Overcoming procrastination and just getting on with it at Hypnosis Downloads.com Podcast & Blog

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I love the expression: ‘Stop having a wishbone for a backbone!’

Just think how much potential achievement has been irrevocably lost to the world because of procrastination. Before we developed our Overcoming procrastination session for hypnosisdownloads.com, we had had hundreds of requests for a hypnotic download which would address this problem and stop procrastination from tripping people at the first hurdle.

But what exactly is procrastination?

Procrastination takes effort

Surprisingly, procrastination can actually be a lot of work. This is because there is usually a lot of ‘displacement activity’ involved. Rather than just, say, getting on with writing, I might convince myself that I need one more cup of coffee. I might then find that I’m out of milk. I then convince myself I have to go and get some. While I’m out, I may decide to get some other items. When I return, I might then decide that I need to call someone up. I talk to them. I then remember I haven’t checked my emails for a while. Finally, I might decide I really should get on with writing but now it’s getting late. So I convince myself that it will really be more practical to make a ‘fresh start’ tomorrow. So, instead of just writing, I’ve gone out, I’ve talked, I’ve wasted mental effort coming up with reasons to persuade myself why I really shouldn’t just get on with it today after all, because, as we all know, there is always tomorrow, isn’t there?

Procrastination: wasting creativity

Procrastination is partly about self-deceit. How many times have you heard people telling you they haven’t done what you asked because they were too lazy! This is rarely the case. Procrastination likes to waste your creativity. You have to be very creative to produce convincing excuses. People will tell you all kinds of reasons why they haven’t actually finished – or even started – that project yet. Don’t get me wrong, I have procrastinated with the best of them. But I estimate the amount of time I spend procrastinating has dropped by around 90% ,and I can live with procrastinating over some things occasionally as long as they are just the more trivial things!

Procrastination: short term v long term gain

Actually, procrastination is all about short-term benefit versus longer-term gain. In the short term, it may indeed be more comfortable not to write that report, even if the long-term benefit of writing that report well might just get you promoted and land you more money.

What usually happens when we procrastinate is a pattern more or less like this:

Steps to procrastination

You become aware you have to do something (or know that if you choose to do it then you’ll benefit.). Let’s say it’s writing a report.

You decide to start the report but inertia prevents you from actually starting. It’s easier not to do it now than to do it.

To avoid the unpleasant realization that you just aren’t doing it, you now really begin to procrastinate.

You start inventing displacement activities. You convince yourself that other things need doing first, that you need a walk to ‘clear my head’, that the cat doesn’t like their food so you need to replace it, that watching daytime TV is somehow going to help the project, and so on. It’s amazing how creative one can be when procrastinating.

But all the while the stress of not doing what you know you should be doing is building in the background, and that starts to feel unpleasant. The tension of not doing it grows.

But you are likely to continue to procrastinate: ‘I’ll start on Wednesday when I’ll have a clear run at it!’ ‘Actually, I promised Joe I’d go to the movies with him on Wednesday and I just can’t let him down again.’ And so it continues. But now guilt is building. The report needs to be 5,000 words long and it needs to be in by Monday morning!

Procrastination can continue until the point where a reverse occurs and it becomes more unpleasant not to do it than to do it. Now, because it has to be in tomorrow, procrastination goes out the window, and doing or not doing the report becomes ‘non-negotiable’ in your own mind.

You finally write the report in a hurry.

Now you experience the relief of actually having done it, but this is often of coupled with a feeling regret: ‘Why didn’t I just get on and do it in the first place and save myself all that extra effort and stress? When it takes more effort and more work to procrastinate than not to procrastinate?’

What a cumbersome, inefficient and laborious way to go through life.

The hypnosisdownloads.com session Overcoming procrastination seeks to get people ‘just doing it’ – and it’s already producing brilliant results, as testified by the feedback we’re getting from many reformed procrastinators.

People don’t always take procrastination seriously, and we can be very glib about our own procrastination habits, but life spans are finite and there is much to do and experience if you want to get the most out of life.

All the best

Mark

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