Why we procrastinate, and how to beat it….
The cursor was pointed at a number. I looked away, and realized the room was dark. I’ve been checking on our bank account for the past 10 minutes.
I leaned back, not sure how I am going to pay bills.
I stared at the number again. This was our savings account, and not much here. It was just enough for the next few days. My mind was running different scenario. Sell on eBay? Sell on Amazon? Those options I’ve done, and it didn’t do much.
This is when I decided to try another business to add another revenue stream. Not eBay, not Amazon or high stakes currency trading (I have a friend who does it full time, but it’s really hard to do it).
For the past few months, I been studying sales funnel and direct marketing. It was appealing to me, because unlike eBay or Amazon, where you are required to have an inventory, and inventory I got from China through Alibaba, using sales funnel, if you sell information products, you don’t need a huge stock of cash in order to start.
The problem when I first started, I tried to learn everything in order to move forward.
I would learn to Photoshop to make my logo, and then the next thing I know, I’m learning pixels and Facebook advertising, even though, at that time, I don’t have a product to sell.
Isn’t that funny, I’ll learn advertising but I don’t have anything to advertise.
What makes you procrastinate is a huge to do list.
When you look at your to do list, you are overwhelmed of the things that you need to do. Your list could have these:
- Walk the dog
- Grocery
- Learn photoshop
- Learn advertising on Facebook
- Learn YouTube adverstising
By just looking at the , you will be overwhelmed and not even try to do one thing.
And that leads me to the One Thing. This principle of the “One Thing” came from the book, The One Thing. The author advised, go to the extreme and just do one thing in your list. But this one thing is not just an ordinary task, it should be a task that will move you closer to your goal.
Just focusing on one thing will not overwhelm your brain, which an overwhelm brain tries to avoid the any task, and leads to Procrastination.
My mentor would yell at me and say “just address the most pressing problem, the kind of problems when solved, turns your business into a selling machine.”
So I practiced what my mentors call “just in time learning”. It means that if you need a product to sell, learn how to research the market and focus on a profitable niche. Once you’ve done this, go to the next thing. The ultimate goal is to sell and be profitable.
As an entrepreneur, you are going to solve problems. This is a given. The problem with people full of ideas like entrepreneur is that we are always in a learning cycle mode.
What I’ve learned is that when I’m stuck at this learning cycle, it is one way to procrastinate too.
I tell myself “I need to work on my logo” where in reality, the most pressing problem is have your product made so you have a product to sell. I go on learning advertising when in fact, I should be checking if the payment in my website works.
Even if you are not an entrepreneur, you procrastinate in a similar way.
Take this for example. When I was in graduate school, a fellow grad student told me a story about how she studied for the test.
The weekend before the test, she went to wash her car because she didn’t want to open her book. Then after washing her car, she called her mom because she thought “she needed to call her anyway.”
That’s procrastination.
In my work, I caught myself arranging my table because I don’t want to work on the report that I needed to do.
In my business, it was always like this. I procrastinate by doing menial jobs so I can say I did something. For five minutes, I will clean up my desk, and make sure I do it it slow so I kill more time and I know I’m doing something.
I’ve heard students arranging their CD collections just to avoid the most pressing task of studying for the finals.
Remember, don’t mistake movement as progress.
That was my mistake too.
Lately though, I avoided tasks in my business even though it is important. The most pressing problem was knowing that the payment system in my on-line funnel works.
But what did I do? Wrote this blog. Then listen to YouTube for more Tony Robbins motivations (I needed the dose).
Then I came across a lecture from The Great Courses about Outsmart Yourself (that’s the title of the lecture series). You know what the lecturer’s advice was?
To beat procrastination, do nothing for the next 15–20 minutes.
This helped me a lot. Although it doesn’t make a lot of sense, when I practice doing nothing, I usually go straight to the most important task.
What I usually do is I meditate and just listen to my breathing for 15 minutes. Every time I do meditation, my mind transitioned to the task I needed to do. The job becomes easier to do, in my opinion. Then I concentrate more on the task at hand.
Why does it work?
Science explains it this way: if you are under pressure, your over-all tendency is to step away from the pressure.
Pressures could come from studying for an examination, or finishing that report your boss asked you to finish.
To step away from the pressure, you clean-up the car, or you tidy up your desk. These tasks, tidying up your desk, or washing your car, is not overwhelming so you procrastinate by doing this less overwhelming tasks.
Science say, by doing nothing, the pressure of studying for a test is lessen, therefore you will likely study for the test.
I do it in my business tasks too. I don’t do anything before a very important job to finish.
