Today will be about exploring procrastination, what your current procrastinating habits are and how we can address these once and for all so you can make massive leaps in your business. There are a few questions you can answer that will allow you to address your current situation and help you move forward.
In my experience, procrastination is the number one habit for people who are in fear or self-doubt and feeling stuck.
So, are you ready to slowly and gently work through this?
A little bit about procrastination
There are some people who procrastinate by doing very little – i.e. watching TV, or scrolling through Facebook. If you fit into this camp you probably have a tendency to call yourself mean names like ‘lazy’… and I don’t like that fact. So I want to do something about it quick smart.
There are also people who are structured procrastinators. If you fit into this category you probably get lots of other tasks done, just not the one task that moves you towards that dream.
Reflecting on this, in what ways do you procrastinate? What do you do?
Daniel Levitin, neuroscientists and the author of a book ““The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” notes that humans tend to put off things that don’t provide immediate reward, like writing a book as it is a big goal that takes a significant amount of time. Instead, searching social media and liking posts is more rewarding and so you do that rather than doing the task in front of you.
Perfectionism can also lead to procrastination because we get into our heads that everything has to be perfect and if it’s not going to be perfect so why bother?
- Who has sat in front of a computer and gone over and over the same sentence for an hr?
- Where did it get you?
- What did you learn from that?
The idea is not to aim for perfection but instead just to start.
If you don’t prioritise you will find yourself going CRAZY from too much multi-tasking – this is in fact just doing lots of things at once in a mediocre fashion.
Your brain has a daily processing limit and multi-tasking lead to the release of the stress hormone cortisol in the brain which clouds thinking and creates mental fog.
But there is a way through it!
Creating options
Sometimes the hard part is not knowing where to start. Having a range of possible options can help you decide where to start first.
List a range of options from 1 to 10.
Change the pattern
Learning to turn procrastination into forward motion involves recognising those things you do when you’re procrastinating (like folding washing, doing the dishes, looking on Facebook etc) and start changing your strategy.
- What could you do differently when you become aware you are procrastinating?
- How could you respond differently?
- Who could you choose to be in that moment in order to take action?
- What can you ask yourself that will move you in the direction you want to go?
Another thing that will have you turning procrastination into forward motion is reconnecting with your why – your purpose, your passion, your song.
We will be exploring this in the next blog in this series. To read the first “how to take the big leap and step into your power” click here, or “how to get intimate with fear and overcome your blocks” click here.
About the author: Tess Bartlett is the Founder of This Simple Space and a mindset coach based in Northcote, Melbourne. She works in person and over skype with high-achieving conscious female entrepreneurs using mindset, visualisation and strategy to help them take the big leap and move to the next phase of their business so they can step into their power using. She also offers research consultancy and workshops.
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