If you find yourself constantly putting off work only to
feel guilty when things pile up, you force yourself to focus but can’t seem to
make any progress, trust me you are not alone.
Everyone procrastinates. It’s just part of being humans,
so you are not sole, you are not beyond saving.
You just don’t have a proper protocol.
Most people fail to overcome procrastination because they
don’t understand it. They just want a quick fix but that’s the problem. We
can’t change our behaviors unless we understand them, and that’s why I created
this video to share my five-steps protocol that’s been incredibly effective for
me in beating procrastination in moment it appears.
But for the protocol work we need to ask ourselves – why
am I procrastinating right now.
Procrastination is always a result of our mind’s desire to
escape from negative emotions whether it boredom, frustration, tiredness,
annoyance, fear of failure.
Our mind uses Jedi mind trick in the book to avoid those
emotions.
But if we dig deeper, we’ll find these are symptoms of
three underlying causes.
First is a lack of experience. Either we don’t have the
experience or knowledge to do thing that we need to, or the instructions are unclear,
and we don’t know how to get started.
The summer before starting college I wanted to get my
first job so I could have some extra money before moving out of my parents.
Every morning I told myself – today I’m going to find a
job. I’d pull my laptop struggle for a few minutes start feeling overwhelmed
and then just devout to playing video games hating with my friends or
something.
I never got a job that summer.
I realize now that those emotions were just symptoms of
the real problem.
I had no clue how to find a job. I had not experience. I
didn’t even know what knowledge gap stood between me and having a job.
Lack of clarity causes confusion which leads to those
negative emotions that cause procrastination.
Second is level of effort.
Effort goes both ways.
Something that’s too low effort makes us feel bored or
gives us a false sense of security and something that’s too high effort makes
us feel overwhelmed.
If my professor assigns me of 50-page paper on like
neurochemistry of cat brains or something I’d feel hopeless and anxious about
how many hours and how hand cramps, I’d suffer researching and writing that
project.
I’d end up procrastinating.
On the other end of the spectrum let’s say that study for
my exams by rereading my notes 20 times over I would feel so bored and annoyed
having to do such a mindless and passive task.
I would also just get distracted and procrastinate.
The emotions we feel from the different levels of effort
are sometimes attached to our ego.
Maybe you’re a perfectionist and the fear of failure
causes you to procrastinate doing things unless you’re 100% certain you’re
going to succeed. Or maybe you feel threatened by difficult tasks because you
don’t want to be judged as being incompetent and the third type of procrastination,
I call a low energy state we all have a unique energy curve for when we’re most
focused and motivated to overcome procrastination and our energy curve is
affected by the time of day and the surrounding environment.
So, in college I had the freedom to choose my own class
schedule. I went to a big public university right to there where multiple
options for biology and chemistry classes that I need to take. You know and
being the degenerate party animal that I was back then I decided that my first
semester I was going to take only afternoon and evening classes you know. So, I
could stay up all night, play video games, party and sleep in and stuff and
most days I woke up around noon or even later. And when I went to class I could
barely focus or even pay attention which didn’t make any sense to meat all back
then like how I was tired from doing absolutely nothing all day, yeah.
I didn’t do very well my first semester so the following
semester I changed things up and started waking up way earlier and studying in
the morning and that changed everything for me.
I realized that my energy curve, my willpower to overcome
procrastination was way easier to tap into in the morning and I didn’t feel
that resistance of tiredness or laziness, so figure out what your energy curve
looks like as you can imagine trying to force ourselves overcome
procrastination doesn’t work if we aren’t targeting the root cause.
Some people can watch a David Goggin’s video and motivate
themselves into action but for most of us we need a better approach.
So, here’s the five-steps protocol that’s worked amazing
for me.
Step 1 is to identify the emotion
you’re experiencing.
Don’t react.
Don’t fight it.
Just sit with it for a second.
What is this feeling?
Is it fear?
Is it boredom?
Is it anxiety?
Or hopelessness?
It might be more than one of them or all of them simultaneously.
Sometimes we get so worked up that we can’t think clearly
enough to identify our emotions. In which case there’s an interesting physiological
mechanism we can tap into, that temporarily clears our mind, so if the overwhelm
or emotions are too intense, fill up a large bowl with ice water and dunk your face
in it.
Cold shower also works. This evokes something in US called
the diving response.
When ice water hits our face our brain and body do like a
hard factory reset.
If you’ve ever done this you know what I mean, but our
heart like skips a beat, we hold our breath and were on our mind instantly
vanish and then from this new place of peace we can revisit that emotion from a
much calmer perspective.
There are other more effective long-term ways to strengthen
our mind to detach from emotional states like meditation and exercise which I
also highly encourage making a regular practice of.
Step 2 is to deconstruct the
emotion. Now that we’ve identified the emotion we need to break it apart and
determine which of the three types of procrastination that we’re dealing with
is the procrastination coming from:
· Lack of
experience
· Level
of effort
· Low energy
state
Experience effort, energy, or some combination of the
three.
Think about your current situation you know your
environment and the responsibilities you have planned for the week as guiding prompts
to determine why did that negative emotions appear now.
Did you just get off a 10-hour work shift? This might be
an energy type of procrastination.
Are all your friends diming you to play Valorant? Your brain is probably calculating a high
level of effort to continue studying?
Do you have the skills and knowledge to film a YouTube
video? You probably hit an experience gap that manifesting as overwhelmed because
you don’t know the next steps to take. What emotional consequence is your mind
trying to escape? These are some examples of questions to think about when
deconstructing an emotion.
And once you’ve deconstructed the emotion, move on to Step
number 3.
Create a clear plan
of action.
That’s so simple you’d be stupid not to do it. Emphasis on
clear and stupid this is going to be a little different for each type of
procrastination but ultimately the idea is the same – make the action plan so
easy and the next steps so clear. It’s no brainer for you to get started.
For example, that ambiguous task of getting a job do a
brain dump of all the many tasks that are parts of that big task.
Lay out everything you know to uncover those experience gaps
and then build a plan around it.
I probably need a resume, right, so how do I do that?
I’ll watch YouTube video about how to write a resume.
I’ll get AI to draft a resume template for me.
What I do from there now I’ll brainstorm all my work
experiences and school achievements.
Next, I’ll have to find jobs to apply for, so I’ll
research local job centers. I’ll ask my school counselor, you know, so on, so
on and at any point I run into an experience gap I’ll look it up or I’ll ask
someone for the effort type procrastination.
Break apart the task into bite-sized actions a 50-page
paper can be broken apart. Into head an article summarizes the article.
Write one paragraph. If it still too hard make it simpler
and make it stupider. Write 1 sentence. Write 1 word.
If I am feeling low energy from exhaustion then how can I
create an action plan to tackle this tomorrow. Don’t try to force studying
right now.
Just to take a hot shower, get to bed early, set an alarm
for like 6 a.m. and then try again with a fresh cup of coffee and a clear plan of action.
The whole idea of step number three comes from Brian Tracy’s
Eat That Frog when faced with a daunting task whether it’s due to experience, effort,
or energy.
Get your mind off the negative emotions by focusing on a
single action. You can take this step is definitely the most challenging and
requires practice.
There’s an art to prioritization and goal setting and it gets
much more complicated than I’m letting on right now. But check out this video
up here if you interested afterwards.
Begin your action plan even if it’s not perfect.
It’s important to know that too much planning and
researching is itself a form of procrastination. It’s perfectionism.
So, once you’ve got a plan that’s at least somewhat
coherent. You know, maybe 60% complete. You know, don’t think too hard. Don’t
allow that perfectionist tendency to override. Go dunk your face in ice water
again if you have to and just get started. It doesn’t matter how perfect your plan
is if you don’t use it.
Step 4
The hardest step is the step from stillness.
Once you start
working momentum will carry you over procrastination.
There’s this popular quote, that I love by author Brad
Stolbery:
Mood follows action.
So, just get working even if of emotions aren’t completely
gone because the good feeling of making progress will eventually catch up.
Finally step 5,
which is often forgotten step, is to celebrate your ability to overcome
procrastination.
Be your personal cheerleader and praise yourself for doing
something despite those negative emotions you felt. Bred Bryant who’s done
research on the psychology of enjoyment and motivation talked about the
importance of savoring and acknowledging our wins no matter how small they are.
There’s an intimate relationship between our brain and achievement. Achievement
releases dopamine and other endorphins in our body.
Remember that procrastination presents as negative
emotions. So, by celebrating our wins every step of the way we’re conditioning
our brain to enjoy the feeling of overcoming resistance to feel good for taking
action and this in turn will make it easier for us to continue doing in the
future, but also keep in mind that there is an important nuance between the
idea of celebration and reward.
A celebration is an experience. It’s that internal
euphoria we feel for accomplishing something like Steph Carry doing a shimmy
after draining a three-pointer or dapping up your boys after acing an exam.
A reward is something external like treating yourself to a
new pair of shoes or playing video games for five straight hours. Focus on
celebrations.
Rewards can be useful but be careful, not to use them too
often because then your brain will start to associate joy with reward and not
some actual accomplishment.
And that is my five-step protocol.
Now I want to make a disclaimer that this protocol is an
effective tool for overcoming the immediate battle against procrastination.
However there is no actual cure for procrastination just because we beat
procrastination today doesn’t mean we’re conquered it forever and never have to
worry about it again.
Procrastination is a non-stop balancing act. We have to be
attuned with our emotional state at all times. Every minute our subconscious brain
performs a mental calculation to assess the emotional damage of the current
tasks. The long solution comes from doing internal work on ourselves and
reflecting on our core values.
People who seem to effortlessly dive into hard work are
the ones who’ve identified their values and internalized so deeply that action isn’t
even an option. It’s a duty so honestly ask yourself what do I want for myself
what does that person value? And does that person spend their time.
Once you’ve clarified that version of yourself take full
responsibility to become that person. Actually, let’s take this step further. Take
personal and public responsibility for your goals by sharing them in the
comments bellow. Why exactly do you want to be procrastination? What do you
think that’s going to do for you. That way we can work together to reorganize
our lives and eliminate procrastination,
Now if you still feel like your life is out of control, I’d
highly recommend checking out this video over here. It’s my full guide for
dopamine detoxity that I use to help take back control of my life.
