We have all been there. You have a major deadline or task to do, and yet you sit around and waste hours of your precious time on Netflix or some other time wasting endeavor.
We try to console our mind by saying we have enough time to do it later on, but all we are doing is treating our mind with cookies and letting it become a ‘Couch Potato’.
How to Defeat Procrastination
If you don’t defeat procrastination, you are prone to wasting thousands of hours of precious time that could have been used for improving your health, building a business or any other major goal you have.
Procrastination, if untreated, will suck the motivation out of your life stage by stage. It is like cancer.
To avoid procrastination and become a High-Flying Go Getter, follow the following 7 steps that have helped me become a highly efficient individual.
Step 1: Use The “5 Goals Per Day” Technique
This should be your first step towards annihilating your procrastination habit. The technique will help you build discipline (which is the opposite of procrastination).
Here is how to use the “5 Goals Per Day” method:
- Before going to sleep or every morning, set yourself 5 ultimate daily goals that you must accomplish before going to bed that day.
- The Goals must not be huge, because if the goal is too huge and you don’t accomplish all your goals by the end of the day, you are only feeding your mind thoughts of you being a weak person.
- For example, if I wanted to build a blog, my daily goals would be “Write 500 words today” or “Read chapter 2 of how to build a blog”. They are small but require effort.
Note: Whatever you do, make sure that you accomplish those 5 goals at the end of the day. You defeat procrastination by proving to your brain that you can accomplish goals and are a strong individual.
Step 2: Find Your “Optimum Efficiency” Time
Your optimum efficiency time is the time where you are most inclined to work and put in effort.
Are you a night owl or an early bird?
Well, if you already know what time you are most effective at, then you can jump this step.
If not, I have a defined plan that will help you find out. Here it is:
1. Sleep 8-10 Hours; Wake up early (5-7AM); Take a bath and start accomplishing your tasks.
- Are you concentrated?
- Are you yawning a lot?
- Do you accomplish at least 75% of your goals…
Evaluate your results and if you were energetic and efficient, then, you are an early bird! High-Five!! That’s me too! If not…
2. Sleep 8-10 Hours; Wake Up; Take A Bath; Do your daily tasks until it becomes night time and start accomplishing your tasks.
- Ask yourself the above questions I mentioned before.
Evaluate your results and see if you were efficient. If yes, then you are a night owl!
If both times are not your optimum time, then try noon, afternoon… and evaluate your results.
Step 3: Use The “Pomodoro” technique or an adaption of it
If you haven’t heard of the Pomodoro technique, here is a simple explanation:
- Work for 25 minutes and take 5-minute break
- Repeat
- Repeat again, but now take 15-minute break
- Now Repeat from the Top.
What makes this method effective are those 5-minutes breaks. They are basically rewards for working 25 minutes.
Now, you can change this technique by making an adaption of it, but I advise as a beginner, you don’t lengthen the 5-minute break part. It is a sweet spot.
Step 4: Make Sure Your Working Space Is Organized
Yes, it might not seem like a big deal, but if your working space is dirty and unorganized, you will lose concentration and motivation.
Make sure your table is well lit, well-spaced and well organized. Make sure everything you need to accomplish your goal is on the desk before you even start working.
When I am talking about organization, I am also talking about your computer. A disorganized computer can feed your procrastination like nothing else.
Step 5: Stop Multi-Tasking
This expands on the previous step. Even though, many people say that multi-tasking is effective, it actually hinders your effectiveness.
When you doing an important task on your PC/laptop, make sure you don’t open 12 tabs at once. It will casually lead to you opening another tab of YouTube, Facebook or some other time wasting endeavor.
This also relates to goals. Don’t focus on two of your goals at once. Make sure you finish and concentrate fully on the first goal before going on towards your next goal.
Step 6: Have One Major Long-Term Goal
On the first step, we discussed laying out daily goals that will help you become efficient, but what is also important is having one long term goal that you can focus 110% on.
How long should a Long-Term Goal be?
Well… in my eyes, the perfect long term goal should be between 3-6 months. The reason this time interval is effective is because it is not too far away as to inspire procrastination or too short to cause stress.
In the perfect world, your daily short term goals should lead to your ultimate major long term goal.
It is fine to have unrelated daily goals, but effectively, 80% of your daily goals should be goals that build your long term goal.
For example, if my long term goal is losing 30 pounds of fat in the next 3 months, then…
My daily goals would be similar to the following:
- Track my calories
- Full Body Workout
- Drink 2L of Water…
Step 7: Do What You Hate First
In the perfect world, all your goals and tasks are going to be things you absolutely love doing, but we aren’t in that perfect world.
As a result, you should accomplish the tougher goals before doing the easier ones.
If you start out doing the easier goals first, you will eventually burn out by the time you get to the harder tasks. And almost always, the tougher goals are the more valuable.
So before accomplishing any other goals, make sure you are obliterating the tougher goals before you move forward.
If you have extreme discipline, then this is no matter to you, but why are you reading this if you are disciplined? Right.
To build discipline and defeat procrastination, you need to prove to your mind that you are a goal-oriented individual.
Over to You
Procrastination can render your life goal-less if undefeated, as a result take the above steps seriously and you will develop a goal-oriented mind in under 6 months.
You can enjoy a lazy day once in a while, but make sure you don’t get trapped into over extending your lazy day to a lazy week and then a lazy month. I am not joking; it can happen to everyone.
This is why losing fat and becoming healthy is hard. People start for a week and then decide to have one lazy day and that lazy day transforms into a lazy year and then they are back to a new year’s solutions the next year.
The cycle continues…
This is why you should start defeating your procrastination habit early on and with full vengeance.
What is the best way to defeat procrastination? Well…
It is by following the above steps, but what is the most important is having goals that you accomplish. It literally does change your life if you become a goal oriented individual.
If you don’t know how to set goals, then make sure you give this guide a read.
But what is ultimately vital is that you take action. All this steps I gave you are absolutely worthless if you don’t put them into action.