One of the great hindrances to an individuals success is the age-old problem of procrastination. It is very much in the nature of man to procrastinate. After all, why do today what you can put off tomorrow. I was actually going to publish this chapter some time ago, but I never got around to it until now. Someone aptly said “to do nothing is within every mans power.” Everyone procrastinates from time to time, but some go on and keep practicing this bad habit until they become chronic procrastinators. They begin to self sabotage their own lives and all their dreams turn to ashes as they succumb to a live of negated meaning, lifeless apathy and lethargy which is always the end result of procrastination.
Procrastination always leads to frustration, anxiety, stress, discouragement, sometimes leading to depression, and much more. The obvious key to overcoming procrastination is to just get started. Procrastination has more to do with our thinking than reality, and most of us understand that if we could just get started, we could immediately get a second wind and really make some progress on the project at hand. Once we start by taking action, we then can get focused and begin to concentrate, suddenly we find ourselves in hyper creativity, and hyper-productivity, and that is when we become unstoppable.
I have a plaque that says “I will do today what others will not, so that I will have tomorrow what others have not” if I could just get started!
I want to help you overcome procrastination by empowering you with some tools to defeat this energy devouring culprit.
So here are some great ways for you to deal with procrastination and get started:
Power principles for overcoming procrastination:
1. You must plan out exactly:
A.)What you are going to do. You must write it out on paper where you can see it. This is essential. The great film director Stephen Spielberg said “if it’s not on the page then it’s not on the stage.” In other words if it is not planned out exactly on paper, it’s not going to happen. We procrastinate because we do not take the time to define exactly, in detail, just precisely what we want to accomplish. If it is not important enough to take the time to write out what is really important for us to achieve, then we will have a natural tendency to simply put it off. We spend more time planning our vacation than we do our life. How absurd and short sighted we are that this is true. How can we ever achieve if we don’t know what exactly it is that we want to do?
B.)How you are going to do it. This is the step by step detailed plan of just how you are going to get this thing done. Many dreamers imagine all the things that they would like to do, but with out a precise plan of action they are doomed to failure. Bad things happen by accident, that’s why they call them accidents. Good things happen on purpose, that’s called purposeful living. You must empower yourself to overcome the inertia of procrastination and take the action necessary to achieve your desired outcome by having a well thought out carefully crafted plan of action! You must take some quiet, creative time and ask the question; just how am I going to do this? Wait then for the answers to come and your incredible brain with figure it out and report it personally to you.
C.)When you are going to do it. Next; you must set a time deadline to accomplish the task at hand. Just when do you intend to have this thing done. Think of the incredible motivating power of a time deadline. How about when you were a child and you absolutely had to give an oral report on Friday. Or what about when you procrastinated until the last minute then ended up staying up all night to cram for an exam or finish a book report due. Or what about April 15th that causes people to focus and prepare their tax documents and stand in long lines to get them postmarked before 12pm. Never underestimate the incredible motivational power of a time deadline, and learn the incredible power of attaching it to any project!
D.)Why you must get it done. Great lives are absolutely motivated and empowered by great “why’s.” Why must you succeed? What is at stake? You must feel the emotion of what it means to fail or succeed and all the ramifications if you do one or the other. This is what I call getting emotional leverage on your self and it is so powerful! It requires intense thought and just as intense feelings. You must not only apply your “intellectual IQ” to the task but also your “emotional IQ.” To the degree that you complete this commitment question of “why” you will find the energy, time, and effort to overcome procrastination and achieve your dreams. I dare you to try it!
2. Break it up into smaller more achievable tasks. Small steps are the keys to success. Remember, “how do you eat an elephant” answer “one bite at a time.” When you break a project down to the least common denominator as far as small steps, the mind can get it’s understanding around it and the mind will not feel overwhelmed. Much procrastination is caused by a feeling of just being overwhelmed. When you break it down and commit to finishing one little step after another you will then build momentum until massive action takes over and you make a quantum leap in productivity. Little by little, step by step, one by one, is the key. Anyone can do the little things, all you have to do is again take the time for creative and meditative thinking and split it into easily achievable compartments. That is how productive people operate while many others are lost in an overwhelming fog.
3. Next, you must do something immediately. By now the creative and motivational juices are flowing and you should naturally experience and energy and focus. There is something about just starting that is 80% of the battle. Capitalize on where you are, in the moment, and take action now. This is the time to move forward and just get started. You have come this far in the process and I guarantee you’ve got what it takes, the focus, the interest, the excitement, the mental clarity, so utilize the convergence of all these things and start, and start now! Remember the old wise sage that said “the journey of a thousand miles begins in a single step.” Trust me, at this point; it is the perfect time to take that step.
4. Make sure you have everything necessary to do the job. Plan the logistics of the operation. How much time will it take, how much money, manpower, supplies., Carefully lay out anything that you will need to crate, or buy or secure so that you can successfully accomplish your project. Most people fail because they do not take the time to carefully plan every detail, for instance 80% of all companies fail in the first two years due to under capitalization. In other words they did not plan accurately for the finances and other imperative logistics. It is easy to get stuck if you are missing some important piece of the puzzle and you can loose valuable momentum if you have to stop and finish preparations that should have already been done. Make sure you have all the supplies at hand before you set sail on jour project and then when it is time to start you will feel confident that you will succeed, you will conquer the incapacitating fear of failure, and you will procrastinate no longer.
5. Do the thing you hate first. Do the thing you fear most, and you conquer fear! Same concept. Our minds build up immense opposition to things we hate to do or are afraid of doing and it often causes a paralysis that forces us into procrastination mode. Doing the worst thing first makes everything else easy by comparison. Make the phone call you hate first in the day and you are on your way to productivity. Many people fear using the phone, it’s called “phone reluctance” and a lot of people have it. But, whatever it is that is incapacitating and paralyzing you, you must identify it, and put it on the top of your too-do list and get it done first. Why not commit yourself to this simple little tip and make a habit of doing the thing you hate first so that you can get on with the main thing which is your successful achievement of the task at hand. It just simply works!
6. Picture in your mind’s eye the task accomplished, and how good you will feel. We do things because we believe the results will ultimately produce something that will make us feel better. Visualization is so important and it is a true saying that we do things for the feeling it gives us. Why make more money, because we feel better with it. Why drive a nice car, because of the way it makes us feel. Why wear nice clothes, because of the way it makes us feel. It’s not the money, or the car, or the clothes, it’s the way those things make us feel. That is the great motivator. That is why we do what we do. So, if you can make that fact work for you, if you will but imagine and visualize how great you are going to feel when you win the battle and do the thing that important to you, then your mind, body and emotions will automatically move towards the fulfillment of your project. Your mind cannot distinguish between an imagined thought and a real thought, so let your imagination work for you and meditate, think, visualize, and feel with the most emotional intensity that you can muster, and you will overcome procrastination, guaranteed. That is why people, with all odds against them, rise out of the ashes of defeat and succeeds in life, because they tasted the victory in their emotions and thinking long before they ever experienced it in reality. If you can imagine the powerful positive feeling as a result of accomplishment done even before a task begins, it will definitely help you get started. Be sure to make full use of this powerful principle along the journey to your dreams.
7. Make yourself work on it for a short time – anybody can do something for 30 minutes. Anybody can give a project their best shot for 90 days! See the concept? Since just getting started is 80% of the battle, if you commit to working for a pre-determined short amount of time, you will generally catch your second wind, and develop energy and interest to go on and work on the project for a longer period. It is human nature, so we should wise up and take advantage of our nature, even to the point of tricking ourselves into action with the end result of becoming a winner in life and achieving all we are meant to achieve in our time on planet earth. You can certainly apply this to bigger projects by breaking things into small achievable tasks, and then also breaking things into small achievable start times that will automatically produce longer effort and major progress.
8. Commit yourself publicly and then work like crazy to get it done! We all hate to be wrong at the top of our voice, so often it is a great push to overcome the inertia of procrastination when we announce to everyone what we are going to do. This makes us accountable to those that heard our words and accountability is a huge motivator. One would be wise to use this principle by making themselves accountable to a counselor or coach, or anyone that cares enough about us to check on our progress. This of course only works for people of character that it would be important for them to keep their words. Words are powerful so should be used carefully, but trust me this can be so moving and empowering especially at times when one may be tempted to quit when the going gets rough or again in just motivating one to take the action of simply starting. Work is obviously essential. One multi-millionaire said “the harder I worked the luckier I got.” So commit yourself to others and then so whatever you have to do to make it happen, and they will celebrate with you when the battle is won.
9. Reward yourself for accomplishing the smaller tasks, and give yourself a big reward for the big achievements! The truth is , like Pavlov’s dog, we are motivated by reward and the wonderful feeling that we get from reward, therefore, if you want to overcome procrastination, determine what would make you feel happy and then commit to accomplish a small task and then reward yourself. You can do this over and over, accomplishing each small step until you get close to finishing the project, then create a fantastic reward for when you finish the task. The project might be so big that you could reward yourself with a vacation, or maybe a cruise, or some new clothes, or a magnificent piece of furniture, or a new car. You know what you like and what revs you up, so be creative and design a reward worthy of and commensurate with the fulfillment of the project, task, or the reaching of your dream.
Now you have the principles that are really the tools to enable you to defeat the ugly dragon of procrastination. Without implementing these tools and making them a pattern in your life as part of successful living, things will literally drag on and on and on, and procrastination will control you if you are weaker than it. Life is about decisions and choices and from this day forward you chose to be an overcomer because you hold the keys to your own success. I can give you the keys but you must drive your car yourself. Now you know how to do it, so the responsibility for your achievement is in your grasp. Good luck and God Bless!
DO IT NOW!
DO SOMETHING EVEN IF IT’S WRONG!
“READY…FIRE…AIM!”
And Have FUN!