There’s 3 main ‘P’ words that all relate to success. The first two are productivity and perseverance, the last one is procrastination. Productivity and Perseverance both lead to success whereas procrastination slows us down, not really helping at all. In simple words – we don’t need it!
I recently finished reading ‘The Compound Effect‘ by Darren Hardy (which I wrote a review of here). Darren touches on the idea of being conscious about how the decisions you make now affect your future. I’ll let you know that being conscious about decisions is hard, very hard. It’s not one of those habits that will carry their momentum; you have to push it, every step of the way.
Why is it so good for combating procrastination?
A year from now you may wish you had started today – Karen Lamb
Everyone procrastinates, some just have it worse than others. I’ve talked about productive procrastination before, but it’s definitely one of those things you should only use when you ‘need’ to.
Basing your decisions on future thought is, in my opinion, the best way to beat the evil wrath of procrastination. Think about it this way, you can finish that blog post or that assignment now – when you’re full of energy and ideas. OR, you can watch T.V. - The latter can be much more attractive for the non-conscious decision maker.
What you should do in this case, is think about how your choice will affect you down the road. Think about how it will affect you long-term, and short-term.
Telling yourself you’re only going to watch 30 minutes of T.V and then write a blog post is dangerous, why? Because the thing with T.V is that they have ADS, some of which advertise the next program after the one you’re watching. No doubt you’ll be telling yourself “I suppose another half-hour wouldn’t hurt”.
T.V does wonders for my productivity – No One
Thinking about how your decisions affect you short-term is taking into account that possible extra hour of T.V, it’s taking into account the calories that you’ll have to burn off later if you eat that cake.
Long-term results are harder to vision, but can be more convincing. Sometimes it’s good to think outside of the square; I’ll go back to the T.V example for this: You watch that second program that was advertised during the one before, you find that you really like it, and decide that you’ll continue to watch it as the series had just started.
Here’s the problem – an episode is one hour long, there’s 10 episodes in a season. If you choose to watch T.V instead of writing that blog post, there is a possibility of wasting 10 hours watching some show.
It’s hard to bring across to you via text, this is one of those things you have to try yourself. Start now, try your best to be conscious with all the choices presented to you. It can be little things, like not wearing shoes outside on a rainy day. Make it your goal to track yourself making conscious decisions, keep a tally – whatever works for you.
Hey Sam, great post and very relevant. I think a ton of people have a tough time staying on task, especially when it comes to working at home. I work as a freelance writer and must say that procrastination (and distractions!!!) are a constant battle for me.
I have been guilty of being that person you described in your example – getting sucked into some ridiculous TV show on Netflix and then just having to watch 5 episodes before getting back to work. That’s never good.
One thing I’ve found has worked well for me is having a productivity partner. I’m currently doing an experiment with another writer and we email each other what we did for the day and how many hours we spent on each activity. The thought of having to send her a spread sheet that says I spent 5 hours watching movies or TV shows is enough to deter me AND I get to see how long it takes me to get things done (added bonus).
Hi Hermine,
I’ll have to agree with you on that first point. I also work from home and find I get distracted really easily, it came to the point where I was almost subconsciously opening up Facebook in a new tab.
I was that person! It’s like, you try and justify it, but you can’t really. It’s always the ‘I’ll just watch one more episode, then I’ll get straight into it.’
Hey, that’s a really great idea actually. Definitely a good way to keep motivated, especially since working online can get quite lonely. I may have a look into that. I’m personally thinking of starting somewhat of a mastermind group, 5-10 members, where we share what we’re doing, encourage each other, etc.
Thanks for the comment!
Ha! I was that person subconsciously opening FB in a new tab too at one time. The thing is, I don’t know how I wasted so much time just scrolling through people’s updates. Now, I rarely go on there during my work unless it’s work related (and some days not at all) and so much more work gets done.
I think that your mastermind group is a great idea, maybe do it as a 30 day productivity challenge (that’s what my productivity partner and I are doing right now).
This is great, Sam, and it resonates with me! Every since I got into this personal-development area, conscious decision making is something I’ve tried to improve, and it’s worked wonders for me. My to-do lists magically disappear, but I think it’s just as important (if not more important) to have the reason behind doing something, the why power.
I think Darren explains it in the book, with the plank and the $20, and that’s definitely something I’ve tried to work on. To me, no T.V. seems normal, but then I see so many around me wasting time in front of it, and I think wow, let’s have a 1 year race and see who can get furthest!
Thank you, Sam!
Yeah conscious decision is great right? I find that it’s one of those habits that takes a long time to build though, I’m definitely not fully there yet! Yeah I loved that part about the why power, the reason. I’d like to get into the routine of reflection on my why power every morning before I get out of bed, I reckon that’d be cool.
In terms of T.V, wow, I was reading the point he made about the average american watching 4.7 hours a DAY. Equivalent to two months per year, which I think is really, really sad. It’s such a waste of time. No T.V crew for life!