Dealing with procrastination

Gaming goblin does his homework

So in school, I have always been good at doing assignments to time. I did them as soon as we got them delivered.

Now this might sound a bit contradicting. Because if you read my 3-part story, you know that I was a little gaming goblin.

So how could a gaming goblin do homework so fast?

Well, the reason is simple:

I was not allowed to game all the time. This meant that when I was not allowed to game, I was bored. The only thing I could then do was my homework.

All while my peers had not even begun most the time until a few days before deadline.

So what is the lesson here? The lesson is, that if you limit and constrict yourself, then you do the work. And the limiting and constricting has to be done to the fun stuff, like gaming.

If I was gaming all the time, I would have had the same trouble as my peers. Not getting homework done in good time.

So obviously this works if YOU dear reader, still want to game. Then set a limit to yourself, and begin working afterwards.

But what I find it can be more useful to do is limiting the time spent LEARNING something. Because I have always had a belief that I HAD to read an entire book before I could begin to take action.

This belief sucks. It is a form of procrastination, keeping you in your comfort zone. And we all know that learning all day will not lead to anything good. Action has to be taken.

I don't have a good action to learning ratio myself, but I have heard others talk about it. They say that you have to at LEAST have a 5:1 ratio between action and learning. So if you spend 10 minutes learning, spend 50 minutes in action.

I don't know how correct this is, but it seems pretty decent. Because wisdom can only be learnt through experience. My biggest lessons has come through a period of struggle. And then self-reflecting to learn about my mistakes.

So the entire key takeaway is: Limit your learning. Take more action.

Starting tasks

I believe we have all been procrastinating on tasks. Especially when you are just about to start, then you get this heavy resistance.

And then you end up on the YouTube tab or on your phone instead.

I won't dig too deep into resistance, but what you need to know is that resistance appears when you have IMPORTANT work. It knows that the work is important to you, so it tries to stop you.

So how do we fix this? Well, one thing that has helped me is asking yourself this:

"Is this task leading me towards my goals?"

If you find yourself on YouTube, is it leading you towards your goals? If the answer is "no", I am sure you know what to do ;)

Now if you want to dig even deeper and gain self-awareness, ask this:

"If the task does not lead me towards my goals, WHY do I want to do it?"

This will reveal some disgusting answers, but it is worth it. Many times I find it is because I don't want to "fail" my work. Even though I can't really fail, it's just my mind playing tricks on me.

Another question is: "What are my avoiding?" Because you might avoid work when you procrastinate.

Failure is scary!111!1!11!1!!1

So as I said earlier, I am sometimes afraid to fail when I start a task. Even though I can't fail, but I can still kinda mess up you know.

Well, I want you to view failure like this:

Failure is how you get better. You CANNOT possibly be good at something when you start. Failure is essential to success. Do you want success? Well then go out there and start failing. Do you not want to grow and in 1 year be in the exact same situation as the year before? Well then go out and stop failing.

If you don’t fail, you don’t grow.

So can you avoid failure? Yes, but then you won’t grow. Do you want to grow? Good, then let’s look at how you can switch your mindset.

You need to see every failure as an opportunity to learn.

So that was a little rant by myself on failure, I hope you liked it ;)

But every time you are afraid of failure, ask yourself this: What am I afraid of? Why am I afraid to fail? Will the world explode if I fail? What can I learn from failing? What are the consequences of not failing?

Journal about it. Getting your fears and thoughts down on paper really helps. You can also talk to a close friend or family member.

As said, understanding yourself is the best way to overcome your problems. So journaling will help you become self-aware.

So a quick little conclusion:

1. Limit your learning.

2. Ask yourself if the task is leading you towards you goals.

3. View failure as a way to learn, and gain self-awareness about your fears.