Ah, procrastination. It affects us all at times. Some of us more than others, and I’ve been guilty of it as much as anyone.

It’s insidious, it creeps up on you, you may not even realize you’re doing it. It affects you and the quality of your life to a great degree. It causes stress, failure, feelings of dissatisfaction, and disempowerment.

In short, it sucks.

Why do we do it? Is the short-term pleasure we gain from putting things off – from watching TV, playing Wii, mindlessly surfing the internet worth the long-term harm we do to ourselves by putting off the things which are truly important?

I always believed I worked better under a deadline, so I would procrastinate until that important thing that I needed to do became not only important, but important AND urgent. Nothing like a deadline to get those motivational juices flowing!

As much as I told myself I did my best work when under pressure – I was truly just kidding myself. Yes, pressure can cause you to do better work because when you have no other options you are focused 100% on an objective – it lets you pull off great feats like the 24 hour study marathon, or occasional great strokes of genius. But without applying that pressure to yourself, there is no need for a 24 hour study marathon. Those strokes of genius – they happen more often when your mind is on something else – when you’re spending quality time with your friends or family, or when playing a game of soccer, football, baseball, hockey or whatever gets your juices flowing.

I’m not sure you can ever completely eliminate procrastination, or that you’d really want to. But I think it’s safe to say that most people could benefit with doing considerably less of it. So how do we go about that?

Well, there are a couple of ways that I’ve seen people challenge themselves on this very topic. I think both can work very well, and you should choose whichever suits your personality the best.

30 day challenge

The first way is the all out 30 day procrastination challenge. For 30 days you will ALWAYS be doing something productive with your time.

That means no TV unless it’s educational – discovery channel, history channel, that kind of thing. No video games. No surfing the internet. It means working on whatever is most important on your list. If you need some down time, you watch or listen to motivational videos or audios, or videos or audios that can help you in your field of expertise. You read personal development books or books to do with helping you in your field.

Perhaps you build a new website, or you help out a charity, or spend more time with your kids or family. Maybe you help a friend with a long-overdue project. You catch up on all those things you’ve said ‘one day I’ll get around to it’ to.

This is the hard-core approach. It’s for the kind of people that thrive off of a challenge. It’s 30 days long for 2 reasons. It’s short enough that anyone should be able to manage it. The end is always in sight. Studies have shown that it takes 3-4 weeks to form a habit. 30 days of always being productive should instill a much higher productivity base rate – your default rate – for after those 30 days. You should have formed a habit where you enjoy getting things done and being active. When the 30 days are over, you’ll be able to watch TV and procrastinate however much you want, but you’ll probably find that you don’t want to as much.

The second method is for those who don’t think they can quite manage something as hard-core as the 30 day challenge.
 

Building block method

You chunk things. The difference here is you are taking on a lifelong commitment! You add one new productivity habit every month. You focus on it for a month – (3-4 weeks to form a habit!) and then move on to the next habit, while maintaining the old ones. Within 6 months to a year you should find your productivity, happiness and confidence has soared. Maybe even your paycheck.

The key here is you are relentless with each new habit. Let’s say it’s something as simple as getting back into tennis. You make a commitment that every Monday at 7 you’ll play for an hour. You commit to it completely. If you’re feeling ill, or tired, or lazy, you get up and go. If you’re really too sick to play, you go anyways and sit on the sidelines. The point is, you must generate and stick to that new habit. No exceptions at all for that first month. After the first month, the odd slip is ok, but if you find yourself slipping out of the habit, it’s time to put the focus back on that. It goes to the top of the list and becomes your habit to focus on for the next month.
 

The way we talk

The way we talk to ourselves has a huge impact on how we view things in this world. It impacts how we get stuff done. Talk negatively and down to yourself – and you probably won’t succeed. Talk confidently, positively and your odds of succeeding skyrocket. With that in mind, it’s worth developing the habit of watching how we talk about procrastination. Just changing a few words and internalizing them will help a lot with trying to get where we’re trying to go.

For example, try changing:

Help along the way

Whichever method you choose, inmindmotion.com offers 2 audios that can help. The Motivator session audio is great for giving you that boost when you feel procrastination kicking in. When you need to get off that couch and doing something, pull out your mp3 player and put this on. The second audio – ProcrastinationKiller – is a Rewire audio that you listen to at night for approximately a month. It reinforces beliefs that it’s better to be active using visualisations and affirmations. It will change your long-term beliefs around procrastination – making either way you choose to work on procrastination easier.

Life really is more fun when you’re getting more done.