Have you ever gotten really fired up about something? Your motivation is super-high, there are simply no thoughts about failure, and you are absolutely certain that you will be able to achieve some type of goal. You take action, and you are so stoked at the beginning of this process that you are a powerful engine of focused activity. Your efforts to reach your goal begin to produce results… initially.
Then something happens.
All that energy created by motivation gets burned up pretty quickly. You lose focus, and before long, the goal you were so motivated to accomplish has been forgotten or ignored.
Why does this happen? Why does motivation often give way to poor efforts, a lack of energy and focus, poor planning and an “I’ll do it tomorrow” attitude? Why do driven people have such a hard time achieving the results they desire, especially when their motivation and energy is so high at the beginning of a process?
Sometimes the problem is procrastination.
That “I’ll do it tomorrow” mindset is easy to adopt. For whatever reason, many people are intrinsically lazy. This is not a knock on you or anyone else. It is just a common fact. Humans are not living a daily fight for survival like our cave-dwelling ancestors were. Most of us have a roof over our head, pantries and refrigerators full of food, climate control, a constant, clean water supply and something that hasn’t been around for more than 95% of human history… physical comfort.
That leads many to believe that there is no need to rock the boat when our basic needs are being met.
This thought pattern is the fuel for procrastination. Why do something today when you can put it off until tomorrow? Rather than working hard on something you want to achieve, why not spend the day at the beach? Surely, putting off some task for one or two days is not going to keep it from getting accomplished, right?
The entire process that moves you from motivation to procrastination and then no activity at all is quite common. This is because procrastinating can kill motivation, but renewed motivation can in turn destroy procrastination, and lead to a desired set of results.
This special report will show you exactly how to consistently take massive action while staying highly motivated and ignoring your natural tendency to procrastinate. You will learn that you can truly achieve great things when you use tools, formulas and systems proven to keep you on the right track to achieving a certain goal. We will explore the very real and very serious dangers of procrastination, and explain scientifically proven ways to stop procrastinating and start taking action.
You will discover how to set goals so they are achievable, as well as the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Finally, you will learn how to create more time so you can work on those things that are important to you, and several ways to stay motivated and clearly focused on a goal or activity. Let’s start wiping procrastination out of your life by taking a look at exactly why humans have such an unshakable tendency to put things off until tomorrow, or some later date.
Why Do We Procrastinate?
Science tells us that human beings may procrastinate as a survival tactic. When you put things off, it is often times because you are content and happy with your current state of being. You may not have everything you want and desire, but you have what you need.
The mindset here goes back to the earliest humans. When one of your Paleolithic ancestors found a warm, dry cave that was near a water supply, and there was enough food nearby to keep him alive but not thriving, he happily accepted that is a lifestyle that was good enough.
Some of the others in his tribe told tales of a valley with luscious greenery, endless fruit trees, more wild game than could ever be hunted or consumed, and underground springs that produced unlimited clear, cool and drinkable water. This Shangri-La I had multiple caves and was perfect in every way, but the journey there was difficult and dangerous, and may take months.
Although the reward was incredibly high, your “my current life is okay with me” ancestor always made excuses for not trekking to the land of his dreams. He was adequately secure and safe right where he was, so his idea was to put off until tomorrow or next week sitting down and discussing a journey to this once-in-a-lifetime land with the rest of his tribemates.
There was something else he desired a great deal, but since he was basically okay, he continually procrastinated.
Psychology today agrees with this idea. They say procrastination is a way of dealing with negative emotions like failure, uncertainty and fear. The idea is that if someone puts off taking action, then they can’t fail. Some people even procrastinate because they have an unconscious fear of success and winning. Some people who procrastinate do so because they are concerned about what others think of them. They would rather be perceived as effortless rather than incapable.
Some psychologists believe procrastination is a learned behavior. If you spend time with people who support your procrastinating behavior, you are likely to make excuses rather than take action. While some psychologists and mental health experts disagree on exactly why humans are so prone to procrastination, they will all agree that the dangers of procrastinating are very real, and can be very serious.
The Dangers of Procrastinating – Why We Have to Overcome It
Putting things off from time to time may not cause too many problems in your life. On the other hand, chronic procrastination can consistently jack up your stress levels, lower your self-esteem and even cause severe mental and physical health problems. Here are a few dangers of procrastinating you should remember the next time you are thinking about delaying some action or task you know you need to be doing today.
You Lose Time
Odds are you already feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day. Why procrastinate, and make the situation even worse? The most fleeting and valuable commodity you have is time. Procrastinators often look up with deadlines staring them in the face at the last minute and think, “Where did all the time go?” When you have to fly around at the last minute trying to cram 2 or 3 days’ worth of work into a few hours because you have been procrastinating, you realize that you have wasted precious time that you can’t get back.
You Pay an Opportunity Cost
Any time you do one thing, you are costing yourself the opportunity to do something else. But putting things off until later, when later finally arrives and you absolutely must take action, this doesn’t allow you to be free in case a wonderful opportunity arises.
You Never Realize Your Full Potential
Studies show that if you procrastinate once, you will do it twice. Procrastinate a couple of times, and you begin to plan procrastination into your regular routine. The people who create their dream realities make effective use of their time.
When you waste time and put things off, the results you finally achieve are watered down and rushed. Everyone has incredible potential inside them, and when you lazily and continually “wait till later”, you kill your inner desire to better yourself in one way or another. This means you rob yourself of living the greatest and most fulfilled life that you possibly can.
You Sabotage Your Career and Relationships
Procrastination is the enemy of efficiency and productivity. When you put things off in the workplace, you kill your chances of advancement. When you consistently procrastinate in a relationship, you are telling the important people in your life that you simply don’t care. This means you run the risk of damaging, or even permanently ruining, relationships that are important to you.
You Crush Your Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem and procrastination are comfortable bedfellows. When you put things off and put things off until you have to rush around at the end and get them done, you feel bad about yourself. You wonder, “Why can’t I just do what I need to do?” You ask yourself, “Why can’t I take action in the pursuit of things that are so important to me?”
This leads to thoughts that you deserve failure, since you must obviously be programmed for poor performance and a lack of motivation. This low level of self-belief and self-esteem leads to more procrastination, and a very unhealthy mental cycle develops. Negative emotions like self-hatred and self-doubt create stress, and stress is at the cornerstone of all chronic disease. It is in this way that…
…Procrastination Can Kill You
You may think that statement is a little harsh or “over-the-top”. Actually, it isn’t. People who procrastinate constantly make poor decisions. You put off going to that doctor’s appointment, justifying your decision by saying that you probably will not be able to afford his bill. You find excuses for putting off exercising all the time. You know you should eat better, but you can always start your new diet tomorrow.
Aside from the poor mental health that comes from a lack of self-esteem, procrastination can lead to physical health problems that have serious consequences. Put off taking care of your physical health for years, and you increase the odds that you will die from a serious illness or disease.
Tools and Techniques for Overcoming Procrastination at Work and in Life
There are plenty of applications and techniques for overcoming procrastination. You can avoid the all too common tendency to put things off with the following tools and goal achievement best practices.
Procraster – This app helps you uncover the most basic reason you are procrastinating. It also tracks personal productivity and provides motivational fuel.
Stand Up – Standing instead of sitting boosts mental energy. When you sit for extended periods of time, the pressure on your thighs and your rear end slows your circulation. This means less oxygen gets to your brain, which naturally leads to poorer focus and concentration.
Practice Self-Control – SelfControl is an application that allows you to block distractions for a certain period of time. You can list websites you want to block access to for certain time blocks, and even if you give into the distracting urge to go to one of the sites you have blocked, SelfControl will not let you.
Listen to Some White Noise – White Noise is an application that delivers noises and sounds proven to boost focus and concentration.
Get Checker Plus for Google Calendar – The Checker Plus app tells you how much time you have left before some task needs to be completed, it stays on your screen constantly, so you can stay motivated and fight procrastination with a quick glance.
Create a Game Plan – Sometimes you procrastinate because you don’t have a solid plan of what you should be doing. Create a plan that has achievable action steps you need to complete each day to reach your desired goal.
Develop Routines and SOPs – An SOP is a Standard Operating Procedure, a specific way of doing a certain thing. It doesn’t allow for distraction or procrastination, because it tells you exactly what steps you need to be taking to reach a certain result.
Routine has been proven to put your goal achievement efforts on autopilot. After practicing the same routine on a daily basis for a few weeks, your conscious efforts become unconscious habits that lead you in the direction of your goal.
4 Ways Science Has Proven Effective for Eliminating Procrastination
Are you the type of person that needs facts and figures before you will believe something? If so, you will appreciate the following 5 scientifically proven methods that can help you stop procrastinating and start taking action.
1 – Attach a Financial Penalty to Failure
Head over to the website StickK. That site allows you to set aside an amount of money you will lose if you do not reach a specific goal in a desired time. Psychologists agree that financial loss is an excellent motivator for achieving goals. At StickK you get to choose where your money goes, to what institution, business or charitable organization, if you fail.
2 – Turn a Huge Goal into A Lot Of Small Ones
You didn’t get out of shape in one day. You didn’t reach financial ruin in a single day, probably. There are a lot of small, consistent and daily activities that caused whatever situation you are trying to escape. Accordingly, it has been proven that chopping up a large, long-term goal into many smaller, bite-size pieces makes it more achievable. If you want to benefit from some result in one year, turn it into 365 daily activities.
3 – Learn to Forgive Yourself
A study reported at ScienceDirect.com shows that self-blame and punishment is counterproductive to goal achievement. If you stumble on the way to success, forgive yourself immediately, brush yourself off, and do something that gets you back on the right path.
4 – Fantasize… The Right Way
Constantly dreaming about some marvelous reality has been proven to reduce the odds that you will ever experience it. However, there is a right way to fantasize. When you think of achieving some marvelous goal, and you also think about the steps you need to achieve it, your success rate skyrockets.
For example, if you dream of being slim and trim and you are currently overweight, every time you think about being thin, see yourself eating healthy food, exercising regularly, avoiding processed food and getting plenty of rest each night.
How to Set Big Goals That Really Matter to You, But Are Still Achievable
Any goal should challenge you, but it should also be achievable. Think about it. If you set a goal to simply crawl out of bed in the morning, that is not a difficult task to accomplish. Accordingly, you don’t feel much of a sense of accomplishment when you achieve it. When you create a reality in your life, and it was difficult and challenging to do so, you have a great sense of pride and achievement.
Big but Reasonable and Realistic
This is why you should always make your goals big. However, you should operate in a goal-setting process where you are honest with yourself. If you are 70 years old, regardless what shape you are in, you are probably not going to compete in the next Olympics as a gymnast. On the other hand, you could set a goal to win a medal in a gymnastics competition for your age class.
What Do You Value?
Another important step to take when setting a big goal is to make sure it matches your sense of values. If you want to stop drinking alcohol for the many health benefits abstinence offers, but you highly value spending happy hour with your friends at the local sports bar, your goal and your actions are at cross purposes.
Set One Goal of Time
You probably want to change several things about your life. Write them all down. Find out the one that will make the biggest impact on your life, and pursue that goal and that goal only until you have achieve it. Multitasking by chasing several goals at once virtually guarantees failure.
Be Honest with Yourself
This tip goes back to your core values. If you set a goal to meditate daily because you hear it is such an excellent stress-beater, but meditating doesn’t “fit” who you are, are you really going to do it? Be honest with yourself about the goals you set, review your goals frequently, and remove or tweak any goal that doesn’t match your personality and actions. Speaking of personality …
How Your Personality Affects Your Motivation to Achieve
Once upon a time there was a man who loved to think. He loved to study and pursue knowledge, and learn new things. He was not physically strong and capable, and would rather spend the day reading than being physically active. He also wanted to be wealthy.
He stumbled across a manual labor job that paid pretty good money, and offered unlimited overtime and bonus pay. He excitedly went to work performing backbreaking labor 16 hours every day. At first he was ecstatic, because he was earning so much money. Before long though, he quit the job, since it did not challenge his brain.
This is an example of understanding your personality and “who you are”. Remember that it is difficult to change who you are and the things you are inclined to enjoy and participate in. However, you can change your environment. If you are impulsive and easily distracted, you should make sure your work environment is quiet, calm and distraction free. If not, you will have little motivation to do what your boss tells you, and you could find yourself unemployed.
If you know you love being around people and hate being alone, use that knowledge to stay motivated in the pursuit of some goal. Let’s assume you would like to lose 30 pounds, and you are this type of person. If you ordered meals delivered to your home and watched an exercise program on your computer by yourself, you probably would not reach your target weight. However, if you joined a group in your local area that was filled with people just like yourself, people trying to lose weight while being social, it is almost a certainty you would reach your goal.
You know who you are. You know those things that you are going to do, and those things that you have a very small chance of doing. Match your goals to your personality traits when you create them, and you may see yourself beginning to achieve things you never have before.
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Did you know your failure to succeed in some endeavor may be because you are using the wrong type of motivation? In the last section, you learned that your personality can affect how you respond to certain types of motivation. Your success or failure as far as goal achievement is concerned may also boil down to what type of motivation is working on you.
Extrinsic motivation means you are being moved to action by some external source. A boss may give you a deadline, or some other demand or obligation may be forced on you.
Intrinsic motivation is internal. You are trying to achieve a particular goal because of a personal desire or hope.
We all need to achieve goals from time to time that we do not set for ourselves. If you did not live up to your boss’s expectations regularly, you wouldn’t have a job. One way to meet external goals and deadlines is to fuel them with intrinsic motivation. In the example above, a boss gives you a deadline which is going to be difficult to meet. You have been given extrinsic motivation, and this doesn’t always work well with a lot of people.
However, you can create intrinsic motivational thoughts that help you achieve that goal you did not set for yourself. Being able to pay your bills is some really important intrinsic motivation. Apply this to your boss’ deadline, and all of a sudden that goal becomes personal, and you increase the odds you will actually achieve it.
9 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Achieve Your Goals
When dealing with topics like motivation and avoiding procrastination, the same methods don’t work for everyone. That’s why we have listed 9 different ways to keep your motivation cranked up below, so goal achievement is virtually guaranteed.
1 – Make a Mental Picture of Your Achievement
Visualization is a daily exercise that can help you achieve any goal. It is what the highest achievers in business, sports, entertainment, politics and other fields use to achieve the results they desire. Visualize your life after your goal has been achieved. Do this regularly, upon rising and before going to bed, and you set your subconscious to the task of helping you reach your goal.
2 – Say “When”, Not “If”
Be self-assured. Don’t tell yourself, “If I get that raise …” Talk to yourself about, “When I get that raise …” Mindset is everything in so many areas of life, and having a positive mindset rather than a doubtful attitude towards goal achievement is extremely important for your success.
3 – Write Down Your Goals
Have you heard about the Harvard goal achievement study? Harvard MBA students were asked if they had goals and if they were written down. Only 3% had written down their goals on paper. Another 84% had no specific goal, and 13% had goals that were not written down. Ten years later, the participants were contacted again. The 3% that had written their goals down so they could constantly use them for motivation had achieved 10 times more wealth than the other 97%!
4 – Set Your Own Unique Goals
You will almost certainly guarantee failure if you chase a goal someone else set for you. Think hard and long about the things that are truly important to you, and then craft a unique and personally tailored goal to chase.
5 – Use an Affirmation
Tell yourself every day, in the present tense, that what you are doing is moving you closer to goal achievement. Say, “I am taking small but consistent steps on a daily basis, and because of this, I am getting closer to my goal of (list your goal)”. Tweak that affirmation so it applies to your situation.
6 – Hang Around with the Right Type of People
There is a reason that people who listen to motivational tapes and watch videos on goal achievement realize more success than others. They are virtually “hanging around” with energetic, enthusiastic and motivated individuals that constantly keep them heading in the right direction. The people you spend time with on a regular basis, your friends and family members, should also be positive minded, energetic and encouraging.
7 – Remove Clutter, Virtual and Physical
People think of clutter as a physical thing. Look around your surroundings right now, and you may see things that distract your attention, physical objects and items which you can remove from the immediate area. Clutter is also virtual, unnecessary noise and sounds, aromas and digital input. Removing clutter helps you focus, which makes staying motivated to pursue a goal much easier.
8 – Take a Lesson from Shakespeare’s Hamlet
In Act III of Hamlet, the great William Shakespeare tells us to, “Assume a virtue, if you have it not.” Whatever your goal is, act is if you have already achieved it. Act and dress and behave in a manner that is consistent with someone who has reached the goal you are chasing. Acting “as if” you have achieved your heart’s desire has an odd way of moving you closer to it.
9 – Motivate Yourself by Looking at Your Current Reality
If you hate your job, despise where you live, have no significant healthy relationships and are constantly sick and unhealthy, embrace that reality. Those situations can provide extreme motivation to do something about your life. Instead of simply accepting that as your reality, use your present situation to create a list of action steps that moves you to a happier existence.
How to Create More Time to Get Things Done Every Day
The following tips are easy to implement, and they can help you realize more free time to spend doing the things that are important to you.
Prioritize. Complete your biggest and most difficult task first.
Wake up 1 hour earlier each day.
Each night before you go to bed, create a to-do list for the next day.
Focus on one task or responsibility at a time.
Learn to say no to people who take advantage of you, always asking for favors.
Clear your work area of visual, auditory and physical clutter.
Delegate or outsource tasks you shouldn’t be wasting your time doing.
Stop wasting time on guilt. If you fail or stumble, as mentioned earlier, brush yourself off and climb back in the saddle.
Get plenty of rest every night.
Stop striving for perfection, it doesn’t exist. For some tasks, good enough is good enough.
Enjoy a digital detox. Set daily, weekly and monthly limits for staring at your smart phone and checking in on Facebook.
Make quick decisions. Give yourself 30 or 60 seconds to come to a decision, because analysis paralysis can kill productivity.