3 Simple Steps To Beat Procrastination.What Really Happens When You Procrastinate Too Much.

1.How to beat Procrastination:(3 Simple Steps)

Let’s be honest, you’re probably procrastinating while reading this blog.

And because of this, I’m going to keep this blog as practical and concise as possible.

In life, you’re often deciding whether to

approach or avoid something.You’re always making a journey towards something or away from something.

When you avoid a task, it’s called task

aversion or Procrastination.

In an eye opening study performed by Allan Blunt and Timothy A. Pychyl, it was found that the reason for task aversion changes based on where we are in a project:

• In the early planning stages, aversion is often due to a lack of personal meaning.
• In the action-oriented stages, aversion is often due to a lack of structure.

Let’s reuse the journey analogy and assume that you want to go somewhere:

Is the final destination worth going to?

Does it matter to you if you make it there?

If it does, this is a personally meaningful

goal.

Now, how prepared are you for the journey?

Do you have a plan for getting there?

Do you know which obstacles you might encounter?

Do you know how you will overcome them?

This is the kind of structure you need to

avoid procrastination.The first thing you want to do is pick a treasure worth pursuing: The Holy Grail

The Holy Grail looks unique to each individual based on their biological and environmental factors.

It’s a treasure that is personally meaningful.and worth pursuing.We don’t live life in isolation.We’re embedded inside an environment or a culture.

Because of this, we can construct a spectrum of action: actions that we only do for ourselves and actions that we only do for others.

Holy Grails occupy that unique and beautiful grey area between the two extremes: tasks that are beneficial for yourself and those

around you.

These are the best goals to pursue because your social environment will want you to achieve them and will support your efforts.

If you pursue goals that only benefit you,your environment will be against you.

If you pursue goals that are only in service of those around you, you will come to resent your environment.

Finding the right goal — The Holy Grail

— requires some deep thought.

Sometimes, you need to adjust what you’re seeking or the way you think about a goal.Other times, you need to change the people around you.

In the end, you need to pursue something that is meaningful to you and worth pursuing for yourself and the people around you.

The next step is to set up a plan for getting to The Holy Grail.On your way there, you’re  probably going to encounter monsters or obstacles.

If you know what obstacles you’re going to encounter along the way, you should use what psychologist Peter Gollwitzer calls implementation intentions.An implementation intention sounds like this:

If [I encounter OBSTACLE X], then [I will perform ACTION Y]

 Or to better understand,look at this:(fig1.2).

(fig 1.2)

Having a plan prior to encountering an obstacles will greatly increase your chances of overcoming it.

A plan can also prevent procrastination because it makes us feel more competent.

When we know we can achieve an outcome, or we know we have a good shot, we rarely procrastinate.

The journey to The Holy Grail is often long and arduous.

It can often seem so distant in time and space that it’s hard to generate any motivational feeling towards it.

In order to generate these feelings, you need to chart the path towards it.

In other words, you need to take that abstract reward and imbue its meaning into your daily life.

You can do this by taking the large goal of obtaining The Grail and breaking it down into the smallest possible goals that you’re willing to pursue.

Always take on just as much of the journey as you’re willing to bear.

For some of you that may mean 15 minutes of work, and for others, a full day.

Break the goal down all the way until you actually feel like doing one of the sub-goals.

Making a long journey requires getting to know yourself better.

How long can you work in one session before you get tired?

15 minutes?

1 hour?

How many sessions can you work in a day that you can sustain across weeks, months, and years?

This kind of knowledge will take a lot of

experimentation and self-monitoring on your part.

Continue to build upon your efforts each day— always breaking down the big goal as much as is necessary to start working.Remember:(fig 1.3).

(fig 1.3)

As you complete each day, you’ll likely

get more competent, and your motivation towards the goal will get stronger, and you’ll be able to accomplish more and more.

So, that’s it:

1.Pick a Holy Grail: a goal that is meaningful to you and worth pursuing for you and those around you.

2.Create a plan that will help you overcome potential obstacles using implementation intentions.

3.Start by taking the smallest possible step that you can and build upon that step each day.

2.What happens When You Procrastinate Too Much:

Most of us have procrastinated at some point in our lives,but about only one in every five of us are compulsive about it.

They put off tasks and chores nearly every chance they get.

They are called  Chronic Procrastinators,and it turns out this behavior does a lot more damage than you might think.

I get it, doing work is hard.

But when you choose to

watch TV over doing laundry or washing dishes, you've just launched an all-out battle in your brain.

On one side, you have

your prefrontal cortex,that's the part of your brain that sets long-term goals and regulates self-control.It's telling you that those dishes aren't going to clean themselves.

And on the other side is the limbic system.It deals with pleasure,arousal, and reward, and it's telling you that washing dishes is lame,dude,You'd have a better time doing something else.

So procrastination essentially puts your brain in its happy place.It feels good, that's why you do it.But of course, just because it feels good,doesn't mean it's necessarily good for you.

For example, several studies have found that undergraduate college students who procrastinated had a lower GPA in the latter half of the semester compared to non-procrastinators.They were also more likely to get sick based on their healthcare visits.

Moreover, other studies have found that procrastinators report higher levels of guilt and anxiety when they choose to procrastinate in the first place.

And if you keep it up, researchers have found that chronic procrastination is linked to low self-confidence,low-energy, and depression.

Overall, your quality of life would probably be worse than if you had just listened to that little prefrontal cortex.

And you may think that you just have a different workflow or you perform better under pressure,but sorry to say, there are no studies to support any benefits of chronic procrastination.

Bottom line, it's unhealthy,but not all hope is lost.In fact, researchers have conducted dozens of scientific studies in search for ways to help procrastinators.

What they've found time and time again is,how you think about tasks can make a huge difference in how likely you are to procrastinate on them.

Tasks like saving for retirement for example can be so abstract,there's no immediate deadline,so you can always start tomorrow,and this is the mentality that lead you to procrastinate.Instead, make your tasks more concrete in your mind.

For example, a study in 2011 discovered

that people given an illustration

of how they might look at retirement age were more likely to say they would save money for retirement than people

without an illustration.

The image was something tangible,and therefore painted a more concrete picture of their inevitable future.

So whatever the task,do your health a favor and do the work right now.

You might even enjoy that TV show even more once you get to it!

As always, thanks for reading and I’ll

see you next time!