How to Stop Procrastinating: 5 Practical Tips That Work

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III here, your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. Having a great morning, I assume, so let's go ahead and jump right into it. Today I want to talk to you about five tips on how you can stop procrastinating. So why is it that we as human beings often behave in ways that don't benefit us or give us further along in our journey? How often have you said or done something only to cringe when you think back to it? The truth is that your behavior is mostly driven by your unconscious mind, especially behavior that is hard to explain from an intellectual level. Procrastination is knowing what to do and having the ability and desire to do it, but still not doing it. Although there's a lot of apparent reasons for procrastination, the root cause, the real cause for this crazy behavior resides in our unconscious mind because see your conscious mind is very limited in its ability to deal with life. You know that over which you have conscious control is mostly limited to one thing at a time. This is why using your willpower to create any real change rarely works long term. In order to change we've got to focus on our automatic behaviors first which are controlled by our unconscious mind. So you can try and overcome procrastination by using willpower but it'll usually be a short-term change. The cause for procrastination is not your conscious actions, but your unconscious associations that are, to a large extent, responsible for your behavior. So, you know, your nervous system is designed to preserve you. And, you know, we've talked about this before. When fear presents itself, your nervous system kicks in, working, you know, basically through your subconscious and trying to protect you. The ironic thing is that we train ourselves unconsciously to fear certain things by making false associations about the meaning. I mean that's the acronym of fear right? False evidence appearing real. Nothing in life has any meaning but really the meaning that you give it. So we create these neurological links to experiences that get stored in our nervous system so that we can act quickly and accordingly next time And whenever something happens to us we assign a meaning to it by the way we communicate that experience to ourselves You've got to kind of understand why this works and how this works. Unconsciously, we try to establish meaning, and at a very basic level, we're trying to establish whether something means pain or pleasure. And this meaning that gets stored in our unconscious mind helps us to act or react more subconsciously in the future. So the challenge is that when associations are reinforced, we build up beliefs that greatly influence our behavior and are often the cause of our procrastination because we're unconsciously avoiding things. Although procrastination makes no sense intellectually, it actually reveals a lot about our unconscious and our self-imposed limitations or inabilities that we have in our life. So the major reason for procrastination is usually fear. And more specifically, our fear that taking action is going to lead to more pain or a painful experience of some kind, some type of emotional experience. And at some levels, our unconscious mind combines and searches its files to come up with associations of these actions to a painful experience to protect us. and this can range from something which is you know mildly uncomfortable to something physically painful and that causes this procrastination although you you consciously want to do something you know you're unconscious is what's preventing you from doing it that's why we say things like i know i need to get this done but why am i not getting it done i've had opportunities at times where i've got a list of some things i've got to get done but for some reason I just never get around to it. Maybe you can associate with that. As human beings, we automatically seek comfort in the moment. And this is why we often procrastinate taking on tasks that don't feel good in the moment, although it would really mean more pleasure in the long term, in the future. So learning to recognize this need for comfort is what creates the growth necessary to produce results. When you recognize this, when we start to see procrastination as a blessing in disguise, we can start to use it and embrace the behavioral insights it holds for us So keep in mind procrastination reveals our fears and quite by design it supposed to gives us the necessary resistance needed to expand and grow in our own capacity to push past the fears and create the things that we really want in life. Does that make sense? The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of discomfort that you can comfortably deal with. And procrastination can also shed some light on the goals that you most value as your concerns over procrastination on it show and some parts of you care enough to really be concerned about this. It's been said that first we've got to form the habits and then our habits are going to form us. And we form habits by the way we think and the actions we take towards our thoughts. Our thoughts lead to and help determine those actions, so it's important to analyze your thoughts. Like the engraved patterns on a record, your behavior are going to play the same tune every single time, and your associations to pain and pleasure play an important part in that behavioral habit that determines what you will or won't do. So over time, you know, through repetition, we form habitual habits of thinking that cause us to automatically act or react in certain ways. So being aware of your associations to pain and pleasure is critical to dealing with the root cause of your procrastination. I hope that makes sense to you. There's many, many symptomatic solutions that will not create long-term results when you really think about it. So although the real cause for procrastination resides in your unconscious, your subconscious mind, you're ultimately still in control of your conscious actions. So I want to give you these five tips now that we sort of understand why things really, truly happen. You can direct better actions to cure this idea of procrastination. So here are five tips to stop procrastinating. Give yourself a deadline for not procrastinating, right? So number one, reduce the number of decisions you need to make throughout the day. Every decision we make requires a certain amount of energy and this causes consequences. consequences So reduce the number of decisions you have to make every day Make certain things automatic and focus on the most important decisions Number two finish your day before it starts Finish your day before it starts Plan your day ahead of time. Make sure you know what you're going to do so that you don't hold back and have to keep constantly coming up with decisions. Number three, the nothing alternative. The nothing alternative. Number four, the next habit, action. Focus on doing some very next thing in your life. The next habit, action. Take action. Make that your habit. Find a way that no matter what, you're going to take a step. You're just going to take the next step. You're not going to bite off the entire problem. You're just going to take the very next step. And number five, Adjust your environment. It's so important that when you have procrastination habits, like not getting up on time or not going to the gym or not finishing that meeting that you have, adjust your environment by putting steps in place that will limit the decision-making energy it takes. So for example, lay your clothes out for the gym the night before. Pre-plan your meals, do meal planning. Find ways to get accountability partners, but adjust your environment so that it makes it simpler and easier to be able to make these decisions. So reduce the number of decisions that you're making. Finish your day before it starts by pre-planning and pre-organizing. The nothing alternative, meaning get things done, get things done or experience that you're not going to have the results that you want. and that next habit action of taking the very next step you need and adjusting your environment. Those are the tips that I have for you for procrastinating. I hope they help you. I hope there's something that can help you to make changes in your life. And I wanna hear what works and what doesn't work for you. So hit me up on The Daily Mastermind on Facebook or Instagram. Hit me up and help me to see where it is that you struggle with procrastination. And maybe we can talk about some solutions for you as well on the upcoming podcast. That's my message for today. This has been The Daily Mastermind. Have a phenomenal day.