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The following scenario may sound familiar to you: You have a task that you urgently need to deliver, but your motivation is nowhere to be found. You feel an enormous resistance at the thought of the effort you will have to make. That resistance ensures that you keep running from your task for a while. You watch some videos on Youtube, check the news, check your mail and social media, tidy up your desk, drink a cup of coffee, etc.
You are waiting for the moment when you have enough motivation to start. But that moment never comes. The hours fly by. Over time, you realise that you’ll never get the job done if you don’t get started now. With as little motivation as at the start, you decide to start anyway. As soon as you are busy for a few minutes, you find out that the task was not that bad!
How come you’re doing this to yourself? You waste a lot of precious time with it, especially if this is done daily. The better question is: What can you do about procrastination? In this article, we will present you with the most effective ways to overcome procrastination to get the most out of your time and skills.
Where Does Procrastination Come From?
In the evolution of mankind, food was scarce. There was always uncertainty about whether your tribe would catch a wild animal or discover a beautiful fruit tree today.
Your brain has adapted to this, always trying to conserve energy. By saving energy, you could go longer without food, giving you a higher chance of survival. This used to be essential, but now this instinct is often a burden to us. Today we live in a world of abundance, especially regarding food.
So we don’t have to worry about saving energy anymore. But our brain still thinks so.
When you have a big task ahead of you, your brain knows that it will take quite a bit of energy. Thinking and focusing is the way your brain uses the most energy. So your instinct is to avoid strenuous tasks. To automatically feel resistance.
You will always feel this internal discomfort when you are about to do something that takes a lot of energy.
This is the main reason that many people today still do not exercise enough, even though literally everyone knows that it is suitable for your health and appearance. The emotional resistance to expending energy during the workout makes it mentally more difficult to pack your things and go to the gym.
So when you procrastinate, you have to compete with your brain. By recognizing where your resistance comes from, you are already 1- 0 ahead! There are also tools to expand that score.
How to Get Rid of Procrastination?
I’ll start with the bad news: You can’t possibly be motivated all the time. In fact, in more than half of the cases, I’ll bet you don’t feel like starting a task at all. You cannot escape this barrier. You’ll have to get over it.
How to overcome procrastination? You can do that in two ways. The first is that you develop more discipline yourself. Research shows that discipline can be compared to muscle. The more often you train your discipline, the stronger it becomes. Whenever you start a task quickly, despite reluctance, it gets easier the next time. Your willpower becomes stronger, making it easier for you to break through the barrier.
I can see that this is not a popular solution. It requires hard work and a strong mind. Fortunately, there are also less difficult solutions. You can also choose to make the task more attractive. You can do this by combining it with something you like.
For example, if you have to write an essay and keep putting it off, you can decide to listen to some music. Or, if your room is messy, you can combine cleaning up with listening to a podcast. Think of something you constantly put off and combine it with something you enjoy. That makes the barrier much smaller so that you are less dependent on hard discipline.
A special way to procrastinate is to eat something beforehand. As I wrote earlier, procrastination stems from your brain’s instinct to conserve energy. When you eat something, you get energy. Your brain sees this as a sign that food is currently available. So the energy-saving mechanism switches off (partially) for a while.
In other words, your procrastination will partially disappear. Now don’t take this as an excuse to stuff yourself completely. It is best to use this as a tool when you are not successfully using the previous tools.
About the Author
Chanisa Mongkhonkay is the Marketing Specialist of ThaiCasinoHex portal. Chanisa has extensive experience with marketing campaigns, public relations, and persuasion strategies. Moreover, she is a motivational speaker and she is interested in the field of self-development.
