Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Procrastination remedies, beating procrastination - the ultimate methods compiled with tricks for Time Management
First find what is your purpose in life. You may use Steve Pavlina's method for to find purpose of life at:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/
We have two things in one human body. One is pleasure loving self or caveman brain. The other is rational self or our advanced brain.
Pleasure loving self is more powerful,that's why its sometimes called elephant.
While rational self has limited willpower, so it is called sometimes rider.
Pleasure loving self always looking for pleasure, easy path. Besides it is the caveman brain, So it always tries to save the self as it was in the caveman days. That is, looking for immediate gain,eating, flight or fight in case of danger.
Though as the days go by, our advanced brain or rational self has developed but still our caveman brain remains powerful. So it is the best strategy to start and continue task, in other words beat procrastination, is to take the caveman brain in our side.
Caveman brain only starts a task when it believes that the details of the task is known to you and there is a fare chance of success. However, if there is less chance, if the details with precise script is there, it may be convinced to take the risky path as well.
So to convince the caveman brain, the details of the task should be presented with possibility or availability of resources to be successful should be presented. It is true that it is not always possible to put forward in detail of every minute parts of a task and sometimes the ways come out as the task progresses, atleast 20 percent,that is called critical path, should be provided with minute detail. The critical path includes starting phase and final outcome and in between important parts.
So next time you procrastinate, try to write a dummies guide of how to do the task you are avoiding. If you do so, automatically you will be inspired to start the work.Nice trick. So Write downs the rough steps in a page or notepad.
Why caveman brain requires details or precise script of actions? The ans is that in the caveman era, the primary task of human beings for survival is to find food. Finding food means going to jungle or kill animals. All these entails risk of live as human beings did not have that much weapons or technology. So to safeguard life, if details are not provided, caveman brain thinks it may entail the risk of life as it could not evaluate what would be things. So caveman brain tries to save life by preventing human beings from doing the task that does not have precise details and fair probability of success. For example, in the caveman era, if a person thinks about to hunt an animal but he does not provide details about how he would do so. Thus caveman brain thinks he may just go straight the animal in open hand without any weapon and may loose his life. Thus it tries to save life by making him to procrastinate to start that task, in this case going for a hunt without any precised plan of actions.
So for a goal, different stages and important tasks relevant to those stages should be figured out in the action plan. However, in some cases detail of micro tasks could be found while doing one task or finishing one task. It is ok and tasks could be modified accordingly in the action plan as execution goes on. But the important thing is to have the action plan prepared earlier. Besides the critical tasks should be mentioned with details. In general, 20% tasks constitute critical tasks.
Some other tips and tricks to beat the procrastination are provided below:
Do the task in happy go lucky rough mode. Just do a minimal rough work. In most cases, doing th the work on time with minimalist is ok and far better than doing it well taking a lot of time.
Start small : Find small steps that your pleasure loving self will allow.
If you get an idea, within 5 second put a time to contemplate on it in that given day.
Doing a task for a short time,that is called dash, is often helpful. For example, 2 minutes dash, or 5 minutes dash etc. Sometims quantity may be used as dash. For example, writing one pages every day.
Less but often. It forms a habit and like compounding interest output grows compoundingly withing time. So the life purpose task or very important, remember important not urgent task should be a given a slot every day or every week or every month. It is also called don't break the chain method.
Bind yourself: change the environment so that you are forced to do the task.For example, cutting internet line so that you may not be distracted by browsing internet.
Take out the lure in advance. When it comes close, it is difficult to resist. For example,take out the modem from your desk earlier. If you think that when you sit for writing you would move it, it may be difficult, you might find yourself logging into internet through this modem instead of writing.
Pre commitment: take decision earlier about you would do for a little difficult task.
Time and place - action trigger: for every task make sure to allocate a time and place to do so .
Begin with the least urgent task first.
Make sure your work is left unfinished a little bit so that you could take the lead from in the next time. It may be counter intuitive but psychology says it helps to keep the flow. For example,for a paper, today you have finished writing introduction,then started writing methodology, well don't complete the methodology,just keep a few lines and you start it over from the last part of methodology in the next day .
When you come to your desk, before planning,start doing something important. Then come to planning.
Always have a task prepared for the next.
References for more reading:
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/5-counter-intuitive-productivity-tips
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/outsmarting-yourself-for-success
http://contently.net/2014/08/07/resources/dashing-starting-stopping-3-methods-beating-procrastination/
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/10-best-tricks-of-fooling-myself-to-work/
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/
We have two things in one human body. One is pleasure loving self or caveman brain. The other is rational self or our advanced brain.
Pleasure loving self is more powerful,that's why its sometimes called elephant.
While rational self has limited willpower, so it is called sometimes rider.
Pleasure loving self always looking for pleasure, easy path. Besides it is the caveman brain, So it always tries to save the self as it was in the caveman days. That is, looking for immediate gain,eating, flight or fight in case of danger.
Though as the days go by, our advanced brain or rational self has developed but still our caveman brain remains powerful. So it is the best strategy to start and continue task, in other words beat procrastination, is to take the caveman brain in our side.
Caveman brain only starts a task when it believes that the details of the task is known to you and there is a fare chance of success. However, if there is less chance, if the details with precise script is there, it may be convinced to take the risky path as well.
So to convince the caveman brain, the details of the task should be presented with possibility or availability of resources to be successful should be presented. It is true that it is not always possible to put forward in detail of every minute parts of a task and sometimes the ways come out as the task progresses, atleast 20 percent,that is called critical path, should be provided with minute detail. The critical path includes starting phase and final outcome and in between important parts.
So next time you procrastinate, try to write a dummies guide of how to do the task you are avoiding. If you do so, automatically you will be inspired to start the work.Nice trick. So Write downs the rough steps in a page or notepad.
Why caveman brain requires details or precise script of actions? The ans is that in the caveman era, the primary task of human beings for survival is to find food. Finding food means going to jungle or kill animals. All these entails risk of live as human beings did not have that much weapons or technology. So to safeguard life, if details are not provided, caveman brain thinks it may entail the risk of life as it could not evaluate what would be things. So caveman brain tries to save life by preventing human beings from doing the task that does not have precise details and fair probability of success. For example, in the caveman era, if a person thinks about to hunt an animal but he does not provide details about how he would do so. Thus caveman brain thinks he may just go straight the animal in open hand without any weapon and may loose his life. Thus it tries to save life by making him to procrastinate to start that task, in this case going for a hunt without any precised plan of actions.
So for a goal, different stages and important tasks relevant to those stages should be figured out in the action plan. However, in some cases detail of micro tasks could be found while doing one task or finishing one task. It is ok and tasks could be modified accordingly in the action plan as execution goes on. But the important thing is to have the action plan prepared earlier. Besides the critical tasks should be mentioned with details. In general, 20% tasks constitute critical tasks.
Some other tips and tricks to beat the procrastination are provided below:
Do the task in happy go lucky rough mode. Just do a minimal rough work. In most cases, doing th the work on time with minimalist is ok and far better than doing it well taking a lot of time.
Start small : Find small steps that your pleasure loving self will allow.
If you get an idea, within 5 second put a time to contemplate on it in that given day.
Doing a task for a short time,that is called dash, is often helpful. For example, 2 minutes dash, or 5 minutes dash etc. Sometims quantity may be used as dash. For example, writing one pages every day.
Less but often. It forms a habit and like compounding interest output grows compoundingly withing time. So the life purpose task or very important, remember important not urgent task should be a given a slot every day or every week or every month. It is also called don't break the chain method.
Bind yourself: change the environment so that you are forced to do the task.For example, cutting internet line so that you may not be distracted by browsing internet.
Take out the lure in advance. When it comes close, it is difficult to resist. For example,take out the modem from your desk earlier. If you think that when you sit for writing you would move it, it may be difficult, you might find yourself logging into internet through this modem instead of writing.
Pre commitment: take decision earlier about you would do for a little difficult task.
Time and place - action trigger: for every task make sure to allocate a time and place to do so .
Begin with the least urgent task first.
Make sure your work is left unfinished a little bit so that you could take the lead from in the next time. It may be counter intuitive but psychology says it helps to keep the flow. For example,for a paper, today you have finished writing introduction,then started writing methodology, well don't complete the methodology,just keep a few lines and you start it over from the last part of methodology in the next day .
When you come to your desk, before planning,start doing something important. Then come to planning.
Always have a task prepared for the next.
References for more reading:
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/5-counter-intuitive-productivity-tips
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/outsmarting-yourself-for-success
http://contently.net/2014/08/07/resources/dashing-starting-stopping-3-methods-beating-procrastination/
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/10-best-tricks-of-fooling-myself-to-work/
Labels: management, personal development, procrastination
# posted by Abu Rashid @ 9:49 AM 
