Today I want to share with you this funny video by Ellen DeGeneres on procrastination.
Sometimes simply hearing someone describing the procrastination and laughing about it helps you to stop procrastinating and to get going with the task!
So what to do if you have the whole day to yourself and want to get some writing done? You specially stayed at home, your children and spouse are out and there is nothing else that is pressing on you. You just need to get going with your writing, but you don’t. Instead you find yourself reading, browsing journals, cleaning or cooking.
So here are a few ideas similar to what I’ve share with one of my private clients earlier this week (and it helped her to face her paper and start working on it!!)
First of all realise that you telling yourself “I have to do it, I have to do it!” actually intensifies procrastination. So the first step to overcoming procrastination is to really realise that you don’t HAVE to do it! No one is chaining you!! You can drop it all together, you can deligate it or you can choose to only do part of it. Feel the relief and the freedom that comes with it.
After that, face the task from the point of view “I COULD DO IT if I wanted to”. Now if you look at it from this perspective, you might feel more freedom in how you work on this task, you might realise that you can go around the obstacle, you can do it diffirently, you can break it down into more managable tasks and/or you can start with the easiest part. You also might feel more excitement and inspiration towards it. Reminding yourself WHY you wanted to do it in the first place helps too!
Now what it really takes to start writing is to give yourself ONLY ONE HOUR, not the whole day! For this hour define a few doable tasks that you will accomplish. This could be simply a) finding the file with the paper, or creating a new one, b) familiarising yourself with what is already written c) making 1 or 2 figures or d) writing an imperfect draft of the Materials and Methods section. Once the hour is over, close the file and go away from it.
Now as the result of these few imperfect actions that took you just one hour, you are NOT procrastinating any more!!! You can tell yourself and everyone else that you ARE writing and this will not be a lie 🙂
Repeat this once a day or once a week, and in few weeks time you are further ahead than you’ve been in months!
P.S. Guess what??!! I’ve been procrastinating with writing this article for several hours, this included searching for some videos and finding this funny video by Ellen!!! Then I gave myself 45 minutes to write this blog post and bahm!! IT IS DONE! You can do it too 🙂
Like this post? You will love getting my weekly Productivity Insights ezine!
“I wish I could work at my own pace meeting my deadlines without stress
and enjoy more of what I am doing!…”
If this sounds like you, then check out this training
that will help you experience instant deadline relief!
>>>> CLICK HERE to get this FREE training now! <<<<
){kind=link}