To be honest, I’d be lying if I said there was a “secret ingredient” to overcoming procrastination. As Po from Kung Fu Panda says, “There’s no secret ingredient. It’s just you!”
You already have what it takes to overcome procrastination. After all, you have overcome it before. If you think about it, whenever you procrastinate, you’re just like a boiling pot of water. The more time you procrastinate, the more the pressure builds up inside of you. Finally, just before the water spills over, you cross the threshold of inactivity and spring into action.
Now, all you need to do is become your own scientist. What factors caused you to cross the threshold of inactivity? How can you recreate those factors to be productive right now? Create your own hypothesis, and the next time you feel like procrastinating, test it out. If it doesn’t work, tweak it and change it. Keep testing out your hypothesis until it works!
After much self-reflection, I’ll be sharing with you my top 5 tips for how I overcame my procrastination: 1. Take advantage of the present moment. Time is fleeting, fast, and precious. You may think you have a lot of time, but before you know it, it’s all gone! So don’t be anxious about what needs to be done tomorrow-- just tackle today. A few habits you can cultivate to live in the present are prayer and meditation, taking walks outside, or turning off your phone for a few minutes.
2. Think of the next small action. If you have a huge assignment looming over you and you can’t even fathom starting, just take the next baby step. What can you do? Can you stand up? If the answer is yes, stand up. Can you open your backpack? Yes, you probably can. Can you pull out your assignment and clear your workspace? Yes. Sometimes, thinking of the next small action is all you need to get started. 3. Think of the next small amount of time you can concentrate for. Sometimes, you might be in a bad headspace and can’t concentrate for more than five minutes at a time. That’s totally okay! So set up a timer to create a sense of urgency. Treat it as a fun race against the clock and do as much work before the timer goes off! After the timer goes off, reassess how long you can realistically concentrate. It may still be five minutes or may have even increased to ten or twenty minutes. Keep doing this, and soon enough, you won’t need the timer at all!
4. Take breaks. Doing homework can be really tiring at times. So rest your eyes, drink some water, take a quick nap or walk, or use the restroom. It’s good to take a refreshing break, but stay away from activities that could distract you and further lead to procrastination. 5. Whenever you fail, be compassionate and forgive yourself. A mistake I made in the past was beating myself up whenever I failed to be productive. But a pro tip is this: If you can’t imagine saying something to a friend, you probably shouldn’t say it to yourself. Guilt and shame only weigh us down, but forgiveness is what enables us to get up and try again. As Arnold Schwarzenegger says, "Please don't be hard on yourself. We all go through challenges, we all go through failure. But the key thing is you just do something. One step at a time.”
The difference between me back then and me now is this: back then, I was so weighed down with guilt that five minutes of procrastination snowballed into five hours. Now, I accept that I’m human and make mistakes so I just keep moving forward. You won’t make the most of your time if you are weighed down by your past. You still have this present moment to give it your best! I’m not going to say this will be easy. Overcoming something like procrastination requires being your own scientist and going through much trial and error. But if I can overcome it, so can you!
Links: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/819232988454135392/ https://www.reddit.com/r/bodybuilding/comments/968445/one_of_my_rules_is_break_the_rules/ Source: Osborne, Mark, and John Stevenson. Kung Fu Panda. Paramount Pictures, 2008.
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