What is Procrastination? How to Beat Procrastination with Proven Methodology?
Most of you reading this article don't know about this term. After reading this you will come to know that how much impact this term or topic have in your lives. Read till end to beat this evil to level up your lives!
The blank screen, the empty page and the un-filmed video. Whenever we sit down to start writing or creating anything, we are often paralyzed by a force stopping us from starting, stopping us from typing that first word, writing that first page, or filming that first video.
In the Book, “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, He says that most of us have two lives,
💖 Ω 💔
The Life The The Un-lived
We Live Resistance Life Within
What is Resistance?
Resistance is the negative force that’s actively working against us to stop us from doing the things we want to do. It doesn’t stop us from watching TikTok or social media or playing games. Instead, it stops us from doing anything that we know in our hearts is going to level up our lives. Resistance is not really that feeling that we get when we can’t be bothered to do daily routine tasks like cleaning the desk or washing the dishes. That is actually the resistance with a small R but resistance with a big R is the resistance that holds us back from doing creative things or things that require any level of risk-taking.
Steven Pressfield quotes a nice line in his Book.
"WE DON'T TELL OUR SELVES, 'I'M NEVER GOING TO WRITE MY SYMPHONY INSTEAD, WE SAY, I AM GOING TO WRITE MY SYMPHONY;I AM JUST GOING TO START TOMORROW"
We have heard this many times, people saying “You know what?” I am going to start a YouTube channel or I am going to start study but time is not quite right. I will do it later. This is all procrastination.
The System of a Procrastinator
Starting off with a mind of a non-Procrastinator.
Here’s the mind of a non-Procrastinator.
And here’s the mind of Procrastinator.
Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them but the Procrastinator’s brain also have an Instant Gratification Monkey. Now what does this means for the Procrastinator? It means everything is fine until this happens. 👇
So, the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision to do something productive but the Monkey doesn’t like that plan.
So, he actually takes the wheel and he says, “Actually, let’s read the entire Wikipedia page or watch a video of a scandal of some actress. After that we are going to YouTube and watch some funny videos, morning shows ending up with anything that is not productive at all.”
“All of that is going to take a while so we are not going to really have room on the schedule for any work today. Sorry!” 😏
Now, what’s going on here? 🤔
The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy you want behind the wheel. He lives in the entirely in the present moment. He has no memory of the past, no knowledge of the future and he only cares about two things; EASY and FUN.
Now, in the animal world, that works fine. If you are a dog and you spend your whole life doing nothing other than easy and fun things, you’re a huge success! And to the Monkey, humans are just another animal species. You have to be well slept, well fed and propagating into the next generation, which in tribal times might have worked OK! But we are in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey does not know what that is. Which is why, we have another guy in our brain, the Rational Decision-Maker, who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do.
We can visualize the future. We can see the big picture. We can make long term plans. And he wants to take all of that into account. And he wants to just have us do whatever makes sense to be doing right now.
Now, sometimes it makes sense to be doing things that are easy and fun, like when you are having dinner or going to bed or enjoying well-earned leisure time. That’s why there is an overlap. 🤞
Sometimes they agree. But other times, it makes much more sense to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant for the sake of the big picture. And That’s when we have a conflict.
For the Procrastinator, that conflict tends to end a certain way every time leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone. Easy and Fun place that’s entirely out of the Makes Sense Circle; The Dark Playground.
When there is any of above-mentioned cases, The Monkey terrifies of the Panic Master, and boooom! He’s up to the tree.
Finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel who can make thing that make sense.
This entire situation, with three characters, is the Procrastinator’s system.
TYPES OF PROCRASTINATION ✌
There are two types of Procrastination.
When there are deadlines, the effects of Procrastination are contained to the short-term because the Panic Monster gets involved.
But there is second type of Procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline.
So, if you wanted a career where you are a self-starter, something in the arts, something entrepreneurial, there is no deadlines on those things at first, because nothing’s happening. There are many other kinds of important things outside of your career that don’t involve any deadlines, like seeing your family and taking care of your health. Now if the Procrastinator’s only mechanism of doing these hard things is the Panic Monster, that’s a problem because in all these non-deadline situations, the Panic Monster doesn’t show up. So, the effects for Procrastination are not contained; they just extend outward forever. It can be the source of huge amount of long-term unhappiness and regrets. 😥
How to Beat Procrastination? 🤔🤷♂️
Referring from the book “The War of Art” there are three Key Points:
👉KNOW THE ENEMY
👉BECOME A PROFESSIONAL
👉BANISH THE EGO
KNOW THE ENEMY
As mentioned at the start, it’s the resistance that stops us from doing anything that is going to level up our lives. One thing that really fuels resistance is the Fear.
As the writer says in the book:
“Fear is actually a very good thing because when we feel scared about doing something, it usually means we should just do the thing”
He writes, “Remember one rule of thumb”
“The More Scared We Are Of A Work Or Calling,
The Surer We Can Be That We Have To Do It.”
Resistance is that compass that points towards the thing in our life that is actually most important for us to do.
Like we never feel any resistance towards sitting and playing any video game but all of us do feel resistance towards sitting down and writing or studying or doing creative things depending upon the nature of each person. That tells us that sitting down and doing the tough task that offers resistance, is currently the most important thing we need to be working on.
Key Rule of Thumb here as Steven Pressfield writes in his book,
“The More Resistance You Experience,
The More Important Your Un-manifested
Art/ Project/ Enterprise Is To You”
This could be used as a model for decision-making. Like if someone is scared about doing something, he/she has to try his/her best to actually do the thing.
BECOME THE PROFESSIONAL
In the book, Steven introduces the idea of:
AMATEUR and PROFESSIONAL
An Amateur take action whenever inspiration strikes or when they’re in the right mood, they are not committed and the Goals are focused on Fun, Money and Status.
A Professional shapes their life so that the work is a priority, they are determined and committed to succeed by following their inner drive and creative spirit.
The only way we can deal with resistance is if we become a professional with our work rather than an amateur. A professional is someone who does it for the sake of doing the work and takes pride in the work itself.
If you’re a professional, you work through adversity and you are open to criticism because you always want to improve. Whereas if you are an amateur, then you feel like if someone gives you bad feedback on your work say drawing or YouTube video, it hurts your feelings. Whereas if you treat it as a professional, you would be more inclined to actually grow from the feedback.
BANISH THE EGO
Once we have become a professional, the next thing we need to do is recognize that the ongoing battle between the SELF and the EGO.
EGO is more focused on external events and how other people see us.
SELF is the inner calm that we have which is about the way that we see ourselves.
When we are led by our EGO, our main priority is to maintain the status of the eye in the world, and we are just focused on how external events affect us, and everything is very superficial and surface level.
Then we have got the SELF, which is made up of the individual and collective unconscious areas of our minds which includes our dreams, intuition, visions and aspirations. It encompasses the deepest form of who we are and when we sit down to create, we are attempting to channel the self because it’s through the self that we can beat resistance.
It’s just like the;
🔒 Fixed Mindset
If we have fixed mindset, and someone gives the negative feedback on any of our work say a drawing or a YouTube video, it really shakes us to the core because it like damages our EGO.
🌱 Growth Mindset
Whereas when we have a growth mindset to something, we recognize that if we fail at something, it’s just part of the process of improving overtime.
GOAL SETTING
When we come up to the goal setting, there are two types of goals i.e., Input Goals and Output goals.
Input Goals are those goals that are inside our own controls. “I am going to make two videos a week rest of my life, I am going to write the best book that I can.” are the input goals that are broadly within my control.
Output Goals are those goals that are outside of our control. “I am going to write a book and want it to hit the World’s best-selling book or make a YouTube video and want it to hit a million views.” are the output goals and it’s broadly outside of my control.
We should focus on goals that are inside of our control and give our level best.
Whenever we think of an output goal,
We Feel the Resistance!
We Feel the Procrastination!
And Here’s The Last One Thing! ⚠
That’s not that many boxes, especially since we have already used a bunch of those. So, I think we all need to take a long, hard look at that calendar. We need to think about what we are really Procrastinating on, because everyone is Procrastinating on something in life.
We need to stay aware of Instant Gratification Monkey 🐒
That’s the job for all of us.
And because there’s not many boxes on there, it’s a job that should probably start today.
Thank You!
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