By now, you know whether or not you procrastinate and you know just how much damage it can do in your life.
But why on earth do you do it? Why do you do something repeatedly, if it just damages you and causes you so much pain? To overcome procrastination, it’s a good idea to determine why we procrastinate. The simple answer is:
We THINK it is helping us.
We procrastinate to deal with the complexities of life. And procrastinating gives us something. It helps us avoid things we believe are uncomfortable, things we’re usually scared to deal with on some level.
But as we’re starting to see, it may be easier to just face what we’re running from.
Once we have these incorrect beliefs about what makes us comfortable, we develop habits of procrastinating. Habits are the biggest area we need to develop if we want to change our behavior over time. I call this habit management, and it’s one of the biggest things I teach my clients.
I have nailed it down to 3 main areas, or habits, we have that keep us procrastinating, and here they are:
- We don’t regularly plan: If we don’t plan our days we just become reactive to whatever happens to us, we find that things just spiral out of control as the week progresses. Then come Friday we discover that nothing has really gotten done.
- We don’t use time appropriately: Wow, all of us are guilty of this at some stage. Often when we don’t have deadlines, we just let things slide and slide until, “Oh damn, the important tasks weren’t done!” Time easily slips away from us if we don’t use it appropriately!
- And most importantly… We don’t prioritize what matters the most: If we don’t know what’s important to us, we become available to be pulled in any direction the world wants to pull us in. We just don’t feel motivated at all when we don’t determine what matters the most in our lives and in our days.
So… How do we stop ourselves from procrastinating and keep ourselves motivated?
It’s obvious that we need to plan our days, make effective use of our time by imposing deadlines, and by deciding what matters the most to us.
The first step is to decide what really matters. We need to look at the things that we really care about, the things that really motivate us – and then go for it! We have to take full responsibility for our lives and make things happen for ourselves.
A new mantra for you: Decide –> Commit –> Do
I’m here to help. If you want to learn the secret formula to getting and staying motivated check out my “Instant Motivation” Program now. I want you to check out the whole thing for free. Click here for details and get instantly motivated.
