Your Comprehensive Guide to Get Rid of Procrastination
The reason for procrastination isn't what you think. By taking two easy steps, you can reduce its occurrence or, better yet, overcome it altogether. However, many of us blame and criticize ourselves when we procrastinate; we feel as if we have lost control, or we may feel stressed and alone.
But the truth is that everyone procrastinates in completing their tasks. For example, think about the housework you must accomplish, and ask yourself: Who has not procrastinate doing it? Most of the time, procrastination isn't a big deal because you know that some procrastination is good for you.
In fact, it is true. There are some benefits to procrastination, and only the bad kind of procrastination is a real problem. As you know, it has serious long-term consequences, such as your self-confidence.
This article will teach you everything you need to know to beat procrastination. So, if you want to get rid of the procrastination habit, let's start now.
What is the exact meaning of procrastination?
Procrastination is the easy act of putting off something intentionally, and "intentionally" is the key word in this definition. This means that you make a conscious decision to put off doing something until later.
You might have already done that today. For example: Did you hit the snooze option on your alarm this morning? Or have you put off doing something today and told yourself you will do it tomorrow? Procrastination is a natural thing that everyone does, and surprisingly, it has benefits that you feel from time to time.
What are the benefits of procrastination?
Procrastination can be good when faced with significant decisions, such as those that change lives. You may still need some information or think about it to make the final decision. The additional benefit of procrastination is that your subconscious mind always processes information, even when you don't think about it cognitively.
There is also another benefit to procrastination when working on a big task, as it is often busy thinking and forgetting the details. However, focusing on the details is sometimes a good idea, as things are clearer in a way that improves your work in many ways. Clarity helps you avoid failure and complete projects quickly.
One of the other benefits of procrastination is that it can improve creativity. For example, sometimes you may not be able to think when you are writing an article, and if you keep writing anyway, it causes a lot of frustration. However, when you stop writing the essay, this somehow recharges your creative energy, and often, when you get back to writing after a break, you feel the creative energy flowing again.
Let's summarize the benefits of procrastination:
- Generating clarity.
- Stimulating creativity.
- Improving tasks efficiency.
- Helping you make big decisions.
when is procrastination bad for you?
Procrastination becomes a problem when it has consequences in the future. It happens when you postpone completing a task to do something more enjoyable instead. The problem is that you know that postponing the completion of the task will lead to future problems, which often leads to feeling guilt.
Procrastination once or twice may not cause you much harm, but it has serious consequences when this behavior becomes a habit. Doing physical exercise is a living example of this. Many do not always like to exercise and prefer not to do it. However, we still exercise for its many benefits. Honestly, this also makes you feel comfortable when you finish it.
Now let's say you'll skip your exercise session because you don't feel like doing it. You'll think that's not a problem, and of course, that's not a big deal. However, let's say you're going to skip your exercise session the next day as well, then the rest of the week, followed by months of not exercising, then you're having a problem with procrastination.
When you procrastinate constantly, it becomes more and more difficult to start getting the job done again. Over time, this lowers your self-esteem and increases stress. In fact, you won't feel satisfied if you choose to skip a workout in search of something more enjoyable.
Of course, there are other consequences of procrastination as well. For example, staying late at work to finish a project, and if you are late more, you may have to take one extra day to meet deadlines. The more you put off the project, the harder it becomes. Repeated procrastination is a problem and has serious consequences.
What is the cause of procrastination?
The reason we procrastinate is to avoid completing tasks we find uninteresting, but what makes a task uninteresting? Many factors often make a job uninteresting, including:
- Ambiguous goals.
- Unclear plans.
- Confusion.
- Impatience.
- Dispersion.
- Challenges.
- Exhaustion.
You may have read through these reasons in the list above quickly, but I want you to go back to the list and try to see if you can identify any of these reasons that cause you to procrastinate. It is because self-awareness is the first step to making change happen.
Another thing to understand is that procrastination is like a snowball. Think about what happens to a snowball that rolls down a mountain. At first, it starts with a bit of momentum, and you can easily prevent it from rolling over, but when it gains momentum, it quickly gets bigger and becomes unstoppable. Procrastination is like a snowball; it starts with something small, like missing a single exercise. Every setback, distraction, or challenge you experience makes it difficult for you to return.
You're telling yourself this isn't the week for me to start this task, or I'll start doing it next time, but that way, you run into more resistance and hurdles. Fortunately, acknowledging this pattern is an excellent step toward overcoming procrastination.
6 Easy Steps to Overcome Procrastination
You now have the tools to recognize procrastination. The next step is overcoming it. You can do this easily and gradually coupled with the principle of pleasure. This principle says that we instinctively seek pleasure while doing tasks and try to avoid pain.
However, what makes something fun and painful? The answer to this question lies in your mind and the stories you tell yourself. It happens all the time. Whether you notice it or not, you make up stories about what you find interesting. Knowing you can, you also make up stories about things you want to avoid. Change the story you tell yourself to stop procrastinating.
This does not mean the task has become less complicated, but you can certainly change its meaning. Basically, it will change your reality , as the idea of this change is to feel more pleasure when doing the task and immediately feel more pain if you do not.
Here are the steps that will help you overcome procrastination:
1. Clarity
The first step is to eliminate the part of your thinking preventing you from taking action. You may have set some goals for yourself, and there may be some that you find easier to achieve than others.
Why do you think procrastination happens? It turns out that there is one major component that makes goals unclear, which is the lack of clarity. The fastest way to cause procrastination is not to know what to do, but to avoid it. You have to know what it is you're doing and why you're doing it. Without this information, working on a task becomes difficult when you can do something more enjoyable.
Clarity is often a game changer. For example, you can devote at least two days a year to going alone to nature so that you can think clearly, and use that time to think about your goals, dreams, and the plan you should make to achieve this. It's one of the best decisions you can make.
So, if you procrastinate on getting something done now, the first step is to clarify exactly what you need to do and explain why it is essential.
2. Facilitation
Facing large tasks can make you feel anxious and overwhelmed, but there is a very easy solution to prevent this from happening, which is to make the large tasks easier. You can divide large tasks into tiny sections. In this way, taking action becomes more enjoyable if you know exactly what you need to do. There is another benefit to dividing large tasks into small sections, which is feeling better when you finish a task, no matter how small.
As a result of these small victories, pleasurable emotions accumulate, which helps you continue build positive momentum. So, break down your big tasks into easy parts to make it easier to take action and make it more enjoyable.
3. Making up an an Urgency
You can make up a necessary reason to get the job done to reduce the chances of procrastination, and you can do this by automatically linking the feeling of pain to the act of procrastination. On the other hand, you must directly connect the feeling of pleasure to do the task now. Here's how to do it by asking two easy questions:
- What joy would you feel if you finished the task?
- What are the long-term consequences of not doing so?
Take doing physical exercise, for example. One fun thing is that exercising makes you feel good about yourself. Over time, consistently doing it will make you feel better, too.
What is the result of not doing so? Well, you'll regret it and feel bad about yourself. The long-term result is that it lowers your self-esteem and self-confidence, and you lose your fitness.
When you think about these consequences, don't you think at least twice before you miss your workout?
4. Rewards Plan
Positive incentives are one of the best-proven ways to motivate work, but what is a good incentive? The answer to this question is that it is relative.
Let's say you must do a task you don't like on Saturday. However, if you feel more like watching a Netflix series you started watching earlier this week, then you can make watching the series a bonus when you get the job done.
If you finish the task first, you can watch the content you want for the rest of your day. Doesn't that seem like a good deal? The best rewards are the ones that benefit you the most.
Another important thing to mention is that you must reward yourself quickly. So, if you are facing a big task, be sure to add many small rewards. In this way, it becomes easier for you to stay motivated. For example, reward yourself with a chess game every time you finish writing a part of a new article, so use rewards instead of punishment to motivate yourself and accomplish tasks.
5. Setting up a stimulating environment
The worst thing that can happen when you make the last step is that your phone lights up. In this case, you want to know what it is, and then check it. You may find urgent news about the Coronavirus, and out of curiosity, you read a whole article on this topic, and then you read two articles, watch three videos about cats later, and then return to your task, but soon your phone lights up again. This time you receive a message from someone you care about, and of course, you can not leave them waiting.
You get that idea, but do you also know how long it takes to get your focus back on what you've been doing? In fact, it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds. Distractions are a huge barrier if you want to tap into your creativity and become more productive, and they are a major barrier to experiencing what's known as a brain-flow state, also known as goal-focusing, and that's the state that makes your work more enjoyable.
In other words, distractions only suppress feelings of joy and prevent you from unleashing your creative genius. They also cause pain because they interrupt the pleasure you feel when you experience mental flow. Moreover, you need to gather your energy to start the task again.
Also, it's not very helpful if you want to stop procrastinating. Creating your work environment plays a vital role in overcoming procrastination, and a good way is to find a place where you can do work without distractions and stop and then remove anything that can cause you to stop working, such as using your phone. Creating a good work environment helps you beat procrastination.
6. Implementing the steps to overcome procrastination
So far, you have prepared yourself to overcome procrastination; you have clarified things and made a clear plan for what you want to do. You have also linked the feeling of pleasure and taking action directly to the pain you will feel if you do more procrastination.
If coupled with the right environment that is free of distractions, it's time to take action and overcome a few things, and at this point, you just have to do it; you have to work hard and don't forget to reward yourself when you finish the work as you planned to do.
Additional tips and tricks
The six steps above to combat procrastination should work in most situations, but of course, each person is unique, and everyone should overcome different challenges, perhaps looking for something a little different. The following tips and tricks may provide you with that, so try them yourself to decide what suits you:
1. Stop punishing yourself
Although you can use the idea of feeling the pain to stop procrastinating, punishing yourself is not one way to do this. Being upset with yourself reduces your self-esteem even more. If you are reading this guide because you are one of the people who procrastinate a lot, you already have a reason to feel optimistic because reading it means that you are seeking change.
And that's something worth doing, so let's accept the past for what it is and instead focus on the good things and the path ahead.
2. Start with your hardest task
Willpower is a limited resource that drains throughout the day. For this reason, marketers call you over the phone frequently in the evening, and it's also why most people tend to postpone exercise. In other words, the longer you wait, the more likely you are to procrastinate.
A good strategy for overcoming this is to do the most challenging task early in the morning, as the added advantage is that you'll feel good about yourself throughout the day.
3. Discover the following five steps
Clarity and simplicity are two essential steps to overcome procrastination, and one way to get clarity is to know the next steps you want to take, but what are the five steps you must take to achieve your mission or goal?
Once you've written down your five steps, consider the following questions:
- How accurate are each of the steps you take?
- Do these steps provide you with more clarity?
If your steps are not specific or not clear, then you should repeat the process. You should figure out the following five steps for each of the steps you have identified. In this way, you divide them until you get small steps, and the benefits of doing so are clarity and reduced fatigue.
4. Use Pomodoro technology
The Pomodoro technique is an easy and effective way to overcome procrastination. Focus on completing one task and remove all distractions, then set the timer for 25 minutes and start working on this task for 25 minutes without taking breaks, and at the end of the 25 minutes, take a break from 5 to 10 minutes.
Then set the timer again to accomplish another task, repeat until the third task, and then take a more extended break for about half an hour.
Pomodoro's technique has several benefits, such as better self-management, enhanced motivation, and improved planning skills, too. In addition, by working for a short period of time, you rarely feel fatigued while performing your task.
Remember how we talked about rewards. This method has a built-in reward system because of the tiny breaks you get, but also remember to try this method.
Although Pomodoro's technique follows the work system for 25 minutes, it encourages experimentation with different periods. For example, the copywriter Eugene Schwartz worked for 33 minutes and 33 seconds per task.
5. Surround yourself with great people
Motivational speaker Jim Rohn said, “You're the mix of five people you spend the most time with, but that doesn't mean you have to give up on your friends; it doesn't hurt to find people who have similar dreams to yours, or at least who are somewhat similar to you in thinking that way.”
You may wonder how this helps you overcome procrastination. Being with people like you improves the principle of complete pleasure we discussed earlier. Seeing others succeed makes the idea of overcoming procrastination real. It is inspiring and motivating to surround yourself with people who have similar goals and dreams to your goals and dreams.
Having a group of like-minded people also makes you less likely to procrastinate. After all, it's annoying to admit that you've been procrastinating while others make progress, so you're more likely to take action to change who you are. Surrounding yourself with the right people will have a positive effect on you.
6. Find a friend
Another way to use social influence to overcome procrastination is to have a friend who makes the same journey as you. When you have someone to hold you accountable, you are more likely to prove the opposite and do the work, and vice versa. It is an excellent example of 1 +1 = 3. Moreover, doing things together can make your trip even more enjoyable, and no one knows what other opportunities you might take advantage of.
In conclusion
Procrastination happens to everyone and has its benefits, but if it becomes habitual and has long-term consequences, you have to address it. Now, you have learned how to do it using a detailed and gradual approach designed to include the principles of pleasure.