How to Stop Procrastinating- A Practical Guide

Procrastination is a part of our regular life. From waking up in the morning to until we fall sleep we all procrastinate something, it can be anything somthing important or just casual. From leaving your bed early in the morning to piling up small-small tasks for a day when you finish all together. Procrastination isn’t awful for you generally, imagine you have planned to go to the grocery shop, it’s Sunday and you’re postponing it since morning, at that point all of a sudden you get up to go and all of a sudden it began raining heavily outside for a long. Here your procrastination has saved you from getting stuck somewhere in the rain.

Procrastination is a mental state that keeps you busy with instant gratification, even if you know it’s important for you, for your work. Your mind keeps making excuses to keep you distracted from starting the work. There are plenty of books, articles, and research that have been published on this subject, and there were many common points that everyone grounded. I was a victim of procrastination for a long time, all the work I used to finish at the last moment or when it was about to go beyond my control. I have been practicing and learning new tricks and hacks to get rid of procrastination. After going through a lot of books and blogs, videos I understand this can’t work the same for everybody.

At that point I understood that I have to find my own ways by understanding my procrastination habits, here I’m explaining few fundamental things which will help you to under your procrastination behavior, and help you create your own hack to beat procrastination.

• Stop Yourself from Overthinking
• Create a New Mindset
• Write Down Your Goals
• Start With Easiest Task
• Focus and Enjoy The Process
• Recognize and Reward Your Progress

1. Stop Yourself from Overthinking

You bring back some pending works from the office to finish it over the weekend, also you have to go to the party on Saturday evening. Now you have settled on Friday night that tomorrow first thing you will get up as early that you will never think of, you are feeling motivated to conquer the tomorrow. But the next day you woke up late you have already lost half of the motivation, now you are blaming yourself for not waking up early.

Now half of the day was already gone, despite everything you’re accusing your morning and searching for another motivation to begin the work. You are also getting curious about what is going to happen at today’s party, by thinking all these your most of the day has passed, now you have left with the frustration that you could have finished the work and will be able to enjoy a party without any worry.

Understand your thinking pattern and becoming aware of it, the first thing you can do. It’s not you, it’s your thinking that stops you from starting the work. You have to look deep into your thought that how your brain is giving distraction when you think to start the work. Come out of your thinking zone and rewire your thought process.

2. Create a New Mindset

It is easier to reach somewhere when you have a clear roadmap. Our brain is always trying to avoid complications and hard things, creating a new mindset means you are creating a new vision to achieve your goal. At the point when you know where you are and where you have to proceed, you can design your approach to reach there.

Making a new mindset and a positive attitude can assist you with releasing you of your negative thoughts and start looking forward positively. A new mindset keeps you motivated to take a step ahead.

3. Write Down Your Goals

Studies have been proven when you write down your tasks or goals, then it is most likely that you will some take action on goals. when your thoughts and goals just exist in your mind then it’s more uncertain that you will follow up on that. Writing down your goals will give you confidence and a clear vision about your goals.

With growing technology communication, different gadgets and applications are providing everything we need, whether its laptop, phone or any device most of them have a feature where you can take down your notes. But still, I would prefer to keep a separate diary where I can write about goals and achievements. And I would recommend you keep a diary to write your goals, steps and your track your progress. Even after having gadgets it will work more efficiently.

4. Start With Easiest Task

As I earlier said our brain doesn’t like hard work, and when you try to put on it forcefully it will create different ways of distraction. But you don’t generally need to push it hard on the mind, you can make it easier for your brain to acknowledge and begin dealing with it. So when you realize that you’re procrastinating your work and out of the track, then you just have come back on the track by starting your work as soon as possible. And the best way to do any work is by enjoying it. Make a list of your tasks, then see which is easiest that you can start with.

Once you start the work then more likely you’ll finish the work and it’s the way to making our brain fool to start the work by picking the easy task. When you start your with the most critical task, there are more chances that you will lose confidence very soon and your motivation will drain out.

5. Focus and Enjoy The Process

Continuous progress gives you confidence and when you complete your small tasks, it boosts up your confidence to finish the most difficult tasks. Marking complete your task list one after one makes you feel motivated and energetic and the best way to do any work is by giving it your full focus, time and energy.

When you are involved in any work without any distraction, you will give more attention to your work while enjoying the process. So when you start your work make sure you have removed all the distractions and you can spend quality time on your work.

6. Recognize and Reward Your Progress

Our every action is a set of reaction performed by our brain, every activity is based on this three-step trigger, action, and reward. When you get an urge to do something, then you take an action and in the result, you get a reward. The same How to Stop Procrastinating- A Practical Guide

7. Continue the Progress

The most famous quote is, investing in yourself is the best investment you can ever make. And spending some time alone with you can be one the investment in yourself. Make a schedule for yourself to spend some time for self-analysis about your life, goals, and progress, problems and everything that matters to you.

Any habit can only be adopted by wiring in our brain, it’s not possible for anyone to overcome procrastination all the time. We all break down at some point but it doesn’t mean we have to lose motivation. Once you start seeing progress in the effort then you have to keep it going until your brain adopts it.

Procrastination can be a mental efficiency that stops you from reaching your best. Go through all the points above then relate with your own life and problems, where you are lacking and what can be improved by analyzing. Self-analysis can help you to find any problems with your habits which directly affects your productivity. Analyze, learn, grow.