower. What to do then? We need to save our willpower for really important things. We can remove this decisions in two ways. Always make a decision in advance, we talked about triggers before, well, here’s an example of one of them. “If I have to go up I always take the stairs” “If I want a snack I’ll never eat pastry” We decide beforehand what we want. We can compound that with physically removing temptation and get as far as we can from those delicious chocolate chip cookies.
So, as I’ve accustomed you to this before I won’t change it today. I’m going to stop here for length but I’ll continue tomorrow, how about that, a two day piece. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you, please comment down here, even if it’s only to say hello.
Categories
Resistance
I’m not going to talk about Valentine’s day.
I am doing this even though I don’t really feel like it today. You know the feeling. Sometimes your head wants to be in another place. You can’t seem to find the drive that just yesterday you had to accomplish something. You start having doubts again “Is this worth it?” “Am I good enough?” “Am I the real deal?” It’s a real emotional see saw, am I right? All of this happens to all of us, if it doesn’t happen to you you might be a psychopath, but that’s another story. OK, we all feel this, but what is it then? Glad you asked. This feelings, even though they are not equal, can be bundled in the same space. You can see they’re not equal because the “Am I good enough?” feeling is from someone who is yet to make his mark, but the “Am I the real deal?”, technically called “impostor syndrome”, comes from someone who is already crushing it yet she fears she will be seen for what she is, to her doubting self, a fraud. All this comes from one simple force, Resistance.
“Resistance: the attempt to prevent something by action or argument.” Resistance is a force of nature, of human nature. It’s always there, when we are awake, when we sleep, when we feel cheerful, when we feel gloomy, when we are “in the zone” or when we are “in a rut”, Resistance is always there. We might think we’ve beaten it, but we haven’t. The same way the eagle doesn’t defeat 
gravity when it soars through the sky, because it will have to face it again after sleeping and needing to hunt for another meal. And that is a good thing. It’s a good thing because fighting Resistance is what builds us up. We lift weights in a gym because they cause resistance to our movement and we build muscle from that. We memorize, and have some trouble doing it, because we want to be able to access information later on, and use it, but there is resistance in the memorization process, at least for me.
Resistance is. Resistance will always be there. And it’s relentless. And, as Steven Pressfield said “Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill.” Resistance seems to want things to stay the same, but in reality, we know things can’t stay the same, ever. Resistance then wants us to stop moving, to prevent us from provoking that change and produce something. Resistance wants to let things rot. We want to help things live. We want to create. We want to help others create. We want to fight Resistance on every opportunity we get. We fight Resistance every time we decide to write another word, brush another line, talk with one more person, send one more business email, review one more expense report. We fight Resistance all the time we move forward on our creative space. And that’s all there is to it, with Resistance. We only need to know that it’ll never, ever, go away. It will always be there to hold us back. And that is good to know. It’s good to know because we can count on it as we can count on gravity. We can use it to make us go forward. We can use it to make us stronger. We can use it to produce better work everyday. We can use it to force us to stop procrastinating. What? You thought I wouldn’t be able to make a reference to procrastination? It was implied all this time and only in the end did I allow it to show it’s head here.
When you go on this morning, minding your own business, and you feel Resistance, I hope you’re able to recognize it. When you do, first thing before fighting it I want you to recognize it. I want you to see it curiously, and acknowledge it’s existence and power. Then you fight it. You’ll find this way is clearer, you will have more options and you’ll be more successful. Tell us how Resistance has been trying to get you? We’d all love to read it down here in the comments.
A few weeks back, in my post titled “What kind of procrastinator are you?” we talked about the different kinds of procrastinators. I want to revisit and expand on the ones that have the “student’s syndrome”. We’ve seen how they leave until the last possible moment their tasks, and then rush on to do them, their bodies full of adrenaline, cortisol, from within, and from the outside they might use stimulants such as caffeine, taurine or even others even more intense substances. In the future I will refer to this type of procrastinator as “The Rusher”, because, he rushes to get his job done, sometimes even regardless of the consequences.
The Rusher goes to extremes to get the things done at the last possible moment, just when the pressure, exhilaration and anxiety surpass his content and calm brought by doing something else. Now, this would be the end of the conversation if not for the fact that, more often than not, this rush brings unwanted results. As he sprints to the finish line The Rusher might want to cut some corners, maybe not on the job he’s doing if he’s got high standards, but on the other aspects of his personal and professional lives.
The Rusher, is by his procrastination a risk taker, as he won’t be taking into account that Murphy may break havoc with his plans of finishing the task. That’s when an unexpected outage in the Internet, an empty printer cartridge, a late delivery all become life or death emergencies that have to be handled at any cost. The procrastinator suddenly starts asking for favors left and right, and his relationships might suffer from this or he might end up indebted much more for this help for much more than the value of the favor entitled in other more normal situations. Also our Rusher might, for example, neglect his commitments to other people or other projects, stressing unwittingly those relationships. All of this without the need of there being an extra setback on the task at hand. The simple fact of having to set everything aside because all available time, every ounce of energy, all of the attention have to be concentrated on the task can cause problems with others. A commitment previously engaged, could be even previous to the assignment or existence of the task, might have to be canceled because it’s priority suddenly drops, as the task’s rises. That commitment is now a casualty of The Rusher’s procrastination. The Rusher is no longer harming himself, he’s harming others who now suffer from this “Second Hand Procrastination”. As second hand smoking is unhealthy second hand procrastination is also harmful to the ones around the procrastinator. It cost them his time, his affections, and it can even have a monetary cost with things as late fees, non refundable tickets going to waste and others. In his professional life The Rusher might even be affecting his coworkers and subordinates, by making them miss important personal activities because of having to rush to finish some task that was waiting on his desk for 2 weeks but now has to be finished by morning. This is one of multitude of reasons why reducing our procrastinating is important. It gives us more clarity, more options, improves the chances of success and might even save a relationship or two.
Has this nudged you to work on your procrastination issues? If so, or even if not, I’d love to read some comments bellow, in the mean time, have an excellent week, and remember that on Sunday it’s Saint Valentine, so better be prepared so you don’t have to cancel it with a work emergency, lack of reservations or whatever other thing you’re putting off.
Hello everyone. Today I bring you another tool that will help you take control of your time and therefore be less prone to procrastinate. Remember when you where young (you shone like the sun) no no, really, remember your school days? Remember how you used to get all this things done, at least in the morning? And then, in the afternoons, if you where left to fend for yourselves time slowed down? Maybe you wasted the afternoon watching TV, or some went outside to play. Some might have had extracurricular activities, most didn’t. Try to remember how time seemed to change its pace from morning to afternoon. One reason that might have been was the existence of the school schedule. Give it a thought. In the mornings all of your activities were planned beforehand. You woke up everyday at the same time, had a morning routine and then you went to school. Once in school you had a clear schedule. And it was great. It was great for your productivity, maybe not very fun but you got stuff done. On the other hand, the afternoons were loads of fun, when you could figure out what you wanted to do with them. In the end it mostly turned our to be same old same old, am I right? If your schedule wasn’t prepared by an adult for you had to think of something yourself and that could take some time. Well, we are the adults now. We’ve got to take care of our schedules. And that can be a daunting task. I know that some parts of our day are fixed, most of all the mornings, but that’s only because we tend to get up as late as possible. After the morning rush we are set free to go on with our day. Whether we work a regular job, we are independent, we don’t work or whatever it is that we do with our days we still have the day ahead of us. We still have all this time that has to be filled with, if we do it right, meaningful activities. And that’s where procrastination comes in, because if we don’t figure out, with preparation, what this activities are going to be we can be drawn to other tasks less important and more urgent, or so they seem at the time, or we can end up wasting our time because we haven’t solved the puzzle in our head of what it is we want to do. I recommend then that we schedule our days. Like when we were in school. We can schedule our tasks for every hour of the day. Sounds a little crazy I know, but the bigger procrastinator you are the more help you need. You need to do your schedule at least the day or night before. Mixing your daily routine with the distinct tasks that your have to accomplish that day, giving them even less time than your estimation thus forcing yourself to concentrate harder at them, remember Parkinson’s Law from a couple of posts ago. Remember that every task that you put in there is a commitment to somebody, maybe only to you but a commitment nevertheless.
Once you’ve got your schedule for the next day I bet you’ll even sleep better. By doing this you are helping yourselves in two ways. You’ll define what has to be done, and that gets you thinking about the task. You’ll establish if the task is relevant, if it’s meaningful, if it’s feasible, if it’s pertinent, all of this help you choose the task to be done, if it’s the better use of your time right then and there. The second thing you’ll accomplish is the ability to focus and not get distracted. As the tasks have been already chosen, by yourself, your only duty then would be to do them to the best of your abilities, and as fast as possible. No second guessing. No waiting for inspiration or other muses. So my dear reader, do you schedule your day tightly or loosely or not at all? I’d love to hear from you on the comments and if you think this blog is interesting then please share.
Hello my readers. Up until now I’ve been talking and talking about many aspects of procrastination, and that’s fun and, well, an excellent way for you to procrastinate by reading about procrastination. Now I’m going to give the very first actionable tip to help you fight procrastination. As we’ve seen before there are many types of procrastinators and different reasons for procrastinating, so we’ll need a set of tools to be effective and efficient. One of the reasons for procrastination is facing distractions. We all have now machines around us that are fighting for our attention, and on top of that we install more apps to let them do this task better. We’ve got social media, games on top of social media, video sites, music sites, blogs like this one but less useful. Just to see how successful this companies are ate getting our attention I’ll give you some information. As of the moment of this writing, the market value of Facebook is 274 billion dollars, that of General Electric is 283 billion dollars, and that of General Motors… 45.5 billion dollars. Can you see that? Distraction is big big business. Now, we all love our Facebook, I’m not saying you should go cold turkey, uninstall the apps and curse your smartphone or computer, that would only be necessary on the most extreme cases. But what I’m going to propose is a two step strategy, two phases that will let you do your work and have fun too. The first step is to eliminate those distractions, and by that I mean all the literal bells and whistles that our apps have turned on by default. They all shout for our attention “Hey, look, someone commented on that post about a lost puppy your friend put up this morning, check it out!” or the more common “You’ve got mail”. Most phones have the “do not disturb” function or at least the one that lets you turn the ringers off. If you’re only on your computer you can shut your email down, close your browser and even turn your speakers off to quiet it down. Do you need more privacy? Shut your door, let the calls go to voicemail, that’s what it’s there for, and do your work.
We are ready then to work, and that’s awesome. We’ve eliminated distractions and we are prepared, pumped up because we will be able to work. We feel great and maybe we might even have won a little reward, maybe we can get a cup of coffee and… Stop, that’s procrastination too. Here’s where the second part comes in, and it’s the most important. We can see what happened before. We feel happy because we’ve accomplished a prepping task and here comes the pleasure seeking part of our brains claiming it’s reward. We are recognizing some patterns in our behavior. We can use them as triggers to actively change our responses. By first recognizing this pattern we can prepare a different response to it, so we must first do that, recognize them. Some are very easy to spot, they come in the form of “There’s a lot of time left, I’ll do this later” trigger, our response has to change from “yes, drop it” to “you’re trying to get out from doing this, let’s start now” We can frame this in IF THEN statements and be ready for them easily, I’ll give some examples next.
- IF I catch myself saying “there’s lots of time, maybe later” THEN I’ll tell myself “Maybe, but you can start now so do it now”
- IF I catch myself saying “I don’t feel like doing this now” THEN I’ll tell myself “You won’t feel like doing it later either, it’s a horrible task, let’s get it over with ASAP”
- IF I catch myself saying “I need to prepare more” AND I know for a fact that I can’t be more prepared THEN I’ll tell myself “You’re as ready as you’ll ever be, buckle up because we’re doing this”
This mechanical responses can seem simple and silly, but that’s the beauty of it, they work. Try them, write them down on a notebook and check them out, grow your list. You can even write them down on index cards and carry them around with you, like little affirmations this is the software you’re going to use in your head to help you respond to this procrastinating inciting triggers.
If you liked this tips I’d really love to read your comments, you can share with us some of your triggers and responses, we can all learn from each other, so please post some here.