How I Learned To Accomplish More By Being Lazy And Why You Should Too
Stick with me here as I peel back the curtain and show you step by step how to take a task or a goal you have and move you closer to accomplishing it by putting it off.
This isn’t a life hack or trick.
We’ve been encouraged to avoid procrastination from the very beginning of the self-help industry. People like you and I want to be more successful, and we realize that involved getting things done. The problem is we can’t help ourselves. You and I want to reach levels of success that go beyond our reach. Someone told us to avoid procrastinating.
If you want to become more productive in your career, health, or any area of your life that matters to you, forget everything you know about avoiding procrastination….
…So what do we do?
The best way to show you what this is by introducing you to a short story about a writer…
Maybe a lot like you, she wanted to publish her first book after writing many articles for a few online publications. She wasn’t interested in becoming famous; instead, she wanted to become effective. So after researching and reading hundreds of ways to motivate herself, she tried to write the first paragraph and couldn’t finish it. She took all the advice she found and tried it all. She tried waking up and writing early. She tried the extra dose of caffeine. She even attempted to go 30 days without writing to see if that would cure her problem. And that didn’t work either.
The weird part about this process
The next day she realized how much that unfinished paragraph stuck in her head at work. Not only that, she was disappointed that she didn’t think of it when she was behind her computer. It came to her during her shift at work.
What better time right? Keep reading.
Is patience a virtue?
She knew what she wanted to write, but she had to wait until her 8-hour shift was over. She even considered driving home during her lunch break to write it in but found the patience to wait it out. And that same night, after her long shift, she wrote her first book in less than 5 hours.
I felt the same way you did
Yes, you read that right. And if you drank any coffee this morning, you could be having the same reaction I did when I first read this story. As an amateur writer, I have aspirations to write a book one day. What happened in this story is very transparent to anyone now.
How procrastination helps us accomplish more:
If we are pulled away from a task or leave it unfinished, our attention keeps us glued to it. Every time we don’t complete a task, our minds hold the focus on it. Just like unanswered questions and unfinished tasks make us crave closure o does writing just enough of a book to leave it unfinished. And regular attention to one thing makes it seem worthy of attention to us. A motivating force is the drive for closure.
There you have it. Now before you close your tab and walk away so you can read the rest of this later, think about a few things today.
The most important part of this is what it does for you
Some of us want to be more consistent in going to the gym. Some of us want to read ten more minutes a day. And perhaps some of us want to write a little more on Medium. Whatever the case may be, use the power of procrastination to help you accomplish those goals you may have.
For example,
If you want to write more on Medium, start writing a story. Add a picture if you’d like next to your title. Before you continue, know what you want to write and wait to write it until you go to bed that night.
Why?
Because your desire to write will expand further than it ever has. It will leave you wanting to write more and more. Want to know what happens you want something more? You do it more.
This “secret formula” or whatever we want to call it wasn’t supposed to be a secret. It is an often forgotten concept we can use daily in our lives to create more for ourselves. And that’s precisely what you deserve to do. Today.
Take it for granted. Procrastinate. Leave things undone. Enjoy accomplishing more.
Christian
