The Art of Just doing It: Say goodbye to procrastination!

“I will do it later”

We are all guilty of putting things away to do for later, at some point in our lives. When that later becomes now, something creeps in and our priority changes. Hence, we push them to do it later again.

But why? Why so much dilly-dallying to get just menial work done, something that can potentially bring us joy or change our lives in a positive manner.

Is it because the task we want to complete doesn’t hold as much importance? Doesn’t it hold that much value for us? Nope, it’s not that.

We all have things we want to get done and perhaps get good at. They can just be something as simple that brings us joy or, they can be something that helps us to reach our maximum potential.

Yet, we still procrastinate. But why?

Don’t worry, with few common reasons for procrastination, I will give you some actionable plans you can use immediately today.

Why? Few common reasons

1. How often do you check your phone in a day and what is the majority of time you are checking it for? Are you checking the weather, news, emails or stock market? Or are you checking messages, chats, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or other social media? What is it? 

   Regardless, are you mindful of how often you are checking it every hour? If you feel like you do it quite often and you have no clue how often, you are getting distracted…… a lot.

   Checking phones is only one of the many ways you get distracted. While there is nothing wrong with watching series, movies, playing video games, checking your texts, socializing with colleagues at work, they become a distraction when you are doing them frequently and mindlessly by putting away things that you should be doing at that very moment. Distractions are goal killers.

2. You are most likely getting distracted and getting into procrastination because you don’t know what you are doing or what goals you have: you lack clarity. 

   Are you aware of what direction your life is going? What plans do you have in place? What are your life-long goals? What are your goals for today, tomorrow, rest of the week, month, year and decade? Can you answer any of these questions without thinking too much?

   Lacking clarity in general will take your life to no direction and you will keep swirling around on the same useless stuff over and over again. You get bored and push your to-dos for later.

3. Closely related to distractions, whenever you have two choices: 

   1.) to do hard things now for your goals. 

   2.) easy things right now that will entertain or make you feel good.

   Oftentimes you are choosing number 2. That number 2 is producing dopamine in your brain, a feel good hormone. Well, dopamine has other functions in your brain but I am leaving it at that, you can research it more if you’d like. 

   Anyway, choosing potato chips instead of freshly cut celery, watching several episodes on Netflix before bed instead of reading or talking to your partner or doing plethora of other self-improvement activities, playing 2 hours of Call of Duty instead of playing 1 hour and dedicating another hour for learning something new, etc. are all cheap dopamine producing activities because with them you get the results there and then, you get instant pleasure.

   But working on your goals is a life-long commitment that may or may not bring instant gratification (sometimes they do, most of the time they won’t).Hence, you save stuff to work on for later. 

4. While planning is crucial for maintaining a set schedule for things you want/need to work on, many times once you plan something and don’t get a chance to execute the plan in a reasonable amount of time, the plan itself becomes something to do later and things can pile up very quickly.

   A plan not being executed and getting piled up with other plans can easily become a very good reason for you to keep pushing things for later. This gap between planning and executing is one of the most prominent causes for procrastination. You are planning too much.

There can be other many more reasons why you keep procrastinating. Family responsibilities, lack of energy after a busy day at work, mental blocks that can bring out excuses, etc. However, above few ones are more prominent in today’s digitized and fast-paced world.

And like promised earlier, we are about to go through few actionable tips to get you one step closer to eradicate procrastination. Use this as a starting point for guidance.

After going through this, you will be able to identify major areas in your life that require reflection and some deep thinking. You can then brainstorm more ideas that are closely related to those areas of your life and start seeing a pattern. This will then help you pinpoint the culprits that are causing you to procrastinate.

Let’s get started:

Avoid consuming contents by mindlessly scrolling social media. Instead consume contents as a researcher (If you aren’t wanting to grow your social media, you can go directly to 3rd paragraph below).

As a researcher, you watch social media accounts that have same/similar interests that align with your vision and goals. Find 5-10 social media accounts, go through their top performing contents and start analyzing by asking questions such as why that piece of content did so well, how it is structured, who is behind it, what population it is addressing & so on. You can come up with your own research questions & start analyzing contents.

This approach is way better than mindlessly scrolling and laughing at memes or funny compilations. Stay focused on your long term goal rather than a cheap dopamine releasing activity.

However, if you don’t care about growing on social media, set a time for checking social media per day. Once the timer is up, you can’t go back and open it again. You have to break the pattern of constantly wanting to look at your phone. At first it will be hard but you will get used to with it.

Start lifting weights. While this is not an absolute necessity because you can find your own form of physical activity that is more enjoyable to you, working out in any shape or form will impact all areas of your life.

Having stronger muscles, strategizing food habits to fuel your body instead of eating junk food, being able to do a lot of other things after a grueling work day, overall healthier lifestyle are few of the side effects of lifting weights. I will leave it at that. If you are interested you can research this further.

Start practicing mindfulness if you are not already doing it. It will help you create a sense of calm when life throws unexpected adversities to your face. It will keep you grounded.

It may feel hard in the beginning to stay put, you will get used to with it. Start with 1 minute then gradually increase that to 10 minutes and eventually longer.

Being productive while being productive. Assuming you go the gym, perhaps start listening to podcasts, YouTube videos, audiobooks and anything else around the subject areas that you are interested in. Believe it or not, by doing this it may spark ideas of your own. When that happens and it will happen, simply open the notepad and write it down between your sets.

This is however not solely relevant to working out in the gym. You can do this, while gardening, on a solo walk, while cooking/doing dishes, cleaning the house, etc.

Go on a walk. Regardless you make time for gym everyday or not, you should set aside a time to walk. If you have a partner or a pet or kids, it’s even better: you have something to do together after a long work day (school day for kids) which will keep you moving and get you extra bonding time.

Being a form of physical activity, walking can help with burning extra few calories. If you are walking by yourself, you could listen to some audiobook or podcast as a researcher( like above) and gain more knowledge on a particular subject matter you are interested in.

Alright, this is getting longer than I had anticipated so I will end this here. Treat this as a guide for starters. After practicing these tips, you will get a hang of the areas you are lagging on. Then you can customize or re-create your own version of action taking plans to eradicate procrastination.

Think through these, make plans & take actions when applicable, do at least 2-5 things immediately after reading this. If you are reading this while at work or waiting for someone at a restaurant and can’t do anything at the moment, put a reminder on your phone to do it later that day.

Take action however you can with what you have right now, don’t wait. That’s how you beat procrastination.

I will see you in my next post.

Peace out!