all right let's be honest is there
something else you're supposed to be
doing right now give a paper due in 10
hours
is there a stinky pile of laundry slowly
inching its way across your bedroom
floor you should be doing those things
but instead you're here listening to me
lecture you on YouTube wait wait wait
wait wait don't go away just yet the
next five minutes will be the most
productive bit of procrastination you
have done all day and you're not the
only one procrastinating thanks to a
suggestion by one of our viewers today's
episode of well cast is going to bring
you a three-step program to wrangle your
monster of procrastination into
submission about 20% of the population
identifies themselves as chronic
procrastinators people who constantly
put off the things that they really need
to do and that is because
procrastination is about lying to
yourself you know telling yourself I'll
have plenty of time to finish that paper
tomorrow when you know you are way
behind in a recent study two groups of
university students were assigned to
write three papers in three weeks group
a was given the opportunity to turn in
all three papers in at any point during
those three weeks
Group B on the other hand had strict
weekly deadlines for each paper
ultimately the ones who did the best on
the papers were the ones given the
strict deadlines Group A the students
who had to pick their own deadlines and
they did pretty poorly clearly humans
are not the best at regulating
themselves so when it comes to
procrastination you have to trick
yourself into getting the job done and
this brings us to our well-cast 3-step
method for stopping procrastination
please pause and print out your
worksheet at watch well cast calm okay
are you ready
step 1 eat an elephant hey how do you
eat an elephant one bite at a time look
what I'm saying is you need time to
digest or you're gonna make yourself
sick reward yourself for getting through
parts of the project rather than waiting
to reward yourself after the whole thing
is over
okay procrastinator think about
that one project that you really need to
get done but calm down instead of
letting it overwhelm you organize that
project into small bite-sized manageable
segments think about what needs to get
done and write down what you're going to
be doing to tackle this project hour by
hour and make it specific by breaking
down this giant project into smaller
tasks this elephant will become a lot
less daunting step two pick out the
itsy-bitsy goblins instead of going for
the whole dragon the hardest part about
starting any project is always starting
the project a good way to get around
this is to start a project off with the
tasks you like the best listen when you
do something that you like your brain
releases dopamine which makes you happy
maybe it's decorating the cover of a
report or writing a snappy intro into an
otherwise incredibly boring paper step
three are the siren songs seriously this
step is straight out of Homer's epic
poem The Odyssey in the Odyssey our
protagonist Ulysses is trying to get
home unfortunately this requires
maneuvering through a straight of water
where sailors are often lured onto the
rocks by creatures called sirens instead
of giving up
Ulysses instructs his crew to tie him to
the mast of his ship and for all of them
to plug their ears no matter how much he
yells and screams to head towards the
beautiful sirens the sailors must keep
on track we're not saying that you need
to actually tie yourself up to anything
but you should plan to clear any
distractions that will hamper your
ability to procrastinate later for
example if you're a sucker for Facebook
or online video games have your parents
or your roommates change the internet
password to keep you on track for
studying the less temptations you give
into or have the ability to give in to
the better you'll be at a Seng that exam
okay kiddos let's recap the best way to
get around procrastination is to trick
yourself into doing the work it's true
though we recommend that you do this in
one of three ways number one breaking
your tasks into segments in other words
you go ahead to eat that elephant
number two start with the most enjoyable
part of the project go for those
itsy-bitsy goblins and number three
avoid that siren song clear out those
distractions so you can get the job done
at these tips helped leave us a message
below or email us at watch will cast
calm tweet us at watch webcast email us
at watch well-cast at gmail.com or leave
a comment down below we'll see you next
time
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