NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF PROCRASTINATION
Below are the 2 steps I take to stop procrastination. Try them, they work every time. That’s if you follow my steps exactly.
Did you know that the negative effects of Procrastination are anxiety & stress? I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that anxiety & stress leads to numerous health problems. Therefore, procrastination leads to health issues.
Being a procrastinator can be stopped only if you Take Action. Don’t worry, I’ll show you step-by-step how to stop procrastinating. I’ll even give you examples.
1. Psychological Causes Of Procrastination
2. How To Stop Procrastinating In 2 Steps
3. How To Accomplish Your Goals
4. How To Overcome Obstacles In Your Life
5. An Extra Manifestation Tip From Me
PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF PROCRASTINATION
Have you ever asked yourself the question, why do I procrastinate? Being a procrastinator doesn’t mean you’re disorganized, lazy or that you just don’t care.
There are actual reasons behind why people procrastinate. Some people are aware of them while others aren’t. I’ve listed the 3 causes of procrastination below. Does one of them describe you? Try my suggestions to finally put an end to procrastination.
FEAR OF FAILURE: When you’re trying something new, do you worry about all the ways it could go wrong? Do you think about the negative comments you’ll get from the people you know if you fail? Would you rather not try than to try & fail? You sometimes tell yourself, why try, it probably won’t work anyways.
FEAR OF SUCCESS: Believe it or not, this is actually a reason why people procrastinate. People, who have the fear of success will quite often feel overwhelmed just thinking about the added responsibilities they’ll have if they’re successful. They feel if they do well, others will expect them to do more. Some people feel that their success would only lead to others finding out who they really are. That one I find hard to believe but it comes from, Phycology Today.
PERFECTIONISM: Sometimes perfectionism isn’t the best trait to have. Does everything you do have to be perfect? Does it usually end up that you never finish it? Do you become overwhelmed & frustrated instead? So, perfectionism is a type of procrastination.
I’ll tell you how to overcome these obstacles a little later on.
HOW TO STOP PROCRASTINATION IN 2 STEPS
I’m sure everyone knows the consequences of procrastinating. Knowing the consequences doesn’t make it easier to stop. In fact, taking action isn’t easy especially if you don’t know what action to take. The following are the 3 steps I take to prevent procrastination from sneaking iinto my life. Don’t forget, you have to TAKE ACTION to overcome it.
STEP 1: To begin with, let’s stick with just one thing. Write down 1 thing you want. Make it something that would improve your life immensely. Something that would cause you to be overwhelmed with excitement if you managed to get it. If you follow my steps, you will manifest it into your life. You can call it your wish, your goal, your intention, or whatever you want to call it. I like calling it my wish.
This wish is what you’re going to focus on for the next little while until you’ve accomplished it. That means you’re going to have to learn to stop procrastinating in order to get it. Write your wish down & why you want it so badly. How will it help make your life so much better? How will it make you happier if you had it?
If you haven’t taken out a piece of paper yet & written it down, do it now. Don’t skip this step & start reading Step #2. Remember, we’re trying to end your procrastination.
STEP #2: Now it’s time to write out the dreaded schedule. Please try this because it does help you to stay focused. You know exactly what you have to do next to get closer to accomplishing your goal. The reason I had you write down why your wish would make your life easier & happier will keep you motivated.
The schedule you’re about to compose will help you to form good habits for accomplishing any goal in your life. Getting into good habits to stay focused and motivated will accelerate the time it’ll take to turn your dream into reality.
Get out a piece of paper & let’s start making our schedule. Why a schedule? With a schedule, you don’t have to stress yourself out with what you’re going to do next to get yourself closer to your goal. You know exactly what you have to do.
Divide your day up into 3 different time periods. Start with the time you get up in the morning. End it with the time it is a hour before you go to bed. It’s healthy to have a hour to wind down & relax after your day is ended. I’ll give you an example of what my time is below.
■ 5:00 – 11:00
■ 11:00 – 5:00
■ 5:00 – 10:00
I get up at 5 a.m. & usually go to bed between 11 & midnight. No, you don’t have to be working towards your goal all day long! I work from home so it’ll be a lot easier for me to schedule my time than it will be for you.
Decide on how many days a week you’re going to set aside to work on your wish. Please don’t say 1 day a week. I work at my goal 4 days a week & once in awhile 5.
Now decide on how much time you’re going to put in when you’re working on that goal. Make sure it’s realistic. If you go to a job that’s 8 hours a day, you can’t come home & work another 4. You also can’t be working 7 days a week. I always take 2-3 days off every week. Usually 3.
Now it’s time to fill in those time periods. I’m not sure what your day looks like. I don’t know how long you have to work each day. I don’t know if you have kids that you have to drive around to different things.
The easiest way for me to show you is by giving you an example of how I filled in my schedule. It took me about a week to come up with it. I had to tweak it a bit here & there until I got it to the point where it was very doable.
5:00 – 11:00 : During the hours of 5-11 every day I do the following:
■ Breakfast
■ Go to the gym
■ Get my personal things done like cleaning, grocery shopping, meeting a friend for coffee, watering my plants. I think you get the picture.
11:00 – 5:00 :
■ Lunch
■ I work for 3 hours from home
■ I spend 2 hours working towards my goal. I do this Monday – Thursday
5:00 – Bedtime
■ Dinner
■ 2 hours of working from home
■ 1 hour working towards my goal (Monday to Thursday)
■ Write down what I’m going to do tomorrow. I use a white board & a day planner. The white board is for what I plan on doing to accomplish my goal. My Day Planner is for the personal things I have to get done each day
10:00 – bedtime
■ Totally relax. Sometimes I spend 15 minutes meditating. Sometimes I spend it reading while listening to relaxing music. It’s a great way to end your day. I don’t have the t.v. on. I don’t go on my computer & I stay away from social media. I always take 1-2 hours to totally relax.
HOW TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR GOALS
This is where we have to take the schedule we just completed & break it down into bite-sized pieces. What I do before I start working towards any goal is make some kind of reminder of what the end result is going to be. For example, when I wanted to manifest a car I put pictures around my house of the car I wanted. No, this isn’t the only thing you have to do to get what you want.
How was a car going to make my life easier & me happier? At the time, I didn’t work from home. My car was ready to fall apart. It was more than stressful not knowing if it was going to get me to work every day. I definitely couldn’t afford a new one. Taking a bus would have taken me over a hour each way. Remember, in the beginning of this article I said to write down a goal that would make your life easier & happier.
How badly you need & want something will keep you focused & motivated.
By the way, I put the picture of my car in places that no one else would come across. In the beginning, I had such a fear of failure. I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing just in case it didn’t work out. I couldn’t face all the criticism I would receive from friends & relatives if I failed. I’m glad I overcame that.
By now you should have decided how many days a week you’re going to work at obtaining your goal. You also should have decided on how much time you’re going to spend each day working at it.
Now for the hard part. What are you going to do to get yourself closer to that dream? Spend 2-3 days deciding on little steps you’ll take. Write them down as soon as you think of them. Always keep your goal in the back of your mind. If you have to put up little reminders like I did, do it. You’d be surprised at the ideas that seem to pop up out of nowhere when you have it on your mind.
Another place to search for ideas is on the internet. Get a blank piece of paper. Everytime you think of something, write it down.
Now it’s time to fill in the schedule you came up with a little earlier on. I highly recommend that you start with filling out the personal things you have to get done every day. Things like cleaning your house, taking your kids to practice, meetings you have to attend or anything else that’s a must in your life.
After you have that filled in, it’s time to schedule in your goals. At the end of each day, write down 3 things you’ll have time to complete the next day. First, list the things you have to do & the times you’ll do it at. Next, write down what you plan to do towards accomplishing your goals. Once again write down the time.
Don’t forget, each time you come up with an idea add it to your list. Why is this an absolute must? When you sit down to work towards your dream, you know exactly what you’re going to do. There’s no wasted time involved.
HOW TO OVERCOME OBSTACLES IN YOUR LIFE
I’m just going to list the 4 of most common obstacles that arise.
1. Fear Of Failure – There are two main types of fear. The fear of failure & the fear of success. The fear of failure is probably the easiest one to overcome. Don’t tell anyone about the goal you’re working on. Always remember, you can only fail if you give up. How many times did you fall off your bike when you were learning to ride one? Did you give up? I bet you didn’t & the outcome was you learned how to ride it. The goals we set are no different. Once you reach your goal, then tell people.
2. Fear of Success: Because Psychologists say this is a major obstacle people have, I’ll list it. To tell you the truth, I’ve never known someone to have the fear of success. Most people who fear success are terrified of the extra responsibilities they’ll have. The answer to this one is simple. Learn to say NO. If you feel like you have to come up with an excuse, you can always say you have other commitments. Even if you just plan on relaxing & taking time for yourself, which you should, no one needs to know what those commitments are.
It’s not that you should never do extra for people. Be careful not to take on too much. Success Doesn’t Equal Burn Out. Instead, use the word NO to solve this problem if you have a fear of success.
3. Excuses – This is the biggest obstacle of all. Simple answer, NO EXCUSES. The purpose of writing out your schedule every night was to end the excuses. You can’t use the excuse you have no time. You have it scheduled in. In other words, you’ve already made time for it.
Your only excuse for not working on your goal would be if you’re sick. Not just having a slight headache kind of sick. I mean really sick. Actually, you can always make up the time by scheduling it in for another day. How badly do you want to turn that dream into reality?
4. Unforeseen Things That Come Up. This is a hard one. Once again, here is where the schedule comes in handy. Grab your schedule & make a few changes.
Let’s just say that you decided to work towards your goal 1 hour a day, 4 days a week. Never cut back on the time you’ve scheduled to work towards your dream. Cut out one of your personal things. The thing that’s not imperative that it gets done today. You can even move the time to one of the days that you don’t have working on your goals scheduled in.
AN EXTRA MANIFESTATION TIP
Before you try my next Manifestation Tip, wait until you’re having no problems following your schedule.
When I’m using the law of attraction to Manifest something into my life, I always add visualisation. You can try my DIY Visualization Techniques for FREE. If you’re short on time, you can try the program I use, Mind Movies. My DIY program will take you a little longer. Mind Movies is three minutes a day. They both work great.
Why does this help me? It helps me to focus even more on my end goal. I use Mind Movies. The high energy music I pick out just makes my motivation soar. Then the movie is constantly showing me my end result. That just drives my motivational level over the top.
I BELIEVE IN YOU. I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT.
If you have any tips on how to stop procrastination, leave them below. This website is to help others. Trust me, I don’t have all the answers but I will help you as much as I can.
For more ways to Turn Your Dream Into Reality, check put my page, Manifestation Products.
Thanks for stopping by the Manifestation Portal & reading my article on, How To Stop Procrastination.
