I heard a small helpful phrase

One attributed to a man who says he has never said it. It was on a small video, so it was more like a passing thought as most things on the internet are now a days. It went a little like this:

There are no right decisions, but once we take them, we must make them right.

After 4 hours of content in a single day, this combination of words got stuck in my head like a subway chewing gum to my hair did 3 years ago.

Like a blow from a fan coming and going, I kept hearing it. Thinking about it was not even difficult as I went through a rather tedious day.

It’s been days since I have been feeling tired and lacking motivation necessary to work with my bottom bolted to a chair for 10 hours, and yet it remained.

My sight is blurry and eyelids heavy, my back arched like a shrimp and my mouth has a bad taste, belly bloated like a plastic bag you are about to punch to scare someone, it remains.

Despite this, that single phrase got me through the entire day, making myself go from inaction to action.

I get that the phrase is more inclined to saying something about taking difficult decisions, but this perspective wasn’t going in.

What went through my brain when hearing it, was the word procrastination .

Beating procrastination is a matter not of taking the right action but of opposing inaction.

Often, we hear many of the things we could do to get through it, anyone could list them. Somebody here on Medium or a thousand people may have written something about it.

I can tell you right now, someone is missing the point. They want you to make the decision of doing something specific, even resting (Pomodoro I’m looking at you), setting the right desktop, ambiance, super coffee, everything. But the one thing that got you here in the first place is knowing exactly what you need to do or knowing that you need to think of something to do and not doing it. So how on earth are they expecting you to do those things?

The phrase I mention in the beginning has the right idea on how to beat it, because it applies to anyone, at any time and at any level of procrastination.

If you want to outpace your will, you only need to decide to do… something. What would that be? Anything, but make sure that it is a conscious decision.

That’s it write it down, screenshot it, share it with friends, it’s that little paragraph above that matters. What comes next is a brief explanation on why this is the way to whatever perverted goal you have in sight (I’m looking at you cat hair collector).

The reason this little paragraph works it’s because it takes care of three things you need, to start moving those flappy excuses of wings you have for arms. Those three things are: awareness, focus and drive.

Awareness

When they speak of it you will often hear it as something called mindfulness, and it’s a synonym, with it being the act of taking a little time of your day to think or meditate your way into being aware of yourself, your surroundings and your current situation.

Don’t get me wrong, meditation is useful, but is not something that people have in their nature to do.

It may sound weird, but meditation is closer to being a midlevel technique than a beginner step.

It’s not in the nature of the procrastinator to do anything, let alone sit for five minutes to think. We can get there, but it will take some time.

On the meantime what you can do is repeat the paragraph above in your head. Think for a brief instance, and I mean seconds, about the closest simplest action you can take towards your task.

This small window of time and thought is the only thing you need to bring awareness into your brain, afterwards it’s only a matter of letting it flow.

Focus

Flow of course has everything to do with focus, and the quicky method we have here allowed us to do that.

You have the simplest/closest action at hand that needs to get done immediately, as soon as the thought ends, you do it. This action works with active conscience so, no matter how dumb the little step you took was, don’t lose the awareness you won a second ago.

As you are ending this action you need to start thinking about the next leap and you repeat. Everything goes well, you should be provoking a sort of snowballing effect that will allow you to enter a flow state.

Drive

Motivation, as much as many speakers would like to make you think is almost impossible to teach. You can produce it yourself, but it’s so different from anyone else’s feeling that it would almost be like asking a person to teach you how to love. Even if you give a perfect explanation, the other person will never get it until they learn how to produce the feeling themselves.

What you can teach a person is how to give yourself a little spark. What is spark? Well spark is that little hint at feeling motivated you have when looking at an inspirational video or a motivational poster.

You can taste it, but it won’t last and at one point you will choke the little flame. But it only chokes itself because the stimuli is external. It’s almost as if you are asking yourself to only do things every time a dog passes in front of you. Sure, it works and it’s adorable, but you can’t depend on it.

Instead, what we can do is again, follow the little paragraph above and remain aware of the conscious next little step we take. Only this time we will use this awareness not for focus but to harvest a spark that will allow us to continue our journey.

If you did the awareness part, then the only thing you need to add here, is a feeling into it. Imagine yourself jumping into action in any way shape or form as you may like, beat a tiger midair in your head if you like. Open your eyes in surprise and puff your chest as if it was trying to reach something, now try tense your body a bit. These last two will help you mix mind and body to recreate an artificial feeling of drive, while at the same time supporting your awareness because of the control you are exerting on your body.

Keep in mind the spark is not everlasting nor does it ignite everlasting fire. This is where everyone fails, they think the feeling lasts but it never does.

You need to start thinking about this spark as if you were an engine. In them, sparks go off every time a piston goes up, you work the same way.

The good part about this is that you now know a way to generate sparks in any situation you can think of.

With these three things combined: awareness, drive and focus, you are in for a big surge in productivity.

The key to all this is that it should remain almost instantaneous. It’s going to take you a lot of trial and error to remember this. But you also need to remember that since this takes seconds, you can try it even a hundred times in a single day without getting tired.

It won’t take you that long don’t worry, but when you get the gist of it, you will be able to handle procrastination like never before. Having this technique tamed will allow you to jump on to whatever guides you may like, if you remember that defeating procrastination is not about following steps or getting a lot of sunlight. It’s about looping a thought process that will push you towards deciding, and no matter which one you take…

You will make it right.

By Robert V.C.

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