so the other day i made a poll in the community tab asking what is the biggest
obstacle you guys face as students and out of the options procrastination money staying
healthy relationships and other with 17 000 votes in 24 hours the most common answer by far was
procrastination with a massive 76 and some of you in the comments even replied all of the above so
i'm sorry for you guys but after seeing those poll results i was like yeah i need to make a video on
procrastination i want to address the single most common problem that you guys are facing
and by the end of this video you should have a far better chance at significantly reducing how
much you procrastinate throughout the day right now i'm one on one coaching dozens of students in
the transform your grades course the entire course is centered around how to drastically improve your
productivity and decrease your procrastination essentially leveling up your studying and your
grades there's a link in the description below to find out more but for this video these are
the strategies that i use if i'm feeling like i want to procrastinate or if i'm feeling like i am
procrastinating and i need to kind of shake myself out of it we all have this incredible mental tool
that we've been honing in for years the tool of self-deception so when we're procrastinating on
youtube for example we'll say to ourselves just one more video right or if we're playing video
games on our phone we'll say just five more minutes right how many times have you told
yourself that because when we're doing something we like doing like procrastinating on our phone
we're getting those little hits of dopamine that keep us addicted and going from getting those
dopamine hits to then going to studying it seems like such a big deal right so then we use this
tool of self-deception that we've been honing for years so instead of saying just five more minutes
when you're procrastinating you turn it around and you say just five more minutes of studying and
suddenly your studying doesn't seem that daunting and this is the concept of the minimum viable
action we often procrastinate because we build up fears and friction relating to our perception of
how difficult an activity will be but all we have to do is commit to the smallest possible action
and that will get the ball rolling so for example if i had to write a 3 000 word assignment
it can feel quite intimidating at first but then i'd just say to myself i'll just write 100 words
right that's it just 100 words and naturally once i had written those 100 words i'd kind of
gotten into the flow of writing so then i'd just continue writing in fact i just recently used
this trick about six weeks ago i'm in vietnam right now and this whole corona situation here
is getting worse and worse so a few weeks ago there was a government lockdown meaning that all
the non-essential shops are closed so gyms bars restaurants that kind of thing they've all been
closed i go to the gym at least five days a week and i've built it into a strong habit i don't skip
gym days i'm pretty good with that but since the gym's closed that habit has kind of been thrown
out the window because instead of going to the gym i had to kind of work out at home which i'll be
honest with you i don't particularly like working out at home so i use the concept of minimum viable
action to kind of push me into making that first step so i said to myself okay just 10 press-ups
that's it and you know 10 press-ups are pretty easy only takes about 15 seconds but once i
did those 10 press-ups then i suddenly didn't find exercising at home that bad so i continued
for another 20 or 30 minutes and this trick is particularly useful for when you're in the process
of building up new habits so that was a few weeks ago i was really unmotivated when it
came to working out at home but now that i've been exercising at home every day for the last 30 days
and i've not skipped a single day it just took that initial push at the beginning to build up
that momentum and now that that habit is formed it's really easy now in fact i actually made a
whole video last month on what i do to stay productive when i feel unmotivated you can
click up here on the pop-up banner above to watch it and i remember reading months ago now maybe
a year ago or maybe more there was a research study that tried to look at procrastination
and how it manifests in people's brains so how procrastination affects the brain's activity and
feelings and the study showed that the level of anxiety is really high at the stage where
in your mind you're debating whether or not you should continue to procrastinate
on whether or not you should get to work but then once the participants made that decision to stop
procrastinating and start working their anxiety levels dropped significantly to the point where
it almost disappeared so using the concept of minimum variable action is one of the main
methods i use to overcome procrastination but now let's go over six other actionable steps to train
yourself to fight against procrastination step one be aware of when you're procrastinating this is
super super super important in order to fix a problem you first need to realize that you
have a problem in the first place right it's really easy for us to procrastinate for a long
time without even realizing that we're actually procrastinating because we're so preoccupied in
the activity that we're procrastinating with so as soon as you realize that you're procrastinating
you need to take a clear actionable step and stand up from your desk for a minute to break the cycle
and kind of jolt you out of this mental state of procrastination step two be aware of your emotions
try to look at your feelings like you're observing yourself from outside so it's interesting because
what you'll realize with procrastination is that it's basically just a fear and procrastination
comes as a result of your body triggering a fight or flight response so over millions of years our
brain has kind of programmed to avoid potential danger and ensure survival it still thinks we live
in tribes where being good enough to be part of the tribe was essential for survival furthermore
our brain doesn't distinguish between what's real danger and what's unrealistic danger it's why
many of us have phobias of spiders even spiders that are completely harmless or many of us have
a fear of flying even though traveling by plane is the safest form of transport they're in many ways
irrational fears because our brain is still programmed for survival we have the same
fears when it comes to procrastination if we feel like we're doing a bad job with a complex task it
triggers a kind of fight or flight response where our brain is trying to keep us safe so if you're
facing a task that you're dreading for example writing a 5000 word assignment or revising for
an upcoming exam subconsciously you might fear the task is too difficult and that you might fail
and this triggers the emotional response of fight or flight in which your brain naturally
chooses flight which by law of survival means you try to avoid it at all costs
this results in procrastination so you really need to be aware of this whole process and the
emotions that you're feeling at the very point that you're procrastinating step 3 be aware of
your inner dialogue start to pay attention to the excuses you give yourself when you need to study
but you're trying to find reasons not to so in your mind you're trying to keep procrastinating
our brain is really good at tricking us into kind of manipulating us into doing something that will
benefit us in the very short term but that is very damaging in the long term so for example
when your alarm goes off but you don't want to wake up yet so you hit the snooze button
and before you hit that snooze button you weigh up the pros and cons in your head
and even though deep down you know that you should wake up straight away somehow your brain kind of
tricks you into hitting the snooze button and continue sleeping we need to be aware of this
and realize that the excuses that we're telling ourselves are exactly that just excuses step four
remember that procrastination is a choice just because your brain is telling you to procrastinate
it doesn't mean that you have to procrastinate so being able to override what you're thinking is an
incredibly powerful thing to do when your brain is telling you to do one thing but you know that
it's not the right thing to do so you don't do it it's incredibly liberating it's why having an
ultra cold shower in the morning is so popular in the personal development space because it trains
your body to override what your brain is telling it so your brain is telling you not to have a cold
shower it's saying that you should turn the hot water on and be comfortable right but your body
overrides those thoughts and you do it anyway step 5 break the task down break up the tasks
that you need to do into smaller steps to make it less overwhelming so for example i mentioned
at the beginning of the video taking advantage of the concept of minimum viable action which takes
away a lot of that fear and anxiety that is often the underlying cause of procrastination so instead
of saying i need to write a 5000 word assignment instead you can break it down into saying i need
to write 500 words for 10 days it's very likely that on the first day that you write 500 words
you'll catch that momentum and you'll continue writing a lot more than that your main goal here
should be to make it as easy as possible to get started so the task doesn't feel that intimidating
anymore step six start and keep going the hardest part to breaking the cycle of procrastination is
to start the tasks that you need to do right so once you've started that task it suddenly won't
feel as overwhelming so once you've started you need to keep going and there are multiple
ways that you can do this so firstly now this is fairly obvious remove all distractions around you
turn your phone off put it in another room or use your phone productively by downloading an
app like focus to do that will once you start the timer there's a feature that will lock your phone
so you can't procrastinate on it set yourself a rigid study plan so you know exactly what needs
to be done each day or set yourself two or three goals that you need to achieve so being able to
beat procrastination is an incredibly liberating feeling when you have the power and control of
your state of mind so you're no longer slaves to the destructive habits that are damaging you
long term it's an incredibly empowering mindset to have and a few weeks ago i made a video on how i
recovered when i lost all motivation you can click on the video on the screen alternatively i made
a video on how i stay productive when i'm feeling unmotivated again click on the video on the screen
both videos have similar titles but they're both very different there's some really helpful
practical strategies on what i did to pick myself up from the productivity
slump i was experiencing so whichever one you choose i'll see you over there