If you're reading this, chances are you struggle with procrastination and find it difficult to stay motivated to achieve your goals. Don't worry, you're not alone! Procrastination is a common challenge that many people face, but with the right mindset and tools, you can stop procrastinating and reach your full potential.
In this blog post, we'll explore six practical steps that you can take to stop procrastinating and start achieving your goals. Whether you're a student, a professional, or simply someone looking to improve your productivity, these tips will help you stay on track and accomplish what you set out to do.
Change is Possible
If you’re like most people, you have set numerous goals in the past, gotten excited about them, and then found yourself thirty days in the future with no advancement made towards them. The truth is, we all have great ideas and plans for our lives but turning them into a reality can sometimes become a very challenging task, to say the least.
Honestly, change can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as we sometimes make it out to be. Current research in Positive Psychology and Neuroscience has proved that change is not only possible but with the right strategies, it is not as challenging as most of us think.
So, ask yourself, what have you been putting off in your life, that if you were to accomplish in the next few months would dramatically improve your life?
- Do you need to start exercising regularly?
- Eating healthier?
- Saving some money?
- Improving your communication skills?
- Maybe you have wanted to learn a new skill or take up a new hobby.
Whatever it is you’ve been putting off, by following the steps that follow, you can stop procrastinating and begin living the life of your dreams.
1. Write down what you intend to achieve or create in the positive.
Many times, our goals are stated in the negative instead of the positive which leads to procrastination. Let’s say your desire is to lose weight, so you express it as “My goal is to lose weight.”
The problem here is two-fold. First, your intention is stated too vaguely and second, it doesn’t express what you really want.
- Saying you just want to lose weight is too vague. Richard Bandler, the co-founder of Neuro-Linguistic Programming likes to joke with his audience how you could quickly lose weight by cutting off one of your arms. But odds are, that doesn’t solve your weight problem, and it’s not what you want. What you really hope to achieve is a certain body fat percentage, and to fit into certain-sized clothes.
- Stating your goal in the negative decreases your motivation. Just thinking about losing weight or going on a diet causes most people to feel unmotivated because of the negative image it creates in their minds. However, imagining yourself looking fit creates a positive feeling in you and makes it more likely you’ll get up and do what is required to achieve the results you want.
So, step one is to write out what you intend to achieve in the positive. How will you look or feel once you have accomplished your goal? For example, you could say, I intend to have a 32-inch waist and weigh 170 lbs with only 10% body fat.
2. Give your goal a realistic deadline that motivates you without creating too much stress.
I’m sure you have heard the axiom, ‘A goal without a deadline is just a wish.” And, in most cases, this is true. The problem I see with most of the deadlines people put on achieving their goals is they are either unrealistically close or so far in the future that they are unmotivated by them today.
When setting a deadline for your goal, ask yourself how you feel when you think about the date you set. If it makes you feel a sense of urgency to get started on it, but not so urgent that you begin to stress out then you have probably set a proper deadline.
For example, when I decided to create my blog, I created a deadline to publish it on the web within four months. This seemed doable for me because I knew I had a lot to learn about website building. I also knew I needed to have some articles that would be ready to post by that date. The deadline excited me and drove me to take action toward my intention every day. Amazingly, I beat my deadline and achieved my goal by almost a full month.
One note when it comes to not meeting your deadline. That’s okay. Just extend it a little farther into the future. Don’t let your deadline be your excuse for not completing your goal.
3. Decide you will persist until you succeed.
“I am not a product of my circumstances, I am a product of my decisions.” Stephen Covey
Just deciding on and clearly stating your goal isn’t enough. You must next decide that you are going to do whatever it takes to turn your dream into a reality. Too often we say we are going to do something, but never really do it. That wasn’t a decision, that was a wish. Making a real decision means that you follow through until you have done what you set out to do.
The problem a lot of people have when it comes to making decisions is they are scared to make one. They have this deep-seated belief that if they make a choice it may not work out the way they had hoped it would. They remind themselves of their past failures and then erroneously conclude that this attempt will end up like the last one. This fear of repeating the past keeps them from ever trying again.
Use The Power of Yet to Stop Procrastinating
If you are going to stop procrastinating and start creating the life of your desires, then you must harness what Carol Dweck calls the power of yet. Decide right now that the results you achieved in the past weren’t a message from the universe telling you to give up because what you want is impossible to obtain. The results you received from the past were just that results. They are only telling you that you haven’t achieved what you want yet.
Next, to stop procrastinating, decide that your goal is important and that you will make it a reality by following through until you produce the results you desire. Make a contract with yourself declaring this time you won’t give up. If you don’t see immediate results, then take this to mean that you either need to give it more time, make adjustments to your approach, or get more information by asking for expert help.
As you progress through your journey of getting what you want, remember the wise words of Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, “God’s delays are not God’s denials.”
4. Get off your buts and stop shoulding on yourself.
Okay, I realize that sounds bad, what I’m talking about is, carefully choosing your language. Even when people manage to say their intention in the positive they often erroneously add a but or should statement.
They say things like:
- I want to have a zero balance on my credit cards, but I must buy these new shoes.
- I should eat a healthy dinner, but I don’t have time, so I’ll start tomorrow.
The reality is that to achieve our goals we must turn our shoulds into musts and get off our buts. The next time you find yourself procrastinating and making excuses for not doing what you know you need to in order to advance toward your dreams, stop and get real with yourself. Replace should with must and but with or else.
- I must eat a healthy dinner today or else I will just end up getting unhealthier, gaining more weight, and feeling more helpless about my situation.
- I must begin living within my means, or else my debt’s will escalate out of control.
5. Break your goal down into baby steps.
Have you seen the movie with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss called What About Bob? In this film, Bill Murray plays Bob a complete neurotic who can hardly leave his apartment without being overwhelmed with anxiety.
The movie begins with Bog going to see his new psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin, played by Richard Dreyfuss, who introduces him to a concept called baby steps. Dr. Marvin encourages Bob to focus on taking tiny little baby steps instead of worrying about reaching his destination in one large one.
We often become overwhelmed and begin procrastinating because we create a mental picture of everything we need to do as one big event. By learning to break the goal down into tiny doable steps, and then focusing on the next task we need to work on, we can start to feel more relaxed and confident in our abilities to get it done.
For example, when I’m writing I don’t focus on completing the book, or even the page. I concentrate on finishing the current sentence. For me, that’s manageable, it’s a baby step and if I complete enough sentences then eventually I will complete the book. In this manner, I can micro-step my way to success while enjoying the process.
However, if I start to think about all need to accomplish before the book is ready for print, I quickly become overwhelmed and begin looking for ways to distract myself from the task at hand.
For this step, look at your goal and ask yourself the following questions.
- What are the steps I need to take to accomplish my goal?
- What is the very next thing I need to do?
- How can I break my next step down into baby steps?”
6. Take a small step today.
Anthony Robbins says to, “Never leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action towards its realization.”
To stop procrastinating and start taking action toward your goals, you must take some sort of action to get the ball rolling. What you decide to do today doesn’t have to be huge, but if all you do is just read this article and then click on another page, then reading this was a waste of time. In fact, reading this was probably your way of procrastinating instead of working towards your goal.
I know, because I used to be just like that. I would search for great information on how to create the life of my dreams, read the article, and then tell myself that I will put what I’ve learned into practice tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. All we really have is today, and until I figured that out, I made very little progress toward my goals and dreams.
Stop Procrastinating and Get Started Now
Now it’s your turn:
1. Write down your intention in the positive. In other words, what will you look like or what will your life look like once you have achieved your goal?
2. Give it a realistic deadline.
3. Make a contract with yourself that you will persist until you get what you want.
4. Start practicing positive language by telling yourself, “I must get real with myself about what will and won’t happen if I don’t take action.” And then ask yourself, “If I don’t make this dream a reality what will it ultimately cost me?”
5. Write down the steps you need to make and then break them down into tiny action steps.
6. Take at least one step towards achieving your goal today.
By taking the above steps you can stop procrastinating and begin living your dreams!
Remember the words of Lau Tzu, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”
