Procrastinating? Here’s 3 things you need to know
I’m going to keep this article short and sweet because, if you’re reading this, you’re probably procrastinating and I want you to get back to whatever you’re putting off as quickly as possible.
It’s also going to be a short post because I myself am procrastinating by writing this very article. I can hear you gasp. The thing is, I write about everything I experience. Every experience I have is unpicked and deconstructed so that I can understand myself better. Then I share this process with you in case it helps you too.
So what am I procrastinating about? I’m currently writing an online course for new practitioners in the field of holistic health to gain confidence and create a strong foundation for their practice. The thing is, it’s a huge task to create.
The idea of writing a month-long course, creating the content, filming, web design and marketing is overwhleming. I’m exhausted and I’ve barely begun. So, rather than writing the course I’m writing this article. And this leads me nicely onto the first point about procrastination.
You’re making it into more than it is
The main reason we procrastinate, even if it’s to avoid doing something we want to do, is because we build the task into something far greater and scarier than it really is.
Sometimes, when we look at how far we have to climb to reach the top of the mountain, our goal, we stubbornly sit on our bums and refuse to move. It’s too daunting to comprehend even making it half way, let alone to the top.
It’s a well-known proverb that a journey of a thousand steps starts with just one. It’s the same as writing a book, taking one page at a time, or even taking it word by word if that’s how you’re feeling.
What this is reminding us of is that we have to lower our gaze and refocus on the single step in front of us. It’s easy to look around and see everyone racing up the same mountain and thinking we’re not as fast and won’t make it, but this comes down to our belief in ourselves which I’ll talk about in a minute.
Whether it’s a big or small task you’re procrastinating on, break it down. An easy way to do this is to write the goal at the bottom of a piece of paper and write all the individual steps on post-it-notes. Then you can move the post-it-notes to create a clear step-by-step timeline, finishing with the final step before you reach your goal. Now you have starting point you can take action on and a guide to follow.
Ignore all the other steps, just do the first one, and the next and the next until you reach your goal.
Your fear and lack of self-belief is stopping you
Procrastination is often wrongly diagnosed as laziness. It’s not at all. Underneath the inability to get going on a task, doing all we possibly can to swerve around it, is a block. Your job is to figure out what it is and this involves getting quiet and really nailing down how you’re honestly feeling about this task.
Does it scare you because you don’t think you’ll do it well? Does it annoy you because you’d rather be doing something else? Does it make you feel overwhelmed and anxious because you don’t know how to do it? All your emotions give you clues, you just have to follow them.
Once you have the clue you can take action which is the most powerful thing you can do to shift yourself out of procrastination and into creation. If you don’t know how to do it, ask for help. If you don’t think you’ll do it well, work on your self-esteem. If you would rather be doing something else, ask yourself what it is that you’d rather doing and why aren’t you doing that.
Your emotions are always guiding you, you only need to dig a little deeper to understand the truth of how you really feel.
At the root of most procrastination is a fear that we’re not good enough. Those fears are very deeply-rooted in all of us and they crop up whenever we make a start on something. If you’re putting off doing something you know will benefit your life in some way, there is undoubtedly a fear lurking in the shadows.
Weed it out and take action against that fear. Check out my latest handy guide for how to defeat fear in two simple steps.
Shift your energy to release the block
The irony of it is, the more we procrastinate the further away we get from starting. The energy will start getting stale and we will begin to lose what little momentum we had in the first place.
What we need at this point is to take a big step backwards. Just stop, it’s ok to stop. Give yourself headspace before you start again, don’t force it.
If there’s a real downbeat energy about the task you’re procrastinating about, it’s a clear sign to step away from it. Believe me when I say, absolutely nothing good comes from forcing something when the energy is resistant. When you carry out a task with an energy of reluctance, ennui or resistance, you’ll be doing more harm than good.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to take a break from it then turn it on its head.
What you need is an energy shift to swirl this stagnant energy up into the air and clear it out. Some of the best ways to do this are changing your environment and moving your body. You could go for a walk, play music, prepare some delicious food, go to a talk or workshop, do a workout, visit a city. There’s so many things you can do.
Once you have an energy shift, don’t pick up from where you left off. Approach the task from a different starting point, move your work environment to another room if you can, change the atmosphere with smell, sight and sound so it feels like a new, fresh space to work in.
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