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Procrastination is my second most feared thing on earth, next to time its self. If your not careful; there can be instances where it's too late. It’s frightening knowing you have something that you need to do but for some reason subconsciously you keep yourself from doing it. I’ve been there I’ve even put off important things for years, and it affects me to this day.
So I have 10 ways to surely get you back to a life of prosperity and achievements.
1. Just fucking do it!
A bit blunt but this will remedy 90% of your problems. Seriously just fucking do what you need to do. You need to clean your room, do it. You need to do assignments, just do it. Anything you have to do, just walk over and do it! Boom less stress, and now you can cross it off on your list. Make a habit of your needs. Program yourself to prioritize the thing you need to do daily. Often you’ve done a plethora of research but the still prolonging things you want to do. If you’ve been reading about it for months, just do it your ready.
The list goes on. Some things on this list or your list can simply be done just by fucking doing it. Others require many steps and research to accomplish. Wanna get fit to buy a fucking membership and go to the gym. Most gyms have free Wi-Fi use it, YouTube fitness workouts and do it. Do more research as you go on. And don’t be the dumbass that buys a personal trainer lol. More on that in another article. Wanna learn how to invest, do it, then invest. No one got anywhere in life being a bitch afraid of being hurt. Sometimes you gotta be a dumbass and just fucking do it. Don't overthink, Don’t over-analyze, just do it. I’ll be honest with you. You maybe be afraid to fail and afraid to lose money. Well, you will fail, and you absolutely will lose money. That’s the whole point. Learn to make 10x more than you lose. Every successful person has made sacrifices and fear was absent from their thinking.
2. Make time for it, sacrifice
Think of the most successful persons on earth; now think of the most unsuccessful people on earth. One thing they have in common is time. Everyone has the same 24 hours a day no matter what class, race, height, net worth, etc. It all depends on how you allocate and utilize your time. If you’ve ever uttered the phrase I don’t have enough time, then there's something wrong. If you don’t have enough time how the hell did Jay-Z make things happen? How did Mark Zuckerberg or any other Billionaire get to where they are if they didn’t have the time. We all have the same 24 hours. So make the time. Do you need to hang out with your friends, watch TV, movies, social media, drink, clubbing,… Got kids to find a baby sitter. Have distractions, remove yourself from distractions. You are the sole reason why you're not doing it. Fuck excuses. It’s time you make a sacrifice; no one has become anything incredible wasting time.
You know you need to get something done or become good at something to be someone. So stop putting yourself in a position where you have to make rime for your goals in dreams. Your life should revolve around your goals. Your goals and dreams are first, no matter what. You wanna make an app, start spending just a few minutes to a few hours on it. Spend the majority of your time perfecting that app. Build your schedule around that app. Make time for work, postpone your friends, quit TV, make time for working out, eating, etc. Bill Gates spent hours on hours building what we know of as Windows and Microsoft today. He didn’t get it out there by making excuses and trying to fit it into his life. It became his life.
3. Analyze what’s happening & why
There is a root to why your lazy, and why you keep putting it off. Get to the bottom of it and learn to make the needed changes. For me, building platforms takes an incredible amount of focus and time. But there are many projects an I still hadn’t released when I started them over 5 years ago. Projects I’m scrambling to get done to this day. I’ll be honest with you. It takes me about a month to two tops to get the website, mobile, and app complete. So why did it take me so long? I procrastinated, I ran into a few errors I knew I needed to fix, study and research to move forward. This along with a few other things stopped me into the present day.
I could have made a list of every issue, every language I needed to master, the correct software and requirements but I didn’t. There were ways to find a solution but I postponed and postponed, distracted myself with other projects convincing myself that this couldn’t be done without something else. It took me years later after endless BS to finally looking at everything in detail thousands of lines of code, all my errors, etc. to find a solution. I did. And it took me a matter of hours ironically to get it back up and moving forward again. It pains me that so many years have passed but I forced myself to comb through every detail to get myself back on task. It was all mental all in my head that prevented me. So look hard at your task and understand why you put it off, don’t be me don’t spend years.
4. Set short, mid & long term goals
This is something I swear by and has helped me tremendously throughout life. No matter what, buying another car, computer, building software, learning a new skill, you name it. I set goals, but not just any goals, very detailed goals for my bigger goals. For instance, I was building a web app. So I used an app called Google Keep which is my favorite note-taking app. I made a long term goal of creating a web app. Then I made short term goals after defining what the project is, and what’s it going to be used for and about. I wrote out every detail I needed to get this project up and running down to the detail of the buttons. The short term goals were to get a page completed design functionality, then populated, then finally functional. When all those where completed that made a mid-term goal, all leading up to the project full completion. Afterward, there were more minor goals added to get it fully running. Like debugging each page lines of code, sever cost, marketing, etc. Laying out the goals truly helped me see and visualize each step and minor steps with ease.
Things are a lot easier when you have smaller steps to reach a larger goal. Whatever your goals or task may be, breakdown the steps to reach that goal. Like my tiny example above.
5. Make a to-do-list
Similar to goal setting; a to-do-list is another must. Another cause of procrastinating is that you may be overwhelmed. You may be the type that pile so much on your plate you don't know where to start and you also may feel there's no way to get all this done. That’s understandable. Try making a list of every task you have to get completed. Over time the level of importance and what needs to be done first. Don’t worry if the things that need to get done first are the most complex. Similar to what we did above take that one task from the list and write every step that needs to be taken to get that task completed. Then tackle the smaller task one by one into its completed
6. Take a break
Take a break you deserve it. Going in on a task for hours on in can be quite exhausting. By the break, I mean something short and relative to the task at hand. Something minor and brief. For instance, I work for hours at a time sometimes over 9+ hours writing code. The trick is to not make it a chore to get things done, but to enjoy it. I sometimes take a 30 minute to hour break per 4 hours. Studies show on average; a person should do every 40 – 120 minutes with a 10-minute break. For me, I’ll sometimes go out for a walk, do a quick workout. Or even start a movie or episode of a show I haven’t seen or have seen before. After an episode then I get back to my task. But remember me it’s per 4 hours of work. Remember to keep it relative. Whatever you enjoy try doing that during your break.
An advance method is doing the break or something fun during your task your completing. For me, since I have multiple monitors, I would have a movie-going or some YouTube happening on another monitor. This is ultra tricky so I recommend what I listed above before attempting this. It takes an incredible amount of focus to stay committed to the task at hand while a distraction is happening. However, if you master this eventually you can be learning a new trait or skill i.e. Udemy while completing your current one. I'll go more in-depth on this in another article.
7. Be Realistic, stop worrying
Be very realistic, this is extremely important. Don’t try to cram a task you know will take a long time into an extremely short amount of time. This was a big mistake of mine. I would set crazy unrealistic goals for myself. I’d try everything in my power to get it done however almost always I fall short. Not until I started breaking down every task into the smallest possible short term goals; I was able to succeed. In all honesty making, impossible goals can be a good thing as well.
For me when I cram the impossible in a short time frame. I noticed I’d get a lot more accomplished than I normally would. I’d often ask myself if I was able to get this much accomplished in a fraction of the time. Why did it take me so much longer before? I would rarely ever complete the full project but I would accomplish double the amount of work needed. So this became an ongoing theme of mine. I’d set crazy dates with so much on my plate; knowing I wouldn’t finish it all so that I can get more done. I still do this to this day. I never give myself too much wiggle room for release and completion dates which can be seen on aviyon.net now.
Find what works for you. If stress is an ongoing theme with you I recommend not setting impossible dates. This takes an extreme amount of discipline, and work ethic especially when the ongoing theme is to push back dates. You have to know and understand why you set these dates in the first place. Almost tricking yourself and challenging yourself each time. Again there's nothing wrong with being in the realm of realism with your goals. It helps keep you sane. As you get better at completing a task; challenge yourself.
8. Set dates create deadlines
I touched on this above but making deadlines is crucial. Making goals and writing tasks on the to-do-list is great. But nearly useless without a completion date. To help fight against procrastination force yourself into making that deadline. For example, someone may enroll in a competition knowing there not prepared, just to force themselves to prep hardcore for that goal. Take a similar approach. You wanna learn animation, plan a project involving animation.
With this method you now have a much stronger reason to complete the task at hand, to learn animation. You're taking those skills and immediately applying it. Now you're less likely to put it off knowing you have a date to release your project
9. Make it known to everyone
This is my favorite because of its made public. On Facebook, aviyon.net and very recently on this platform I make my deadlines known to everyone. Even if no one likes my post or even sees it I couldn’t care less. I'm not bragging, trying to put others down, get likes. I’m simply making my deadlines public to further drive myself into completing that goal. Knowing that people out there know I set a goal to get an ambitious project completed. Forces me to go above and beyond to make sure my work is near perfect.
10. Reward yourself
You did it you completed a Midterm goal, You even completed a long term goal. Take the opportunity to reward yourself. Just don’t go overboard. For me whenever I make a substantial amount of progress I reward myself with a pizza or veggie burger. Sometimes I may go and grab myself a shirt but in some way, I reward myself and make it a mission to not get any of my wants until I deserve it. I’ve haven’t taken a vacation in some time. I can’t even remember the last time. I plan on taking a vacation after I release 8 extremely profitable projects. Then once I take my company public I have something in mind for that as well.
Find what you like and go for it after you make a stride. I don’t reward myself for short term goals. Only for Mid and long term goals. Use my approach and save the awesome rewards for long term goal completion.
BONUS:
11. Aim for perfection…but,
I always aim for perfection but I’ve learned to compromise and become a bit more realistic. Perfection is very difficult. Software development, in general, isn’t perfect initially. Remember Windows back in the 90’s it was a headache. When the initial release happened for Windows 98 I’m sure the program worked perfectly or at least quite close. However as it was placed in real-world environments it shows what was missed, what manifested, and what needed to be improved. No matter what you do or how many team members you have working on the task perfection is a distant dream.
After many years of updates and revisions, Windows has gotten much better. The developers and Engineers had a date and they aimed as close as possible for perfection to meet that date. It took me years to find out fully just how good of a practice this was. For me, I’d always aim for perfection somehow convincing myself and overlooking the fact that the greatest web apps, software, etc never started perfectly. Early editions Facebook was rushed and riddled with errors just like Windows. But they knew they would improve the project over time with help.
A part of the 5 years that kept me from releasing my work was the aim for perfection and error-free work. If perfection was my goal I would have never been able to release anything. Id always finds something that needs improving. If its functional release it. Then improve it as time goes by. I still hit the release date doing this and I can improve much more efficiently with user feedback and real-world testing. So it's okay not having perfect work, it will get better. Stick to the dates and do your best to get it as close to perfection as possible.
Conclusion
These are all the methods I have in my arsenal that has helped me accomplish the impossible. I know you can apply these steps to what you're working on. Read each step carefully, and remember everyone has 24 hours some just choose to spend it differently than others.
