Ultimate Guide for Overcoming Procrastination

Overcoming procrastination is one of my dearest subjects. If done correctly, it helps you pick up from the failure you encountered and helps you live more happily. When successfully done, you will at the end of the each day for sure breathe easier. Read the first two parts How to overcome Procrastination and Pros and Cons of Procrastination, then get ready, this time I’ve prepared The Ultimate Guide to Overcoming Procrastination.

Step 1: Realizing you need to change

You are here now. Good, because let me tell you something: realizing you need change is always the first step. Not that there has to be something wrong with you for things to change! I mean, look at the world. Everything’s always changing anyway. That’s the nature of it. What’s really cool is that you get to decide what you want to change into.

If you keep waiting for a miracle then you might as well get comfortable because it won’t just drop from the sky.

Set in your mind a long term goal. See yourself in the future, but not in a specific situation. Just visualize you being happy, whatever the circumstances. You see, the thing is nobody knows what circumstances await us. So that’s what I think is best: not to expect life to give us exactly what we want. More like, expect life to give us what’s best for us. And then we just give in.

Let’s review the process upside down. After seeing yourself “in the future”, try to let it go. The image was created by you and then saved in a file to be later forgotten. Work your way backwards in order to find out how on Earth you’ll get there. Remember, at this point, it may be possible that you don’t even know exactly where “there” may be.

Step 2: What are you waiting for? Do it!

Next step: do it. Listen to Shia, he sure knows about this.

There’s really no secret here. At this stage of the game, it will all depend on you. You either do it or you don’t (yeah, “there is no try”, I know). In my case, I just had to realize that I had to be really strong after deciding to do something. Then, I used that strength to actually make myself do it. 

Imagine there are two people inside you. One keeps saying NO and coming up with excuses. Let’s call him Grumpy. Grumpy doesn’t want to get out of bed. Grumpy is always comparing you with other people, making you feel less than them. Grumpy loves complaining about how life is just so damn unfair. Do these things sound familiar?

However, the story does not end here. There is someone else who comes on stage now. This one is a bit like Shia, back there. He yells at you, yes, but he sure gets you out of bed! Shia is the one who actually pushes you when you’re standing on the edge of the cliff before taking the best dive of your life. Whenever you don’t dare to do it, Shia’s there to push you. So let the pushing begin!

In the same manner, the 30 Day Challenge also helped to nail some cool specific goals. (If you want to know more about this, here is my post about the challenge).

When overcoming procrastination becomes addiction

Overcoming procrastination then becomes a sort of addiction. The more things I did, the easier it was to get my butt off the couch and go and do more things. Get it? It’s like a vicious circle but instead of non-healthy habits, you gain better ones.

This is how I got to do things like giving away my TV subscription to avoid the temptation. It’s like when you get on a diet: you throw away the junk food so the only kind of food you have at home, and therefore the only kind you eat, is healthy food.

And, to end, a tiny and last piece of advice: just accept the present. Changing altogether is about stages. If you enjoy each one of them, you’ll be doing exactly what you’re supposed to: living.

Want to read more advices from an experienced Fail Coach? Then browse through our category “Life Coaching” and take a day off, because you’ll find plenty of interesting reading material.