- Hey, what is up guys?
And welcome to the final video
in our procrastination miniseries.
Over the course of the past couple of videos,
we have dug into the science behind procrastination,
talked about what you can do step-by-step
to stop procrastinating when you find yourself doing it
in the moment and that leaves us with one final question
which is, if you are a chronic procrastinator,
if you find yourself putting things off again and again,
how do you stop that process,
how do you stop that cycle,
and this was really the question
that led me to do this series in the first place,
because as I alluded to in the previous video,
I have been a chronic procrastinator for quite some time.
In fact, every video I put out
on this YouTube channel over the past three
or four years has always been done kind of last minute,
and this honestly goes back even further
than my YouTube career.
It goes back into high school and middle school.
I was the kid who'd come to school at 6 a.m.
the day homework was due
and I would do it in the cafeteria before school started,
and I was always proud of this
and I think that's sort
of built the foundation for my chronic procrastination later
in life, so I went, I dug into the reasons
for my own procrastination
and I ended up finding some common themes
that I think a lot of you are going to identify with
which is gonna form kind of the meat of most of this video,
and then we're gonna get into one final tip
that I think everyone needs
to implement no matter what the specific causes
are that they are dealing with,
but the first thing that I want to mention here
is that I think self awareness
is a hugely important aspect in becoming less
of a procrastinator, because everyone
has particular reasons for why they tend to put things off.
Yes, in the science video,
we talked about some of the most common causes
and I think those are gonna be
kind of universal across the board,
but everyone has their own specific demons,
everyone has something that causes them to put things off
and that's gonna affect them more
than it might affect someone else.
So before digging into my reasons for procrastination,
which I do think a lot of you are going to identify with,
I just wanna put this out there.
Observe your own behavior,
observe the decisions you make and why you make them,
both emotional short-term decisions
but also long-term decisions as well.
Once you get into the habit of doing this,
you can start to identify some
of the underlying causes for why you do things
that you don't want to do,
such as procrastinating on your work.
So as I mentioned, I'm gonna go over four
big causes for my own procrastination in this video,
starting with the first one which
is that I am often overwhelmed with everything
that I have to do, and this causes me
to basically become paralyzed.
I have this analysis paralysis
because I'm aware of the huge amount
of things on my plate, all the projects
that are currently going on,
and it makes it very difficult
to focus in on the one task I need to do,
but of course to get over procrastination,
that is exactly what I need to do,
I need to basically put everything out
of my mind except for the one thing
that needs to be focused on at this moment,
and to drive that point home,
I wanna share one of my favorite quotes
from the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
"Do not let the panorama of your life oppress you.
"Do not dwell on all the various troubles
"which may have occurred in the past
"or may occur in the future.
"Just ask yourself in each instance of the present,
"what is there in this work
"which I cannot endure or support?
"You'll be ashamed to make any such confession.
"Then remind yourself that it
"is neither the future nor the past which weighs on you,
"but always the present,
"and the present burden reduces if only you can isolate it
"and accuse your mind of weakness
"if it cannot hold against something thus stripped bare."
And we let the sum total of everything
that we need to do occupy our attention,
then the weight of it all can become unbearable
and that's how we get paralyzed,
that's how we put things off,
so by sitting down and getting clear on exactly what needs
to be done in the present moment,
maybe by writing it down on a piece of paper
and putting everything out of our attention except
that one thing, we can easily move forward
because in almost all instances,
if you get clear enough,
if you make it actionable enough,
it's easy to do, or at least the path is clear.
Secondly, I need to let go of the belief
that procrastination is actually a good thing,
and I think this is something that is not unique to me.
In fact, in the book A Mind for Numbers
by Barbara Oakley she talks about how this
is something that can become a pattern of behavior.
You can start to almost brag about how you're
able to get things done even though you procrastinated.
And in my case, I start
to attribute positive aspects to the act
of procrastination itself,
such as that I work better under pressure,
the time pressure of a deadline
actually makes me more creative,
but what I believe is actually happening
is that I have set lower standards
for myself than I actually have the potential to achieve.
I have been procrastinating for so long
that what I set out to achieve every single time
is something that is achievable by a procrastinator,
by somebody doing things at the absolute last moment,
and if I can get over that belief,
I would be able to achieve so much more,
so if you're like me, if you tend
to make these justifications,
and you tend to brag about how your procrastination
is actually a good thing,
quote unquote, then every time you
have to put something off a little bit,
every time you have to compromise on your vision
because of a deadline, realize
that that is a product of you procrastinating
and far from procrastination being an asset in this case,
it was actually a hindrance,
it caused you to compromise on your original vision,
or what you wanted to achieve.
All right, big issue number three from you which is the fact
that some aspects of my work just aren't fulfilling
and they aren't fun, and that also causes procrastination,
and I think this may be
one of the biggest problems for a lot
of you guys out there as well.
Some of your work just is not fun.
You don't want to do it.
Now, as I mentioned in the first video in the series,
a lot of people are gonna say,
well, if that's the case,
you need to drop your work and go follow your passion man,
find work that you want to do
that gets you out of bed in the morning,
and the fact of the matter
is that no matter what you're doing,
there's always going to be aspects
of your work that aren't fun.
There is always gonna be little tasks
that you don't really want to do,
so instead of focusing on those tasks
and the fact that they aren't that fulfilling,
I think that you need to focus on your identity.
This is something that I think about a lot.
Instead of telling myself
that I really don't wanna do this task and fixating on that,
I fixate instead on the fact
that I want be known as a hard-working person,
and like the author James Clear talks about
in his excellent book Atomic Habits,
every action you take is essentially a vote
for your identity, so when you fixate on your identity,
it actually influences the actions you're going to take.
It's kind of a two-way street.
That leaves us with our fourth
and final problem which for me I think is the biggest one
and it's the problem of perfectionism.
One of the biggest reasons
that I find it difficult to start my work
is that I have this overarching believe
that it has to be absolutely perfect from the start,
and even though in past videos
I have recommended getting in making a mess,
going with that terrible first draft idea,
I have trouble actually doing this.
Now, there are a lot of different reasons for perfectionism
and in fact, I've even done an entire video on perfectionism
which you may want to watch after this one,
but for me, I think the biggest influence is the fact
that my previous body of work has set certain expectations
or at least I believe that it has.
The fact that for the past four years
I've been putting out videos
that I've done well that people
have found useful makes me feel
like everything I put out in the future essentially has
to be the be-all end-all resource on that topic.
It has to be supremely helpful,
and this is honestly a pretty egocentric view, right?
I'm just one person among billions on
a speck floating through space,
so every piece of work I put out can't be
the most perfect thing ever,
but there is this internal belief that it has to be,
and you might have this problem as well.
If you've gotten good grades in the past,
or you've gotten a lot of great feedback from your boss,
maybe you feel like everything you do going forward has
to be absolutely perfect,
and I want to stress that this perspective
isn't completely useless,
but it's an editor's perspective
and it's a terrible perspective
to have when you go into the creation process at the start.
When you're thinking like an editor,
you can't create very well.
When you're fixated on what other people are going to think
and how your work is going to be judged,
you can't be creative.
You can't make that mess
that's important for just getting things started.
And at least for me, this relates very heavily
back to my second problem
which was sort of bragging about procrastination,
feeling like it was almost a superpower of mine,
because it would cause me to delay the start
of my work until right before the deadline,
at which point of course there is no time to first make
that mess and then go back and refine it later,
so for me at least, the solution here is twofold.
Number one, let go of that perfectionist mindset
at least in the beginning
of the process so I can actually make that mess
and get those thoughts out on that piece of paper
and number two, start work well in advance.
Maybe even use mini deadlines to facilitate this.
That way, there actually is time for refinements.
All right, so those are the four big issues that
at least for me cause chronic procrastination
and hopefully you've identified with
at least one of those along with my suggestions for
how to start improving upon it.
But in addition to those,
I do wanna give you one final suggestion
which I think is going to be universally helpful
for anybody watching this video
and struggling with procrastination
and it's to set up your environment
in accordance with the 20 second rule.
This is a concept from
Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage
and the gist of this concept
is that you want to take anything
that you want to do less often
and increase the friction required to start doing it,
so that it takes more than 20 seconds to start doing,
and of course this 20 second figure
is more illustrative than anything.
It's not based some scientific principle,
so if something takes less than 20 seconds
or more than 20 seconds,
that's fine, but the basic idea here is you
want to set up your environment
so that it's more inconvenient to go play video games,
just go check stats, like I have a problem with doing,
and so it's less inconvenient to start doing your work,
and I think this is very important for anyone
to keep in mind, but it's especially important
for chronic procrastinators
is because you can aspire to embody the identity
of a hard-working person.
You can aspire to be less of a perfectionist,
but that doesn't happen overnight.
No big change does.
And when you are in the process
of making a big change in your life,
you need to set up systems that keep you on track,
almost like training wheels,
so install a website blocker on your computer
or disconnect the Internet when you need to do your work
or make an entirely separate user account
that has nothing but your work programs
and websites available on it.
Put your video games in inconvenient places.
Basically do whatever it takes
to make procrastination
as inconvenient as possible
so you can start working on becoming less
of a chronic procrastinator.
Do that and then start working in earnest on
at least one of the issues we've talked about in this video
and you will be well on your way to becoming
the kind of person who does not put things off.
Now, one thing that a lot
of people tend to procrastinate on
to their detriment is securing their online lives.
Too many people I know use
the same passwords across multiple accounts,
they don't use two factor authentication,
and they do all kinds of other things
that could open them up to potentially getting hacked
or having their online accounts compromised.
And as more and more of
our livelihoods become dependent on online systems,
you can't afford to be one of those procrastinators.
Fortunately, one of the most important steps
to becoming secure which
is having a strong unique password on every site
that you log into is also
one of the easiest if you use a tool like Dashlane.
Dashlane is an incredibly well-designed password manager
that gives you a streamlined way to secure your online life
and make sure it's hardened against hackers,
corporate data breaches, and online phishing scams.
Their app, which you could use across
all major platforms including Windows,
Mac OS, Android, and iOS,
automatically generates strong
and unique passwords for all of your online accounts.
All this data is then stored in a secure user account
that is protected by a patented security architecture,
which encrypts all your data
and make sure that you are
the only person that can access it.
And aside from offering you better security,
Dashlane can also save you a ton of time as well,
because once you have your user data in their account,
it can automatically fill in login forms
and even log you into most sites
on the Internet automatically,
so if you want to start improving your online security today
and start saving time as well,
then head over to Dashlane.com/collegeinfogeek
which you will find in the description
down below and sign up.
And if you'd like to save a bit
of money on their premium subscription
which gets you extra features
like a VPN and secure file storage,
then use the code collegeinfogeek
at checkout to get 10% off of that subscription.
As always, I wanna give a big thanks
to Dashlane for sponsoring this video
and being a big supporter of my channel
and thank you as well for watching.
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Thanks for watching and I will see you
in the next one, goodbye!