How to overcome procrastination in 2 minutes!

“A year from now you may wish you had started today.” - Karen Lamb

As you perfectly know from my previous post procrastination is one of the biggest “Time Stealers”.

There are many reasons why we procrastinate: lack of management, fear of failure, badly organized time, laziness and I’m sure that you can name at least other 3 reasons why you procrastinate.

Our brains always try to find a way to justify our actions and also in this case, our brain gives a logical explanation why we haven’t dust the house for 4 months or we haven’t replied to an email for weeks....

The first step to fight procrastination is to admit that you have a bad habit and you want to change it.

Once you admit it, you should find motivation. It can be a friend who monitors your progress, your life-coach (if you don’t have one, I am available to help) or something or someone else that motivates you. For me it’s the feeling of satisfaction after accomplishing the task and I also use many NLP techniques which help me stay highly motivated. Anyway... You have to figure out what works the best for you.

Now, once you know when you procrastinate and you are motivated to stop this bad habit, you are ready to know some simple ways to overcome procrastination:

• complete difficult tasks as first
• prioritize tasks
• ALWAYS finish what you have started
• do not waste time (I wrote about it in my previous post)
• If a task is too complicated, divide it into small steps
• NEVER feel apprehensive about a tough task
• prepare a daily plan for your tasks
• follow your schedule

Once you know how to do it, it is time to start!

Have your motivation disappeared all of the sudden when you've read that it’s time to start?

If yes, don’t worry, you don’t have to do everything at once!

Martin Luther King Jr. said: “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

So, when you finish to prioritize your tasks (remember - first the most difficult),pick up one of them and start doing it just for 2 minutes! Yes, just for 2 minutes!

I can bet that when you check the time, you will realize that you have already been working on it for 20 minutes, not just TWO.

If you are one of those few people who stopped after 2 minutes, I have also a good news for you: You are 2 minutes less from accomplishing your task!

Anyway, I’m quite sure that you will continue, because this is how our brain works.

You send signals to the brain which make you ready to perform an action. You start doing it, so your brain goes in “working mode”. It means that the brain forgets about procrastination and concentrates on what you are doing at the moment.

Also Isaac Newton knew about this law, but he applied it into the physics: “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion...”. Simple as that. If you don’t start doing what you should do, it will stay untouched. You don’t need a Nobel Prize to figure it out!

Here is an example: You have to wash the dishes but you don’t feel to do this right now. You know about the 2 minute rule, so you know that you can do it just for this amount of time. You start washing them, 2 minutes finished, but once you have your hands full of soap, won’t you finish to wash everything? You are already in motion... :D

2 minute rule apply to everything, so next time when you catch yourself procrastinating, use the 2 minute rule!

Good luck!