Procrastination

Hi Cloud!

I'm a pro procrastinator. I've come across a couple sort of insights into this matter that really shifted my perspective and helped me break the cycle. I think whether it makes sense to someone or not depends on the roots of the procrastination. I didn't know the roots of mine. Just some vague perfectionism labels I gave myself. But now after having engaged with these couple discussions, it has greatly helped me and I encourage you to check yourself with them and see if they can be useful to you.

So here are the advices/insights that helped me:

1,. Stop being controlling. The first time I came across this, I was like, I'm not controlling!! But then it started to make sense. So the idea is that we don't start doing a project because we are afraid of the result which means we wanna control what happens, which means we obviously wanna do a flawless job. At first sight, it might look alright (of course I want my project to stand out and be awesome, etc) but that could come from a controlling attitude. Why wouldn't us allow ourselves to achieve the perfect job on 2, 3 or 4 tries? Not one single complicated or complex invention came out neatly the first time. So let's keep in the tracks. Let's perhaps not do a perfect project on the first try. Personally, if I knew that it was okay to not accomplish 100% on my first touch, i would totally start my project. Bear with me as I explain this a bit more. In order to understand the spirit of this method, we need to enter exaggeration mode. Imagine the project is completely failure proof, or better even, if we deliver poorly it's gonna be okay. So let's say if you deliver 10% it's gonna be accepted. So now the question is, can you deliver 10 %? I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can deliver 20 or 40 too once you have your hands on it. So once you get started those muscles warm up, also you will enjoy hitting those imaginary bars and you will feel capable. So stop controlling the result. And go for a lousy 20% and chances are you will be like come on I can do a 65% without even looking. And from there you'll go with the newton's law, you're an object in motion and you will keep moving know your own.

2. It's a purpose related issue. I recently listened to an amazing podcast, The Awesome Project, on audible , where the guest said I was afraid of starting my project because I was afraid of meeting my purpose (totally rephrasing). She said: I was like what if I do the project and I realise I have a purpose in life? Or sth to that amount. And oh my goodness, did that ring true to me! I realised this was a purpose matter. I remember many years ago, one day when I was on a beginner riding lesson, my horse did like one centimeter of unexpected move and I fell. And I absolutely couldn't stay on, I could totally stay, but I lost 10 or 15% balance and I was like I'm gonna throw away the 85% myself and I kinda made myself fall. I knew it. My teacher saw right into me and said why did you make yourself fall? And I was like first of all I don't know!!! I fell! Secondly, how on earth did he know??? And fast forward today because of this woman on this podcast, I found the answer: I was thinking to myself if I can ride well, I have a purpose in life and that's scary. I'm gonna get off the horse and they're gonna respect me as a rider and I'm gonna be counted as one of them, etc etc, all the image that comes with having done a brilliant job. Riding perfectly in theory was the project I didn't want to start. (If you want o find this expert, I think this expert was known as "the purpose girl". (I hope I'm mentioning the right guest here). Or search for the podcast.)

So having these 2 items in mind, I could very recently start one of my biggest long term efforts I was afraid to even look at. Now I engage with it, create and edit and deliver and review, etc smoothly.

Hope that helps you as well 😊😊😊

@halcyonCloud2036

I'm totally in this pit with you. As someone writing their applications for the upcoming graduate school cycle, I can't seem to find a day where I can get a single productive ounce of effort out of me haha. This often just demotivates me to work and gives me a hard time to really start working on anything until the time really starts to become a pressure on me.

I think one thing I try to do with procrastination is just learning how to start a project or the action of working. Often for me I just find it difficult to "start" things if that makes sense. Once I do start it becomes a lot easier and more smooth sailing from then. To do this I often try to ease myself into working by doing something light work in the beginning like some of my easier tasks and try to work myself into a bit of harder tasks. Other times I try to allot myself a specific time in which I dedicate to working. The scheduling aspect seems to help a lot as well as it does put the time pressure to be productive during that span of time.