First off, congratulations on being self aware enough to know that you are actively procrastinating or continuously putting off some task, action or goal.
We read a lot online and often don't apply the advice that resonates with us. So take 5 minutes, get a pen and paper and do so now. An ounce of action is worth a million half-skimmed articles!
1. Stop and Explore your Reasons & Beliefs about this Task
Really take a minute to think about why you keep putting off your goal/task? Be honest with yourself. Check out the blog on reasons you are unmotivated to see if any of them resonate. The first step in fixing the problem is knowing why it exists!
Once you have this written down examine what your beliefs are about this goal or task. A "belief" in this sense, is anything you think about this situation that cannot, without a shadow of a doubt be proven as a fact with evidence. You will find a lot of things you think are concrete truths are just a belief you have about something. The real question is, does keeping this belief help you or does it hinder you ? In other words, is it a "self limiting belief"? For e.g. Do you believe it's boring? Do you believe deep down that it's not your responsibility ? that it is a waste of time? Do you believe it's too hard or that you can't do it, so what's the point trying?
The best thing about self limiting beliefs, is that you can just choose to change them to a belief that's more helpful on a moments notice! Could you replace any of your limiting beliefs with a belief that's more useful eg. It might be difficult but I will improve everyday.
2. Do you Actually HAVE to do This Thing?
This is a fun one and requires some outside of the box thinking. There are a lot of activities and goals that we fall into because we are on automatic pilot and don't question them. They are things we feel we "should" do. But when you take a second to explore this, you will see that you don't know why you should do them and maybe don't have to do them at all!
Society, your parents, friends and religion and lots of other things give us these "shoulds", but do you actually HAVE to do them? You SHOULD keep your house clean, should you? Why? You should want to get promoted? Should I? Why?
If you hate cleaning, could you afford a cleaner? If you hate a particular project or task in work, could you talk to your manager about it and change it or give it to another person? The idea here, is to just challenge the need for it and then come up with creative solutions to avoid it if possible!
3. Identify What is in Your Control
If you have completed step two and still HAVE to do the thing you are procrastinating about, then most likely this activity was given to you. You may believe you have no choice about it. Autonomous goals are way easier to get motivated for but it's not impossible to motivate yourself to do a task given to you.
Identify what about this is in your control, maybe where you do it, how you do it, when you do it, who you do it with, in what way you do. Control as much of this as possible and make it in line with your own goals, values and preferences. The coaching exercise called CIA (Control, Influence and Accept) will help you here. What in this task/goal can you Control? what can you Influence? and what do you need to just Accept? (after you thoroughly practice step two of course!).
You will notice that these aren't 'quick fix's' to help stop your procrastination like so many other articles. That's because I honestly believe a lot of these fail over time or are just plasters covering the bigger problem. You can't stop procrastinating until you fully explore it and do the work internally so to speak. Hopefully these three exercises have helped you do that and take some action to move forward!
If you are still having trouble with procrastination or achieving your goals, please feel free to contact me for a free session to see if we can figure it out together :-)
Topics: Procrastination