On procrastination
Hello friend,
This week’s edition is quite meta.
I have been dealing with a serious bout of procrastination for the past 5 days. I procrastinated for over 5 hours before I finally sat down to write this newsletter.
And I could not think or write about anything else except that!
I decided to look into my digital vault and wondered if I could find anything relevant. 😀
And these three things are what I found:
1. How to stop procrastinating
Sahil Bloom talks about two types of procrastination in this article- Type I or the harmless kind of procrastination on day-to-day errands and Type II or the more serious form of procrastination on important projects. He recommends five core steps in his Anti-procrastination framework:
(1) Awareness: Schedule a daily assessment of your day-to-day actions based on the important long-term projects in your life. Then ask two questions: Am I proud of the actions I am taking on these big projects? Am I doing what I should be doing?
(2) Deconstruction: Break down the big and scary project into small and individually manageable tasks.
(3) Plan Creation: Specify each micro-task in terms of what to do and when to do it.
(4) Stake Creation: Turn tasks into mental games such as a public declaration, planning a reward or penalty, and increasing social pressure.
(5) Action: Just take the first step. Reward small initial actions.
2. The right now list
Sometimes no matter how many to-do task lists you prepare, you could struggle with taking the first step.
In this article, the author suggests keeping a square yellow sticky note in the corner with “RNL” at the top. This is your “Right now list” where you write the first two or three things that you need to do right now.
These are actions that are so obvious that it seems absurd to write them down.
For example, finding the appropriate file, clearing a space on your desk, opening a blank document on your second monitor
3. Freeze state and procrastination
This tweet thread talks about the deeper, emotional state that might be responsible for procrastination. The author talks about the freeze state and how to deal with it by:
- identifying when you are in it
- using bottom-up practices like walking, deep breathing, or grounding exercises to slowly get your body out of the freeze state
- talking about it with someone close to you
Check out the full thread here
Well, that’s all from me this week, folks!
Until next time,
Love,
Vishal