Procrastination: 5 Simple Hacks To Stop Today

Procrastination is one of the greatest traps we can fall into.  Thank fully there are simple hacks to deal with procrastination.

Everyone procrastinates from time to time, some of us more than others. Procrastination must be one of the greatest enemies of human kind. Procrastination prevents us from becoming the person that we were meant to be, quite simply be getting us to do nothing. And we all know that when we do nothing, nothing happens, except we lose time, time that we never get back.

And so, today, let’s look at how we can move past procrastination, by understanding why we procrastinate.

There are several reasons people procrastinate…

these generally fall into 2 buckets:
1. Lack of drive, motivation or belief
2. Fear or anxiety

The lack of drive motivation or belief…

…can be caused by several things. A person could be inherently lazy, or a person may just not believe that what he is doing will have any meaningful consequences, and therefore is not motivated to get it done.

The easiest way to overcome this form of procrastination is to find your ‘why’. Most of us operate in the ‘how’, or ‘when’ – how we get things done and when we get things done, and ignore the why we get things done. Knowing your ‘why’ helps you to get driven, and stay driven through challenging times that will stand between you and what you want to achieve. Knowing your ‘why’ also helps you to articulate your goals and to break down your goals into the steps that you need to take to get to those goals.

Read my blog post on your “why”

Read my blog posts on achieving your goals, starting with this one…

The second sort of procrastination is caused by fear or anxiety

This could be fear of failure, and more commonly than you’d imagine, fear of success.

Fear of failure often stems from having high expectations of oneself without the understanding that failure is often the stepping stone to success, if we know how to fail properly – meaning, fail forward – or just making sure we learn from our mistakes, and quickly pick ourselves up and refine what we’ve done with that recent lesson in mind. Many businesses ‘fail’ because the entrepreneurs have given up after a couple of ‘failures’ and didn’t fail forward.

Read my various posts on failing the right way, here, here and here.

Watch my video on being motivated by love and not fear.

More complex is the fear of success. Many people believe that success is not for them – there is a deep seated belief that they are humble individuals or that they are happy to be the number 2 person. Success comes with responsibilities, and sometimes, that makes people afraid of succeeding.

If you procrastinate because you’re afraid of success, what you really need to understand is who you really are. The moment you understand that you are made to succeed, then you realize that you have an obligation to succeed. Being ‘humble’ and depriving yourself of who you were made to be deprives the world of the gift of you. You owe it to all of us to succeed!

So whatever your reason for procrastination is, you can move past it, and start taking action…

I used to be a huge procrastinator myself, until I learnt the power of taking action. Small steps daily add up, and before I knew it, I was living my dream life – free from financial worry, and with lots of time for my family and to serve in church and my community.

Start by taking a small step today, and before you know it, you’ll be living your dream life too.