Procrastination
I struggled to get a post done this week. It was a combination of a lot of things, but the main reasons for almost not posting were, procrastination, being busy and running out of ideas. Although I had a busy week and ended up playing two football games this weekend, there were small pockets of time when I could have at least started on the post. Except I didn’t, and I’m now writing it on a Sunday evening exhausted after football. I guess it serves me right to leave it till the last minute and this got me thinking about procrastination and the School of Greatness podcast when Lewis Howes had guest Rory Vaden on. They discussed procrastination and the ways to overcome it to achieve greatness. This may not be my longest post, but I thought I’d explore these points and hope they help.
Firstly, Vaden says that there are three types of procrastination:
Classic procrastination
Creative avoidance- avoiding something by coming up with 'productive things'
Priority dilution - focus on less important but urgent
I think most of us fall into the second category most of the time. Avoiding productive things has been made so easy by our phones. We don’t need to try very hard to get distracted when we intend to do productive things. The solution to this is discipline. You need to become aware of your distractions and simply do the thing you know you should be doing, even when you don’t feel like doing them.
Problems procrastinated on are always amplified and if we can overcome our procrastination by implementing these seven steps, then we will be on our way to greatness.
The Paradox Principle of Sacrifice
To achieve great things, we need to make sacrifices. I know it’s important to have a balance in your life but focusing on something wholeheartedly while sacrificing others can get you results. Sometimes you’re going to have to sacrifice things you enjoy to be successful. These don’t have to be permanent changes, but just an understanding that you can’t have it all if you want to see results.
The Buy-in Principle of Commitment
The emotional energy for making a decision is much greater than the physical energy expended. If you commit to something upfront for an extended period, then you don’t need to think about going every day or week. You’ve decided and maybe even paid for it, so you must go. This could be a gym membership, a trainer or even making an agreement with an accountability partner where you both have to show up. The key to staying committed is to ask ‘how’ not ‘should’ - ‘should’ is neutral or negative. ‘How’ has committed you.
Focus is Power
Focus can’t be determined by circumstances. You’ve got to do whatever you can to ensure that you focus on the task at hand. If you don’t give yourself the best chance to focus, then you don’t really want to do whatever it is you set out to do. Getting into a flow state and really focusing can be so powerful and we tend to undervalue it. With so many distractions, we can go ages without really focusing on something.
Creation Principle of Integrity
Integrity is the congruence between words and actions. Whatever you tell yourself most often becomes true. Although we do a lot of things because we think it looks good to others, being honest with ourselves can help so much. If we want to be a certain way, we can constantly ask ourselves whether our actions are in line with the person we want to become.
Harvest Principle of Schedule
Great results are not achieved through balance, great results are achieved through short seasons of intensive imbalance like farmers. This point is so important because we don’t realise the amount of time and effort successful people put in to get to where they are today. They knuckled down and ground it out focusing on a specific thing to succeed. This is tricky to do especially if you have a project on the side, but do it to the best of your ability.
Prospective Principle of Faith
I like this point because it ties back to stoicism and having a positive general outlook about most things. It’s about the way we respond to failure. It’s about being able to learn from our failures and understand that what is happening now is for the greater good. If we can see things in this way, we will continue to grow.
Pendulum Principle of Action
This point ties all the points together. It’s about moving forward and not stopping. If we decide to keep going every day, these small choices will compound over time. The compounded effect is important because these small incremental gains are not noticeable at first. This makes it difficult to keep going because we don’t see the results that we’d like, but that’s how compounding works. Suddenly, the growth is exponential and once we see that we won’t stop.
I hope that these points were as helpful to you as they were to me. They got me off my ass and enabled me to finish this post. Although I was tired while writing this, I’m happy I got it done and kept my streak of one post a week going.