3 Key Tools to Beat Procrastination. Or How I Finally Conquered the “Monkey”
How to stop postponing tasks?
Why do people still struggle in this unequal fight?
Why do 2 out of the top 10 Google search results recommend paid apps (again)?
All techniques have been reviewed, step-by-step instructions have been developed. It seems… just do as instructed, and you’re good to go.
I’ve battled this ailment for most of my life. And I can say
I’ve won.
Part 1. My Journey
My “track record”:
- Pretended to faint in elementary school, just to avoid studying.
- Skipped school for 6 months out of 9 in middle school, forging health certificates.
- Failed my university coursework.
- Worked for just 2 hours in an 8-hour workday.
- Ruined my life and my family’s life, suffering from self-hatred because I couldn’t find the strength to do anything.
I was a top student.
I just didn’t want to do everything on time, kept postponing.
And then… I just couldn’t. That’s it. I had no obvious reasons for such behavior.
Every time, it was exposed publicly. Imagine the shame and guilt I felt.
And I felt it… strongly.
I tried most of the popular techniques. But it didn’t work.
Why?
And the reason is gradually becoming the motto of my blog.
Because…
If it were all so simple, these articles wouldn’t be emerging by the thousand every day.
Part 2. The Missing Elements
What do many materials miss?
- Complexity. Depth. The Cause
- Procrastination is not always a standalone issue
- ️It’s not an atomic phenomenon
- It’s a complex (like our entire organism) psychological process
- Often, it’s a consequence of other depressive states that need to be addressed first
- Different life stages may have different triggers
- There is no cure
Enough treating this playfully, like dealing with a monkey (a popular metaphor).
This “monkey” will soon introduce you to its best friend — depression. And who knows where this friendship will lead you.
But this is a part of us, our human existence.
Even pigeons can procrastinate 🫢 (there is a study).
We must learn to live with it.
And most importantly:
🔹 Procrastination is about negativity, destruction.
🔹 It’s not just about studying in educational institutions.
It’s about life in the broadest sense.
New experiences, physical activity, checking your health, and much more that is so beneficial.
But we always have a thousand and one excuses why we don’t do it.
Part 3. Popular Solutions
Let’s take a look at popular solutions and why they didn’t work for me:
1️⃣ Break down a complex task into simpler ones — my favorite.
I broke my tasks down to the atoms
But it didn’t bring me any closer to starting them.
2️⃣ Create a to-do list — not only do you have to allocate a decent amount of time to compile this list, but it also induced even more stress when something didn’t go according to plan.
3️⃣ Remove distraction — an interesting point.
I have been working remotely for almost my entire career, and I highly value the time spent with my family.
Should I send my wife away every time she asks me something during work? A harsh example, but still.
Our lives consist of everything that distracts us.
The main thing is to learn to live in this environment.
4️⃣ Reward yourself — in my mind, this is perceived as training. Although I acknowledge the importance of our animal nature, I wouldn’t like to take another step closer to it.
5️⃣ Deceive yourself — under this point, I mean a variety of different techniques that somehow boil down to self-deception to overcome procrastination.
But… I seem to be running a blog here about being honest with yourself, about “listening to yourself”. And now lie to myself? No, thanks 😅
I’m not saying these methods aren’t effective.
They just didn’t work for me, with my perspectives and beliefs.
It made the quest for “healing” almost an impossible task.
Part 4: Light at the End of the Tunnel
Whether we realize it or not
We are destined to live this life
Like any living being on this planet.
And therein lies the secret to “salvation”. At least, in my case.
When you reach a point where it seems there’s no further down you can go.
Live or die — that’s the only choice.
Each iteration of my life that I associate with various manifestations of procrastination or depressive moods in general, all have one interesting property.
- At first, there is an ascent 🎢
- Then comes the peak, the zenith 🏔
- After that, you tumble down the mountain 🤸♀️
You get sucked in so quickly and forcefully that…
Catching your breath, you realize you have stopped just a step away from the very bottom…
Or even a greater abyss.
What’s next? You ask yourself.
And then there’s only one choice — live or die.
I’ve always chosen the former.
And again, a new ascent…☀️
From human history, we find countless examples where, only when on the verge of life and death, a person still found a solution to their problem.
It is at this point, absolutely and precisely, that you unleash 120% of your strength and potential.
My depression and procrastination gladly led me to this moment.
Over and over again…
Essentially, I had no other choice.
Part 5. The Spiral
But what’s the point, if we are doomed to repeat this cycle of suffering over and over?
🔹 The point is not to make the same mistakes twice.
Learn from them, and… make new ones. 🥳
Thus, ON AVERAGE, each subsequent fall will not be as deep as before, and the ascents will be higher.
And at the peak… a new summit is already visible ⛰️
A landmark, where you will climb next time, after the next descent.
Walk in a spiral, not in a circle.
And it is in our power to determine the number of turns of this spiral.
Speaking of life and death I didn’t mean this literally, at least not always.
By “death” in this case, we can understand a very strong decrease in the quality of life compared to the previous point.
🔥 The moment when we no longer want to fall lower, and with all our might want to regain what was lost.
We won’t be able to get everything back, certainly not in the same form.
But it is possible in another form, no less wonderful.
In a perception that will open up even more possibilities.
Try to transform your life from what’s on the left, to what’s on the right:
The main advantage of this approach is:
You simply have fewer chances of dying along the way.
Agree, it sounds pretty good?
Part 6. Tools
What exactly makes us rise each time?
A genetically ingrained setting: “survive.”
Motivation.
It appears automatically in life-threatening situations.
However, the life of a modern person is so tricky and uneven that immediate physical danger — the threat of death — is extremely rare.
This mechanism for triggering motivation is often inaccessible to us.
In everyday life, it comes and goes.
The moment it fades is the scariest of all.
Motivation is the only thing that allows a person to do anything: from everyday household tasks to achieving the most daring and bold dreams.
So how do you keep it from fading? 🤔
If we recall physiology, the motivation born from the proximity of physical death is based on our consciousness sensing the approach of the end
At this moment, the picture of the future embedded in us begins to diverge significantly from reality.
Reflexively, this makes the brain send signals to our body, causing the gap between reality and desire to rapidly close.
For example, running at a speed you never expected, jumping as high as you never thought possible, clinging to a surface where there is not a single protrusion — and this is just a small list of miracles our body is capable of when on the brink of physical death.
And here we find the first key.
The natural goal of “surviving” generates an immense amount of insurmountable motivation 💪
But do you have any other goals?
A goal that fuels your consciousness.
Maybe you don’t like to dream and set too high goals?
But what if you try anyway?
It’s never too late to just start… living again.
The evolution of my goal-dream:
- to become a train driver
- to work in the IT department at a local key industry factory
- ️to leave my hometown
- ️to work in Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.)
- to write this blog and prepare to move to a new country.
Initially, I could not even imagine where I would end up now, and what path would lead to this.
Reality inevitably makes its adjustments, but one way or another, each of my new goals was head and shoulders above the previous one.
Not all of them are destined to come true, and that’s absolutely fine.
However, some are worth returning to, even after some time, if you feel that the right moment has come.
My ability and desire to write texts were born back in school, but only now is it finding its practical application.
To find the next key, we need to reflect on our behavior during procrastination.
At what point do we actually start tackling a necessary task?
Exactly, at the very last minute.
When there is no more time to waste.
To solve any task, it is crucial to understand the available resources and constraints.
Time acts as a key constraint.
Observations have shown that the higher our motivation and the less time remaining, the higher the chance that we won’t procrastinate on that activity, up to a one hundred percent chance.
Realizing the value of time is our second missing piece.
So how do we come to realize this value? 🤔
This image helped me:
This represents a human life, spanning 90 years
Quite optimistic, right? 🫠
Where each small square represents a week of your time on this earth.
In my mind, I shaded in about 25% up to that point.
My brain made notes about how much time had been spent working.
I recalled my goals and dreams, looked out the window…
With horror, realized the chasm that separates reality from where I desired to be in life.
That very day, I updated my job resume.
It was also the last day I felt the grip of procrastination.
When my “inner monkey” seemed to finally perish.
The day the realization of “time” ingrained itself in my subconscious and seems, even now, to occasionally burn.
Dreams (or goals) act as a connecting link between the most crucial components: motivation and the realization of the value of time.
Part 7. How do I feel now?
Since I threw that image into the furnace of my motivation, it has been burning brightly and shows no signs of fading.
It periodically gets stoked in moments when I have to call for emergency help.
Life has divided into before and after.
Does this mean I’ve stopped procrastinating entirely?
No.
This percentage has dropped from 80–90% to 5–10% 📉
An unequivocal victory 👏
I still play video games, watch TV shows, and occasionally visit YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
But now, it’s a part of the relaxation process.
And sometimes, I even feel a strong need for it.
A life, in which I want to accomplish so much and see so much, is involuntarily filled with a certain level of stress.
I continue on my path, having achieved much already…
Yet there is still so much ahead 🥲
The main thing is to live long enough…
Both mentally and physically.
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