One of the hardest things when it comes to doing anything is actually starting the process itself.
I have been the type of person that never asked myself, why am I procrastinating? And more often than not, there always was a clear reason for my behaviour.
It is very widely known that all of us procrastinate in one way or another, but the procrastinating can be on different magnitudes as well of different types.
You can be procrastinating because the task is too hard, and you are looking at solving the whole task. If you identified that as a reason you don’t start, then breaking down the task and the end result into small and actionable parts would be the best way to go about solving it.
You can be procrastinating because the task is something that you have never done before, and you feel that you lack both the information and research required to start the task. If that is the case, instead of spending months being afraid, spend a good day researching the task and ways to go about achieving it. Sometimes jumping into doing is not necessarily the best thing.
Another reason for procrastination can be the distractions that are all around you are too eager to take your attention. Who wants to study when you have your phone buzzing every couple of seconds with new messages? Phones and all of the digital world is designed to get you hooked and provide the easiest way to get dopamine hits that eventually make you want to use the app more and more. That is why identifying what is truly important to you and your life is one of the best ways to go about achieving the result that you require.
There are many more reasons and causes for procrastination. Make sure to ask yourself every-time you are postponing something, what is the reason for this?
Motivation
So why is it so hard to start, and why are there so many reasons you can be stopped midway?
There are again an unbelievable number of reasons for this. Still, the one that I myself found out about is that motivation plays a key role whenever you can push through your initial reason and overpower the urge to be distracted.
I was once again the type of person that was waiting for the motivation to come to me and the muse to make me want to start doing the task.
What I found though that in anything that you do, no matter what it is, waiting for motivation is a complete waste of time. So much that waiting for motivation is the same as walking further away from the initial goal and the initial task. If you are the type of person who does that, there is an easy way to solve it.
Start. Start right now. Start and don’t have second thoughts about it.
I use 2 rules that changed my life completely.
The first one is a 2-minute rule which states that:
If the task is going to take you less than 2 minutes, Do it straight away.
That is a great way to make sure that there are no dirty dishes, and there is nothing that clatters and distracts you. Also, it is the best way to get difficult things done because they require you some additional effort, but with this model, if it only is going to take you a 2-minute phone call, just do it.
The second one is the 5-minute rule:
No matter what the task is or how hard it is, start it straight away and keep on going for 5 minutes. If you are fed up with it, stop. But if you can keep on going, go on.
This rule is probably the biggest game-changer as sometimes things that I have to do feel like a towering mountain that I can not move, but after starting and working for at least 5 minutes, not only I get an incredible boost of motivation, but there is no reason for me to stop.
The key takeaway from all of this, that motivation doesn’t just come naturally before you do the task. The motivation itself comes whilst you are doing the task itself.
Start now. Get perfect later.
Klim Y
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