John wanted to start a business. He knew what he needed to do but he couldn’t get himself to do it. If he eventually did take action he would do it once or twice and then stop and let everything go to waste. It was devastating for him, here he was trying, but no matter how much he wanted to do it he could never get himself to take action. The more he tried but didn’t succeed to get himself to take action, the more painful it got. All he wanted was to take the actions he knew he needed to take but procrastination and self-sabotage were biting him in the back. It was immensely painful for him.
John isn’t the only one suffering from the procrastination devil. Many people attempt to create a change, like starting a business, going to the gym, or any other venture. However, the majority fall short and fail to follow through on what they want. They might even know exactly what they need to do e.g. going out and generating leads, or stop eating sugars. But they can’t get themselves to do it. When they try, and then fall short they might feel like they have a weakness in character, guilty, no willpower, not enough motivation, or are flawed in some way. The problem is not that they have a weak-willed character like society has led us to believe. The problem is that we’ve been conditioned to follow a flawed approach that clearly doesn’t work, otherwise everyone would have the change they want.
To overcome procrastination we first need to understand what it is and why we do it. When we’re clear on what procrastination is we can approach it scientifically which will make us understand why the common approach doesn’t work and what approach will work.
Fundamentally the two guiding forces of human behavior are pain and pleasure. As humans, we want to avoid pain and gain pleasure. This doesn’t fully explain why and when we perform a behavior. Using the principle of pain and pleasure we have previously explained that behavior occurs when motivation, ability, and prompt converge at the same time. If your motivation and ability are above the action line when prompted, then you will take action and perform a specific behavior, no matter what.
Looking at what we do when we procrastinate we are simply not doing the action we want to do. Therefore procrastination is simply the act of avoiding a behavior. This is great news! Because we now know that procrastination is the act of avoiding a behavior, or in other words, the act of not performing a behavior. We also know that behavior occurs when our motivation and ability are above the action line when we get prompted to act. So if we want to take action, all we need to do is design our behavior.
The approach most of us are conditioned to follow is the go-big-or-go-home approach. We attempt to change our entire life in one big chunk. This all-or-nothing approach rarely works. The reason we know it rarely works is that all the movies, media, and news cover it. It gets covered because it’s out of the ordinary. What they don’t show you though is all the hard work and continuous improvement that was done to get the results. That’s the thing, the results come from continuous and consistent action and improvement. Through consistent action, your skills and knowledge compound to then culminate at a moment to create great success where everyone thinks you become an overnight success. In order for you to have success you need to design your behavior so it goes above the action line and stays there consistently, no matter what. Using feedback loops and scientific experimentation you can figure out what is working and what needs adjusting.
There you go! Procrastination is nothing but avoiding a specific behavior. In order to make a behavior attractive so you want to do it, you adjust the motivation and ability parameters and make sure to create a solid prompt for it. You then use feedback loops and scientific experimentation to figure out what is working and what needs adjusting. If you want someone to guide you through the process of overcoming procrastination and take action I offer personal success coaching. Reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help you achieve success and change. Until next time!