Beating Procrastination for Beginners

How many times in your life have you felt that you are not getting the urge to start learning a subject? How many times have you blamed yourself for not being as serious as your fellow competitors are at studies?

I wanted to share one of my biggest learnings in 2015, which is a solid approach to build new habits and beat procrastination. All thanks to the course titled ‘Learning how to learn from Coursera, I’m at a much better place than before in my academics.

It was in mid-2015 that I enrolled for this wonderful course which takes a scientific approach towards learning. It was really an eye-opener for me as I got introduced to many novel and effective methods of learning. It made me wonder why we were never taught this in school before they tried to teach us anything! My purpose here is not to elaborate on the whole course but rather to share with you one of its biggest takeaways – winning over procrastination.

Habits & Procrastination

Understanding our habits and rewriting them is the first step in fighting procrastination. What is the nature of habits? They are basically energy savers and they help us do something almost automatically. The first step in fighting procrastination is rewriting our habits – replacing bad ones with good ones.

A habit has basically four parts, including habit itself, without which it doesn’t stay. These are:

1. Cue – the stimulus which makes us perform the habit,
2. Routine – the habit itself,
3. Reward – the pleasure of doing it, and
4. Belief – for e.g. “I’ll never be able to do it”, “I have not done before, hence can never be done”

Cue – Process vs. Product

We might have always noticed that when we begin to learn something new or develop a new habit, a few negative feelings arise within us such as those which question the purpose of the subject at hand, playing down the importance and urgency of it. This false temptation nudges us to procrastinate. This initial stage of the cue is where we have to use our willpower, in fact, this is the most important stage where willpower has the greatest effect. The few points below will help:

1. Focus on the process instead of the product
   • Thinking of the product of the activity causes pain deep inside, leading us to procrastinate. For eg. Postponing homework about answering an essay saying it’s too easy and hence can be completed later at the last minute. However, the real reason might be that the answers are not easy and we know this deep inside.
     Here focusing on the process instead of thinking about finishing the answer will really help. Also don’t give importance as to whether it can be completed in the given time or not – starting the activity is the most crucial part
2. Always relax into the flow of work than finishing it.
3. Keep distractions at bay when starting to develop a new habit.
4. Instead of full-scale changes, try overwriting habits or developing new ones.
5. The cue can also be influenced by 1)location 2)time 3)feeling 4) reaction. Find out the one which is affecting negatively and change it. For e.g. if it’s location, try changing the place where the activity is attempted.

Routine – Have a plan

This doesn’t need much explanation. It means we need a plan to create and sustain any new activity so that it becomes a habit. Create weekly task lists for developing new habits or improving on existing ones. One effective way is writing down the tasks for the next day on the previous evening itself as this will allow the mind to ready itself.

Reward – Appreciate yourself

Any new habit we create must be rewarding. It can be as simple as treating oneself a lunch, having a latte, or more important ones like winning a job, getting a degree, etc. Habits are powerful because of the neurological cravings hence it helps to keep a reward if a new habit is to be formed. It will take time before the flow is achieved. Also, delay the rewards until a given task is achieved. It need not mentioned that for achieving anything worthwhile some discipline is required.

Belief – In oneself

This is an important one. Before we set out on developing any new habit we must believe in making it happen. Avoid the common trappings of mind such as it can’t be done now as it was never done before. If you have a community of like-minded friends it helps even further.

Summary – As simple as that

In short, try to keep these few points in mind if you are thinking about creating new habits:

• Be more process-oriented than product-oriented
• Keep plans and reward yourself for each task achieved
• Leisure time for physical activities
• Quitting time – learn when to stop and take a break from the activity
• Always perform the most disliked and difficult things first in the morning.