What to do against the tendency to procrastinate, be late, or not to do things at all, from elementary things like getting out of bed, getting dressed and bathing, to a task you have categorized in your head as things you do not like to do?
When you end up choosing not to do the task, then not only do you have to pay the price for not getting the job done, but you suffer from feelings of guilt: "I'm lazy, etc."
Often, it becomes clear to us that it was a trivial matter when and after you finally did the thing or that the demon was not so terrible. We will dwell a bit on the word: "demon". As its name implies, yes it is: it is a demon! His origins are feelings of fear and anxiety not to meet the task before us that we inflate him like a demon. Our brain, which operates at lightning speed, invents for us more and more "reasons", which are in fact excuses until it seems to us that this is impossible and that too often, we give up doing it. And what exactly is this run? This is when you do rationalization in retrospect, inventing seemingly logical reasons (but in fact that do not stand the test of logic at all) to justify the decision you made in advance not to do the thing.
So, what to do against it?
First of all, understanding that we are just making up excuses and why are already a good move.
Second, it's anxiety. In the post "How to deal with anxiety?", I gave an example: Anxiety because of a problem we face. In this example, I said that an effective thing is to ask ourselves the question: "What can happen to us in the worst case scenario?" (If you want to know more about it, feel free to read the post). Against the problem of procrastination, when we do not feel like doing something, I ask myself the question: "How my experience taught me, I would feel after doing this thing?"
Examples:
1) The decision: to get out of bed, bathe, and get dressed.
For years, I would sit for a long time and even be late for work instead of getting up. In this case, the answer to this question: "How my experience taught me I would feel after I doing this thing?", Is that it was a trivial matter. So now that I'm too lazy to get up, I ask myself that question. The answer: "It's a trivial matter" immediately "turns off" my anxiety (see the image of our body on the phone in the post "How to deal with anxiety"), and I get up without any problem! (This is instead of tossing and turning in bed with negative thoughts such as: "I'm too tired to get up!"
A small note here: it may be, dear readers, that you will try this patent and it will not work for you the first time, or it will work for you once or twice, and after that, you will return to the negative thoughts. So, it happened to me too! But, similar to what I wrote in the post "How I quit smoking": First of all, I did not blame myself when I had such a failure, but tried it (in this case, ask myself the soothing question) every morning until it became a reflex, a part of me.
2) The decision to perform a task we have set for ourselves.
I will take as an example the decision to write a post on this blog. Even after I knew about what I wanted to talk about, it was hard for me, at first, to sit down at my computer and start writing. Here, too, I felt anxiety accompanied by gloomy thoughts and metaphysical questions: "Why am I doing all this?", "I write nonsense!", "I expose myself too much!", "I do not repeat anything!", I never. I'll not finish "!
At first, I would say to myself in this case: let's go to work, in the worst case (remember the question: "What can happen to us in the worst case scenario?"), My questions were right and justified, and then I will decide (but this time I will not feel emotional after that , Because it will be a decision based on something) to give up and not engage in it in the future.
Like I wrote in the post "How to work efficiently?", I never work more than 45 consecutive minutes. I set my clock to 45 minutes; during this time, I know I can overcome the problem of lack of concentration, and when the redeeming ring comes, either I finished, or not then: I leave myself a few minutes to finish what I was in the middle of and take a 15-minute break. I know from experience that if I have entirely completed my task, say writing a post, I'm kicking myself, and even if I have not progressed or just a little, even then I am satisfied and say to myself: that too is something!
3) The decision to give up a particular activity.
As I hinted in Example 2, I decided to try just about anything. There are a thousand and one things where one or two attempts did not go well, but then the answer to the question: "How my experience taught me I would I feel after doing this thing?", Is that I will not feel good and then I just decide not to do it! But in this case, I do not bang my head against the wall and repeat this experience again and again in the future. I do not feel guilty for not engaging in these things. Thus, I concluded that cleaning the house, cooking, sports, and other things are not for me. I formulated for myself alternative solutions to them (use of cleaning services, eating in restaurants, etc.).
Summary:
What to do against the tendency to procrastinate and sometimes do things late or not at all?
- If this is a task we are doing for the first time: try to do it anyway.
Slowly, we gain experience in performing this task, and may decide to avoid it in the future.
If we have decided that this task is for us, then the following times we must do it:
- Ask ourselves: "How my experience taught me I would feel after doing this thing?". This question "turns off" our anxiety and all the excuses that arise from it and gives us the strength and determination to do it.