This Small Step Can Help You Beat Procrastination

Vladimir Elie
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read

Imagine beating procrastination and finally leaving up to your potential.

Procrastination may seem invisible, but it isn’t. You can beat procrastination. To do so, you must understand that procrastination seeks to shackle you in inaction.

Procrastination causes you not to take action on your goals. Sure, you “act” on many activities, but not on important ones: activities that move your goals forward. You’re watching TV, scrolling through Facebook, and doing all sorts of other things, but you’re not working on tasks and activities that matter (e.g. working on your report).

Procrastination rules the land of inaction. To beat it, you must escape the land of inaction and step into the land of action. And simple way to do that is to take a small step in the direction of your goal. That is, tackle a small task — as small a task as possible — so that you would move from “inaction” to “action”.

Taking a small step can help you beat procrastination.

For example, if you have a report to produce, your small step may simply be to create the document on your computer and put the title on it.

Once you made the first small step, you simply keep doing small steps.

You’ve created your document and put the title on it. Then, you take another small step: you create the structure for your report. Then, another small step: you put your first few ideas (the key points) on the page. And so on. Before you know it, your report is well on its way to completion.

When you free yourself from the land of inaction and move into the land of action, good things happen. In fact, as you take small steps, you sometimes get to experience big leaps. You get to a part of the road that is so smooth, and because you are in motion, you can take advantage of this and make a big leap forward: make lots of progress in a short period of time.

It’s important to break inertia and set yourself in motion.

One of the advantages of taking small steps is this: small steps aren’t overwhelming. A feeling of overwhelmed may cause you procrastinate. When you see the mountain standing before you, the thought of the climb is daunting and paralyzed you.

Small steps prevent you from feeling overwhelmed. You don’t have to focus on the whole mountain, you simply focus on the next step, and that step is minuscule.

When you focus on taking a small step forward, you increase the likelihood of setting yourself in motion, and thus, of beating procrastination.

    Vladimir Elie

    Written by

    Practical Insights for people doing great work in the world. Topics: 🔹Productivity 🔹Goals 🔹Mindset 🔹Personal Growth 🔹Leadership ResultsEmpowerment.com

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