How To Beat Procrastination

Imagine how the world would look like if everyone got working and stopped making excuses. Life would be such a thrill, and there would be so much to go around.

Now Imagine achieving less than you ought to in every sphere of your life because that’s what happens when you procrastinate. You allow opportunity costs to pile up, and before you know it, the best bits of your life slip away, never to return. It is sad, really, but there is hope because, like any other bad habit, procrastination is something you can beat, and in this article, I will show you how.

Why Do You Procrastinate?

One of the best books that I have ever read regarding procrastination is The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel. Steel puts forward an interesting theory on why we procrastinate. You might think it is because we want everything to be perfect, but Steel says it comes down to impulsiveness.

Steel points out that Impulsive people have little ability to endure short-term pain for long-term gain and are more likely to feel anxious over tasks and go straight to procrastination.

If you understand this, it is easy to overcome your tendency to procrastinate.

The Procrastination Equation:

• Expectancy: When you expect bad things to happen, you are likely to procrastinate. For example, many people delay making life choices like asking someone out for a date because they think they will get rejected
• Value: The less enjoyable a task is, the longer it takes to get started
• Time: According to Parkinson’s law, the more time you have to complete a task, the longer it takes

By understanding the elements of the procrastination equation, you can plan how to stop the habit.

How To Beat Procrastination Using Insight From the Procrastination Equation

1. Think of an area of interest in your life and try and improve just a little bit

One of the handiest tricks in the fight against procrastination is to start small. A famous example of starting small is the Five Minute Rule that requires you to commit only five minutes to doing something like washing the dishes, doing laundry, or cleaning after yourself. You will be surprised at how much you can accomplish in those five minutes.

The Five Minute Rule is such an excellent hack because it makes any workload manageable and gets you excited. I always look forward to seeing how much I can get done in five minutes.

If you think five minutes is too much, why not 2 minutes, 3 minutes, or even 1 minute? The point is, just get started.

2. Seek Inspiration from stories

It is easy to think that you are the only one with procrastination issues. Take this article as an example; I committed to writing a mere 200 words a day because if I had decided otherwise, I would not have had the courage to get started.

Why did I get such an idea? From none other than Earnst freaking Hemingway. Believe it or not, Hemingway also struggled with procrastination. Here is the quote that always gets me started:

“Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.”

See? You are not the only one.

Another way of beating procrastination is to think of your future version — you know the guy who will have to do all the work because your current version is too lazy. Pity that guy. Help him out today so that tomorrow he will look back and say: At least someone had my back.

When I was silly and didn’t consider saving for retirement, I imagined the 50-year-old me cursing at his younger self. Today, savings, investments, and learning new skills is my way of showing up for that old man. But you don’t have to go that far into the future, think a week from now when the project is due. Imagine the pressure and ask: “Do I want this in my life?”

3. Practice wish fulfillment

Make your goals simple enough that you cannot make an excuse.

Have you ever considered what you want in life? You must want something, even if it is a brand new car or a fancy job. Often, you will find that what stands in your way are the things you are not doing.

As a tactic to beat procrastination, wish-fulfillment involves writing down your wishes into actionable steps. To give you an example, I want my blog to have at least a 1000 subscribers by the end of the year.

So how do I plan to get there? I plan to publish at least one high-quality article a week for the entire year and write no less than 200 words a day. The goal is simple enough that I cannot make an excuse.

4. Plan for the worst hope for the best

One of the biggest reasons likely to make you procrastinate is not planning for unforeseen circumstances.

Think of what happens when you have a huge medical bill and not enough money to get treatment. It means putting some of your plans on hold. The point is, the more you stick to your plans now, the more resilient you will be in the future. In other words, like the Walls of Babylon, which stood assault from invaders for thousands of years, you too will stand whatever comes your way as long as you stay prepared.

5. Accept that you are addicted to delay

The most critical step when solving procrastination is to accept that you have a problem. Buddha says the following:

“There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, change it, or leave it. If you can’t accept it, change it. If you can’t change it, leave it.”

The question is, what are you going to do? Are you ready to continue wasting your life away or are you going to rise to the level you know is possible?

I will leave you with 10 actionable steps to help you stop procrastination:

1. Plan ahead so that emergencies and unforeseen circumstances don’t throw you off track
2. Have stable and predictable relationships. You want to spend your time doing things, not solving problems that other people cause
3. Create a road map for everything. Someone once said that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there
4. Cultivate a growth mentality. Without a growth mentality, you will spend a lot of your time avoiding things i.e. procrastinating
5. Make it a rule to always finish what you start this way you will think hard before starting anything
6. Constantly review your progress. As humans, we need reminders of what’s important in life. Otherwise, there would be no going to church every Sunday
7. Write down what you want in life. Studies show that writing things down can have a powerful effect
8. Strive for honest and win-win relationships. Make other people partners in your journey, not obstacles
9. Plan for the long term. Ask yourself what do the next ten years look like?
10. Start small. Every journey begins with one step