The Problem Isn’t Discipline; It’s Getting Started
We might see on the internet about discipline and consistency, while the main problem of productivity is actually getting started.
I procrastinate more often these days.
I avoid doing my work and things that I need to do. I just kept on scrolling on YouTube, and then time passed from 5 minutes to 10 minutes, and then from 10 minutes into an hour or more. I didn’t even realize that I didn’t have much time to do my work again after scrolling. Then, what comes next is,
“I’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, I can finish it.”
Then tomorrow comes, but still, I didn’t get to work, and I procrastinated even more. I feel like I have more time to do my work later, but later never comes. I spend my time on Youtube and social media, scrolling from one content to another while my mind is still thinking of a task that I haven’t worked on.
It’s frustrating.
I became stressed from not doing any work.
I haven’t finished my daily task, didn’t do any work, and procrastinated all day, but I was tired and stressed for that.
The problem is that I never live in the present moment because I always think about when I will finish my work or when I will start to work. I then tried to figure this out by watching some tutorials, reading some books, and finding out the main problem of procrastination.
I found out that the main problem, in my case, is that I set my walls too high.
It’s so big that I can’t jump over it or overcome it. I end up being afraid of how big the wall is. This is why I end up procrastinating because I’m afraid of not finishing the task, and because I’m afraid and doubt that I might not finish the task, I may also just not be doing the task.
You might have a problem with procrastinating and struggle with this. Sometimes, it’s not because we don’t want to set the task small or the wall smaller; it’s just that we don’t have much time to finish the task.
The deadlines force us to start big and finish it this day, if possible.
Escaping pain
My mind always thought about that.
I don’t have much time, so I force myself to start big this day and work as much as I can. Even so, it doesn’t work like that in our minds.
Our mind is built to escape or avoid pain.
The wall that we face or a task that’s too big is scary and leads to pain in our minds. So, our minds automatically avoid the pain by procrastinating, such as by scrolling on social media or binge-watching.
So, the solution that I had to deal with my procrastination was to just start small.
Starting small
If I want to write an article, I make the task so small that I’m motivated enough to think, “There’s no way I can’t do this small task,” so that I can just start taking action.
The small task that I choose is preparing the environment to write by opening documents, listening to music, drinking coffee, etc. That way, I could help myself to jump out of the procrastination trap.
I found out that if I just force myself to start small things and let my mind know that I don’t have to finish the task, I end up doing more than I used to. The more I do, the more my work progresses. The more I overcome procrastination, the more confident I am to do the same in the future.
This way, I’m not only able to finish the work that I need to do but also overcome procrastination.
Then, after that, don’t bother yourself with continuing the work if you don’t want to. This way, you are being truthful to yourself by giving yourself what you promise them. If I don’t want to write an article and just want to set up the environment for writing, I let myself not write an article.
You can do this in order to love yourself more, because
- The more you keep your promise to yourself, the more your mind will trust you and love you more.
- The more you love yourself, the more you will end up doing good things rather than bad things for yourself.
This way, you will easily change your life successfully.
So, to help you overcome procrastination, you can ask yourself this:
- What task do I need to finish?
- How can I make my task smaller so that I can start working?
- What rewards would I give myself if I successfully overcame my procrastination?
Rewards that you give could be going back to do some fun things you wanted to do, giving yourself some breaks, or going out.
I recommend not scrolling on social media or engaging in high-dopamine activities because we need to save our energy to continue doing more work for the day.
Remember that you are not a procrastinator, and you are not lazy, because the problem is not with discipline; it’s with starting.
The more you start, the more you will end up doing the work. It’s much easier to continue to work than to start to work. So, overcome the first step by starting small or doing some small task.
This way, you will overcome the wall that your mind thought you couldn’t overcome.
“We failed to start while we actually had the capability to continue.”
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