When the amount of work starts to increase, the times that I try to avoid it also increases. Now that the exam weeks are coming up, I do find myself procrastinating time after time. To try and find a solution to this problem I started googling it, and I found a really interesting video. The title is: The ONLY way to stop procrastinating by Mel Robbins. What interested me the most about this video was the relative simple and easy solution she gave.
I always thought procrastinating is something you just do, or something that’s a trait you have She shows its different. What she says is you are not a procrastinator, you have the bad habit of procrastinating. When it’s a habit, you can teach yourself to stop doing it. A habit consists of three things, a trigger, a pattern and a reward. The trigger of procrastination is stress. Stress of things you are worried about, or stress of a deadline coming up. The pattern is you avoiding what you need to do, for example studying for your exams. The reward you get of procrastinating is a little bit of stress relief. The trigger, stress, is something you will never be able to change, people always have stress in their lives. What you can change is the pattern of avoiding. The next time you notice you’re procrastinating you can do the following. Acknowledge your stress. Then go 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 and go work on your task for 5 minutes. The problem with procrastinating is not in doing the work, it’s having the habit of avoiding to start the work.
I really recommend you to watch the video, she explains it way better than I do. Just give it a try and see if it works for you. Thank you for reading this!
– Remco