11 – Procrastination

Hello, and Welcome to Episode 11 of the Everyday Confidence podcast from theskillfulmind.com

Welcome to Today’s show, the subject of which is procrastination.

Everyone procrastinates at one time or another, and procrastination is actually one of the biggest enemies of building confidence. If you’ve listened to any of my podcasts in the past, then you’ll understand that one of the most important things I always remind you to do, is to take some form of action every say. And if at all possible, to take that action outside of your comfort zone.

What usually happens of course, is your mind gets sucked into a void of distraction. Whether that distraction is, scrolling through social media, or binge watching Netflix.

Generally speaking, most people get distracted at one time or another. Now, for me, I get distracted just as often as everybody else, but not in what you would assume to be the normal sense. Most people’s understanding of procrastination, is that you do things that generally, are wasting time. Things that aren’t important. But for me, procrastination causes problems because I often do what I consider to be the wrong things, although I don’t think about that at the time. So let me give you an give you an example.

With the podcast, when I’ve decided on a subject for a podcast, my first port of call in the preparation, is to go back and read my old posts, to make sure that my understanding of the subject hasn’t really changed. I’ll probably then jump onto the internet and just check to see if there’s any new, or sometimes even better information. Just so that I can make sure that you’ve got everything you need, to understand the why of the subject, as well as the action you need to take. When what you really need to know, is how you go about doing it.

And so, a lot of my time, I spend on preparation for things that aren’t really that important to you.

So what is procrastination? Well, procrastination fits into a few different categories.

The first one is that sometimes, jobs, or tasks can seem too big. When you think about what you need to do, you sometimes make that particular task, too big, or a little too difficult. And that makes it difficult to start.

So the easy way to negate some of that, is to simply break it down into smaller actions. Into things that you feel you could quite easily do.

The second thing, is to clear away any distractions.

Now for you, that could be something as simple as maybe turning off the TV, or putting your phone on silent. If there are people around you that are making things quite distracting, then you could even go into a separate area. The less distractions you’ve got, the more beneficial it’s going to be for you.

And thirdly, make sure that you get the hardest, or the most difficult job done first. I think it was Mark Twain that said “the first thing you should do every day is to eat your frog”. And basically what he meant by that was, first thing in the morning, you should do the thing that’s most difficult. Or the thing that’s going to take you the most time, or the thing that’s the hardest. Once you’ve done that, everything else you need to do during the day, is going to be much simpler. So start your day by doing the most difficult thing first.

The next is analysis paralysis.

I’m sure you’ve heard of that before. Where you find that you’ve got so many different things to do throughout the day, that it’s difficult to make a decision on where to start. And it ends up sometimes, that you get very little, or even sometimes nothing done.

The way to get around that, is to make a list every morning, or even better the night before, of all the things that you need to do during the day, Then from that list pick, maybe three, or up to five particular items and work on those. Once you’ve got your three, to five most important items, work your way through those from the most important, down to the least important.

And then lastly, set yourself a time limit.

Even if that means you need to set a timer. Set yourself up a timer and give yourself a specific amount of time to work to. Whether for you that’s five minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or whatever suits you. You might find if there’s a clock nearby, or you’ve got a wristwatch, that you can just use that to time yourself. But, having to look at a watch, or a clock can be another distraction.

So what’s my commitment? Well, my commitment to you, is that this podcast, from now on is going to be more practical. As I said before, I spend a lot of time preparing for stuff that you’re not really that interested in any way, and who can blame you? So from now on, I’m going to leave the background and the science of the particular subject, for the blog. So if you need that information, the information will be there. But it doesn’t take up time on the podcast.

For you, for your commitment, what I’d like you to do, is to take on board all these things we’ve discussed. Try them all out. Some might work. Some may well not work, but try them all, see which ones work best for you. Then use them every day.

As usual, the show notes, links and any additional information can be found over on the podcast page. Which is, theskillfulmind.com/podcast/11.

Well that’s it for me today. Use as many, or as few of these ideas as you feel necessary, and until next time, bye for now.

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