How To Stop Procrastinating Step 2: Change Your Emotions
As I said in this recent post, when you’re procrastinating on something that’s important enough, if you think about the repercussions of not doing it, that will push you into action.
However, sometimes we have a mental block and still don’t do the thing we need to be doing.
To illustrate, let’s use cleaning your house. You know when you’ve got guests coming over and you want to make your place spotless for them? It’s a pretty universal example.
Rather than get your vacuum out and get moving, you watch TV, paint your nails if you’re a girl, or play video games if you’re a guy, and so on.
So at this point you need to ask yourself:
What feeling is making me stall? And what thoughts am I having that are making me feel that way?
Take 2 minutes right now and write down your answer.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, your answer will be some version of this:
“I’m not starting the task yet because I feel like I’ll go through pain if I do it now. I feel like that because I’m thinking about the drudgery of the task. And if I delay… maybe there will be some magical time in the future when I won’t go through that.”
And of course you know (since you’ve been reading this blog) that this is ridiculous. In the long run, doing the task will make you happy, and putting it off will make you depressed.
Remember what I said about laziness being a short circuit in your brain?
The answer then is to change your short-term wrong emotion (pain avoidance) to match your long-term correct emotion (satisfaction of working toward your goal).
Here is the five-part formula for doing this:
1. Identify and quarantine your Procrastination Tools.
There are two kinds of Procrastination Tools (as I call them):
1. Silly activities like watching TV or playing computer games.
2. Useful activities that are less important.
If the Procrastination Tool you use is a silly activity, then set aside a specific time to do that thing. Plan it, and give yourself a limit. For example, say: “At noon, I will surf the Internet for only 20 minutes.”
This also reconfigures your mind to link task completion with getting a reward at the end of it.
If you procrastinate by doing a useful activity that is less important, then triage it. Put it lower on your priority list.
I’m a huge believer in to-do lists, but the items on your list must be ordered based on how soon you need to get to them.
If you’re having guests to your house and need to prepare for it, you don’t want to feel rushed. So other things, like paying your bills that aren’t due for another three weeks, can wait.
2. Vividly imagine the pain you’ll have if you don’t complete the task.
If your house isn’t ready for the guests, you’ll feel embarrassed because you asked them to come to your place for a special occasion, and if your house is a complete wreck, then it makes it seem like you didn’t want them to come over and don’t care about them.
Feel this pain right now.
3. Now visualize the task as if you’ve already finished it.
When you’ve got a house that’s clean for your guests, you feel happy, because it shows the people that you care about them enough to give them a great experience at your house. Allow yourself to feel that way right now, before you’ve even begun.
4. Change the way you talk to yourself.
Tony Robbins and a lot of other self-help gurus talk about this, because it works like magic.
Change the current things you say to yourself — such as “I wish I had the energy to get started cleaning my house” and “I wish I wasn’t procrastinating on getting it ready for the guests” to this…
“What kinds of things do I ENJOY about cleaning the house?” and “How can I get this done?”
You see how these new thoughts will change the way you feel about the task?
Finally…
5. Take the next small action.
In Getting Things Done, David Allen says the simple solution is to always ask the question, What’s the next physical action I need to take? So, rather than have “get tires changed” on your to-do list, you should have “get out the phone book and look up tire shops.”
You see how focusing on the next action is way easier than focusing on the overall task?
Rather than have “clean my house to get it ready for guests,” you should have “pick up trash on the living room floor.”
The first is a vague goal that sounds overwhelming. The second is clear and easily doable. Get that small thing done, and now you’ve got momentum and have accomplished something tangible. Your feelings have changed for the better, and you’re no longer procrastinating.
