Spanish Proverb:
“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.”
Martin Luther:
“How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.”
Karen Lamb:
“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”
One of the most common problems is procrastination. We know what we want to do and should do. But still we end up spending hours upon hours doing “easier” work or escaping via TV, blogs or music.
Now, nothing wrong with a little escape from time to time. But if you procrastinate too much you will not get the most important things done. And you will also send yourself into negative spirals where your self-esteem plummets and you spend your days or more in a vague negative funk.
So what can you do? Here are 7 timeless tips to help you to stop procrastinating and start living your life more fully.
1. Make a decision and stick to it:
Theodore Roosevelt
“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
The natural thing is to be a decisive human being and take action. We feel bad when we sit on our hands and don’t take action because it’s unnatural.
When you procrastinate you want to do something but you don’t take the action that is in alignment with that thought. When you procrastinate you lower your self esteem and send signals back to yourself that you are an indecisive person. You become conflicted within.
What you do always sends signals back to you about who you are, positive or negative.
Sure, doing affirmations where you say to yourself that you are confident can help you. But taking the confident actions you want to take over and over again is what really builds your self confidence and a self-image of you being a confident person.
2. Stop thinking and start doing:
Eva Young:
“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.”
A bit of planning can certainly help you to achieve what you want to achieve. A lot of planning and thinking tends to have the opposite effect.
You think continuously trying to come up with what you term as“the perfect plan”. A plan where you don’t have to make mistakes, where you make no loss, where you will never be rejected, where there will be no pain or difficulties. Such a thing does not exist. But as long as you work on that plan you can protect yourself.
3. Just take the first step:
Martin Luther King, Jr:
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
When you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem impossible, more or less. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your focus back to today and the present moment.
What you need to do is to focus on taking the first step today, nothing else. By taking the first step you change you mental state from resistant to “Little begining’s, first step and I will make most definately”. You put yourself in state where you become more positive and open. A state where you may not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but you are at least accepting it. And so you can take the next step. Keep your mind focused.
Truth is, you can’t see the whole staircase anyway and it will shift and reveal itself along the way. That’s why the best of plans tend to fall apart at least a bit as you start to put it into action. You discover that your map of reality doesn’t look like reality.
4. Don’t blow a task out of proportion:
Olin Miller:
“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”
George Claude Lorimer:
”Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.”
The quotes above are so true it isn’t even funny. The more hours and days you spend putting something off the worse it grows in your mind. By over thinking and putting things off you are not only trying to protect yourself from pain. You also make mountains out of molehills. There more you dwell on it, the more it controls your mind.
Have you ever had that horrifying experience when it just occured to you that you’re way behind time in doing what you had to do the day before or even more? Normally in the early hours of the morning when you woke up from bed or right after you left the office in the evening all because you decided to do it later.
Maybe you have an important call to make. Maybe you know you have gotten behind on answering your emails and have big pile to dig into. Maybe you have the last five pages of your paper to finish.
Why not now? remains the big question
And since you are putting it off you are probably thinking about it in a negative way. This makes a little thing a big Godzilla, a horrible beast that is threatening to ruin your life.
How you feel right now changes as quickly as the weather so it’s not the perfect guidance system or anything. And you don’t have to always obey what it says.
When do I obey my feelings and when do I turn it down? Most of the time, the more we spend planning increases the impossibility thoughts thereby creating room for negative feeling. Do your best to plan little and then take action.
Often you don’t even have to plan, why because you have been there before and you know what needs to be done. So stop thinking and just do it no matter how you feel and what you think. You can and will always do what you know is right anyway.
5. Face your fear:
Denis Waitley
“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the “someday I’ll” philosophy.”
I think this is true. It’s easier to live on that “someday…” thought. It’s harder to just take action. To risk looking like a fool. To make mistakes, stumble and not avoid that pain. To take responsibility for your own life.
The easier choice can come with a sense of comfort, with a certain level of success, pangs of regret for all the things you never dared to do and a vague sense of being unfulfilled. You wonder about what would have happened if you had taken more action and more chances.
The harder choice gives you, well, who knows? But it will sure make your feel more alive.
6. Start with the hardest task of your day.
Dale Carnegie:
“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
In doing the hard work first you may come across some one or two ideas leading you into solving the easier work faster and simpler.
If you start your day this way you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself. And the rest of the day and your to-do list tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing what difference this one action makes.
Always remember that whatever the task may be, getting it out of your way is the first and best thing to do.
7. Finish it:
William James:
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task”
David Allen:
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.”
Not taking the first step to start accomplishing something can make you feel bad. But not finishing what you have started can also leave you in a sort of negative arena. You feel stressed which leads to fatigue and sometimes you don’t even know why. It’s like someone zapped your inner power.
You came all the way just to see the finish line and then what? Stop! of course not.
Just be careful. Don’t think you have to finish everything you started. If a book sucks, read something else. Using this as an excuse to quit something that feels hard or unfamiliar is not a good idea but there is no law that says that everything has to be completed.
If that is the case, go over tasks and projects what you are currently involved in. Is there something there you know you want to finish but haven’t yet? Try to get that finished as soon as you can you will start to feel a whole lot better
