Why You’re Procrastinating

…when you said that this time would be different

Let’s discuss that thing that you know you have to do, and you will do, but you keep putting off.

You can’t totally relax because you feel the stress of not doing it building, and you know that you could just take care of it, but you don’t. You have good intentions but it’s not happening. You’re using that  “Procrastination Logic” and “Tomorrow Thinking”.

You don’t want to do it more than you want to have it done, in other words, your resistance to doing it is stronger than your stress about not doing it.

The highest stress and panic of waiting until the last minute has become the only thing that seems to propel you into action. And every time this happens you say “Next time I’m not going to do that”. 

Even though the stress and panic feel terrible, it’s familiar, and your subconscious will always point you towards what’s familiar. Your subconscious doesn’t want to expend any extra effort figuring out how to do things differently.

The problem is that this has become your “normal”.

Stress and panic have become an acceptable part of the process, so there isn’t enough motivation to change things, especially since each time you decide to put it off you get the high of temporary relief.

Let’s look at the example with taxes… comes up a lot this time of year.

Steps in the Procrastination Cycle:

Thought: I Should do my taxes

1. Feel stress & resistance
2. Tell myself I’m going to do it later
3. Feel relief
4. More stress & resistance builds up
   (Repeat steps 2-4 until stress overtakes resistance)
5. Make the effort to do it
6. Reward: Relief…

Your only reward is the feeling of relief, just a bigger version of the feeling you get each time you procrastinate.

The Best Question to Stop Procrastinating

To stop procrastinating you need a better reason and you need to want it enough. It’s easy to intellectually understand the benefits of not procrastinating, but you need to hook in your nervous system so that you are emotionally engaged with wanting to do things differently.

Here’s the question you need to answer: What are you missing out on by procrastinating?

The New Steps

Once you can answer that, it’s going to look like this:

Thought: I Should do my taxes

1. Feel stress & resistance (sorry you won’t suddenly be excited about taxes)
2. Feel resistance to NOT doing it because that means you won’t get to ____________
3. Make the effort to do it
4. Reward: Feel the relief and __________

 Alignment Makes it Easier

This is where the Kickstartology Coaching Alignment Framework is useful because it connects your day-to-day decisions to your long-term vision of the life you want to create.

If you are already emotionally invested in a long-term vision it’s so much easier to find the motivation you need in the moment to do the things that you might not be in the mood to do. 

If you stop procrastinating and do the thing now, who are you becoming?

What are you giving yourself time to do?

What will you do with the mental space you create by not going through repeated cycles of building up stress and resistance?

That’s the secret. 

Once you really believe it’s worth it and you’re worth it, you can start building the muscle of taking action sooner.

You’ve got this.

xo,

-SJM