How to stop procrastinating and start working your ass-off?
So let’s have a look.
What is procrastination?
Procrastination is a habit of delaying your tasks and rescheduling them over and over again.
Every one of us has a habit of procrastinating which leads to a feeling of guilt, anxiety and completing the task before a few hours to reach the deadline.
Whenever you are assigned with a particular job say an assignment, going to an appointment or only doing your laundry, there are two different voices in our mind fighting always.
And our first intention is to delay the task and convince ourselves that we can do it later followed by some guilt of not doing it right away and finally ending up postponing it.
Hence, the former voice always dominates our mind and reduces our productivity and makes us more lethargic.
Why do we procrastinate?
The most crucial reason behind procrastination is our brain tries to value immediate need more than future demand.
According to psychology, a person has two selves, a Present Self and a Future Self.
Now, what a Present self needs may affect the outcomes of your Future Self, but our brain opposes to understand that.
I will explain this with the first example.
Suppose your exam starts within a month and your Future self decides to study from the very moment to perform well in your exams.
This means your Future self wants to work on something that will have a positive long term outcome in future, but your Present person wants to watch a movie now, which will definitely hamper your studies.
Thus, we can clearly see that two selves often conflict each other and make us fall prey to procrastination.
And to overcome this crisis, the Present self must take decisions in favour of the future person.
Our Present self takes action, and the Future person faces the consequences (good or bad).
And taking action is when we finally overcome procrastinating and move ahead.
How to stop procrastinating?
1. Set up small goals
Initially, when you are trying to get rid of this negative trait do not set a substantial future goal for yourself.
Because this will ultimately lead to a lot of planning, and you will end up delaying your actions.
Hence break your goals into small parts and allocate specific time for those tasks.
It will help you to stop procrastinating as after every small task you will receive a positive result which will keep you motivated.
2. Create a positive atmosphere
Like I mentioned before, how you keep delaying the most basic household chores like laundry or even doing the dishes.
The best way to not delay them is by creating an active environment while working.
You can listen to your favourite songs while doing laundry, watch your beloved series while cleaning your room and you can also play some rock music while working out because it’s more fun that way and you don’t feel lazy anymore.
3. Treat yourself
Set up week goals, and once you accomplish them, you can treat yourself by having your favourite food or going out for a movie on the weekends.
You can do anything you like, and these small rewards will help you to achieve your goals sooner.
4. Minimise the time on social media
Well, too much of everything is not good.
You can check the updates in your social media account twice a day.
But devoting your maximum time into it is not acceptable.
Because at the end of the day when you realise you spent your entire time in scrolling newsfeed, you again plan on delaying your tasks.
5. Make a daily routine
Scratch off the tasks you complete every day, and once you grow a habit of reassigning yourself tasks and evaluating yourself, your productivity will automatically increase.
6. Make a priority list
You might have to do multiple tasks in a single day so arrange them according to the priority order.
Your personal work, office work and other tasks should be appropriately arranged.
Because if you don’t arrange them as per your need, you will notice you might do all the tasks by the end of the day, but you definitely not go to your office preparing a presentation at 9 pm.
So, even if you are planning out the routine for your day set specific time interval to particular jobs.
These are a few simple steps you must follow to get rid of procrastination.
And always remember that the biggest challenge is not to overcome procrastination for a day but to maintain the consistency throughout your life.
At times you might have to respond to some immediate crisis, and all of your tasks may not be completed at the end of the day.
Don’t have a negative feeling about that.
If it’s not an emergency, you can adjust it in your weekend routine, and if it’s urgent, you should make it your first priority for the very next day.
For constant reminders, you can set a reminder in your phones or make a habit of leaving yourself notes.
Like you can stick a reminder on your fridge, keep one on your bedside table just to make you remember your tasks at the very beginning of the day.
I am going to end here today and hope you all take this piece of advice and understand how to stop procrastinating.
P.S I honestly feel like Monica from F.R.I.E.N.D.S after writing this article.
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