Procrastination

Procrastination is something that a lot of people struggle with today.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had and still have my fair share of struggles with procrastination.

It’s not only preventing us from doing what needs to be done, but it causes stress, worry, fear, and anxiety in our daily lives because that thing we need to get done is always on our mind.

Procrastination is a big problem when it comes to healing from trauma.

We continue to put off doing the things we must do to start healing and choose to stay in our comfort zones.

Current Ways to Stop Procrastination: They’re Alright, But Don’t Cut it for Me

There are many tactics to help put an end to procrastination.

I decided to ask ChatGPT to give me 10 ways to stop procrastination and here’s what it gave me (my comments added as well):

1) Identify the root cause.

I believe that identifying the root cause is important, but just because we identify the root cause doesn’t mean we’re going to do something about it.

If the root cause is fear, then knowing its fear isn’t going to help you take action.

2) Break tasks into smaller steps.

This is a great strategy if the task is a large task.

It’s easier to break down a large task into small steps to make it less intimidating.

3) Use the 5-minute rule (set an alarm and work on a task for five minutes).

This is a good way to start taking action on something.

Just the act of taking that first step and getting started is powerful.

4) Set clear goals and deadlines.

Goals are very important and having a deadline is a great way to hold yourself accountable and prevent procrastination.

However, it’s hard to use the deadline as leverage if it’s a deadline you created and can be pushed when you don’t show up to put in the work.

5) Eliminate distractions.

It’s always beneficial to eliminate distractions.

However, eliminating distractions is not necessarily going to move you to end your procrastination.

6) Use the Pomodoro Technique (work in focused intervals).

This is similar to using the 5-minute rule and works well for establishing consistent action.

You can set a timer for 10 minutes for getting work done, take a break for 30 minutes, and then get back to work for another 10 minutes.

7) Create accountability.

Accountability is fantastic if you can create it.

You can ask a friend to hold you accountable, but it still may not get you out of procrastinating.

If you are going to ask someone to hold you accountable, then there must be a penalty if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do when you said you were going to do it.

8) Reward yourself.

This is a good way to motivate yourself to get started and end procrastination.

However, you can always reward yourself without doing the task.

9) Change your environment.

Similar to eliminating distractions, this is a great way to help maintain focus when you actually start doing the work.

10) Adopt a growth mindset.

Adopting a growth mindset will help in every situation.

However, this takes time and it’s a process.

Again, these are all great ways to help with overcoming procrastination, and you may have even used many of them in the past.

However, I don’t think the list above is going to be enough to always push you through your procrastination.

I think this list ignores one major factor that gets us moving more than anything, and that’s tapping into our emotions.

Using Our Emotions in Our Favor

First of all, I think everyone should be focused on developing priorities, goals, and actions.

We must know what’s important to us (priorities), create goals to support those priorities, and identify actions that we can take every day to support our goals.

Our goals and actions should always align to our priorities.

Our priorities are what’s most important to us.

These are why we get up in the morning and do what we need to do.

So, here’s how I see breaking free from procrastination.

Tapping into Your Emotions

First, is the task you’ve been putting off tied to supporting one of your priorities?

If so, then great, it’s important.

If not, you must question if you should be doing it in the first place.

This could be an issue with you not setting boundaries or becoming distracted.

Now that we’ve established whether the task you’ve been putting off supports a priority, we can go to the next step.

I don’t mention this much, but I do think there are times when we can use fear to our advantage.

Our emotions are powerful and dictate much of what we choose to do or don’t do in life.

In this case, fear can be a powerful force used to our advantage to get us out of procrastinating.

This is the most important step and will help the most with eliminating procrastination.

We’ve already established that the task you’ve been putting off is a priority (if we’re moving forward with wanting to get it done) therefore, there is value tied to it.

Here’s an example from my life.

My priorities are family, health, and business.

My wife wanted to get the tires rotated on her vehicle.

She asked me to help her get this done.

It went on for a few months.

It just seemed like it was never the right time, or we could never get it up to the auto shop to have them rotated (excuses).

What’s the real problem?

I wasn’t tying a consequence or enough value to getting the tires rotated on her vehicle.

Does getting the tires rotated on my wife’s vehicle support one of my priorities?

Yes, it does.

My family is a priority, and this was important to my wife and therefore, it’s important to me.

However, that wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t tying enough value and/or consequences to this task.

Here what I mean.

My wife doesn’t feel comfortable or safe driving in her vehicle because it’s been a while since the tires have been rotated.

Since she doesn’t feel comfortable driving her vehicle, she doesn’t have confidence when she is out running errands or doing what she needs to get done.

Not having confidence in your vehicle pulls your attention away from what’s important while you’re driving.

It brings an unnecessary level of anxiety and worry.

The tires are also a safety issue because they haven’t been rotated in so long.

If I continue to procrastinate with getting the tires rotated, this can be cause for a potential accident when my wife is driving.

If thinking about this isn’t enough, we can take it to the next level.

If my wife gets into an accident because of the tires, she could get seriously injured or lose her life.

I could potentially lose my wife, and it would be my fault because I didn’t get the tires rotated when she asked.

I don’t know about you but thinking about this is enough to get me moving and end the procrastination.

This may seem extreme to you, but procrastinating is extreme and has dire consequences for our lives which we don’t look at in the moment.

Taking the time to think about the consequences of our procrastination is a powerful way to get us to take that next step.

You can use this with any task that you’ve been putting off.

You see, we must tie consequences to the task we’ve been putting off.

If it’s truly important to get done, then there are going to be serious consequences for continuing to put it off.

We just don’t think about them in the moment therefore, we must bring them to the forefront and really think about what could happen if we don’t do what needs to be done.

This is how we can use fear to our advantage.

We’re bringing the worst-case scenario into the open to leverage our emotions to stop procrastination.

Think about the consequences or what could happen if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do.

Go down the path of the worst-case scenario to get you moving in the right direction.

Stay positive and take action!

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