What is it that you'd like to achieve
that you find yourself just continually putting off?
If you're like me, you've done this all the time
and maybe you even wound up on this video
because you should be getting work done
and you're here
mindlessly wandering through YouTube.
That is something I've done,
it's something we've all done --
don't beat yourself up
because by the end of this video
I want to help you start doing that thing.
You will feel much better if you do
but in order to do that we gotta step back
and understand where procrastination comes from.
There's three psychological triggers
that account for ninety-five percent
of the procrastination that I see
and when we turn those triggers off
we get the thing done and we get what we want
and we achieve our goal.
So let's go through them one by one.
The first one is a lack of clarity.
You get a thesis paper, you told the right thesis,
you have no idea where to begin so you don't.
For this one, the best way to deal with it
is to set a concrete daily deadline
and the most important word here is daily.
When I was making these videos,
I set a goal at the beginning of the year
to do a video a week --
really smart goal, happy that I did it
but what I found was that i started waiting
to Saturday and Sunday to get everything done
before the Monday release.
What has worked much better for me
is setting daily goals so I know that Monday,
I have to have my topic picked.
Tuesday, I need to have
a couple of headlines written.
Wednesday, I have to have an outline.
And what often happens is that
I go in on Monday, I pick my topic,
and I just feel like writing more
and i get so much done
and I'm done in the first half of the week --
maybe I'll even film this beforehand.
Setting these daily deadlines
keeps you moving on a daily basis
and it often gets you running faster
than you would have if you just wait
to the end of the week or the month
to get something done.
So think of a concrete thing
that you can do towards your goal today --
if its fitness, maybe the particular workout regimen;
if it's writing which is something i've tried,
set a word count --
whatever it is concrete goal
that you will do at the end of this video
which bring me to the second point
which is overwhelm.
If you're like a lot of people,
you started thinking these grand things
that you're going to get done --
you're going to write three pages today,
you're going to go run four miles,
and when I said do it at the end of this video,
you're, like, "No way, not about to start that."
Make it smaller.
Make it to the point where you can actually
turn off Youtube and do it at the end of this video.
So if it's writing, make it fifty words, right?
If it's some sort of fitness thing,
make it do 10 push-ups.
If you're really struggling to get started,
you want to make this habit as small as possible.
This comes from something
that is called tiny habits, you can research it,
but yeah, I believe it's out of Stanford University
and it works incredibly well
because what researchers found is that
the hardest thing in starting a habit
is just that -- it's in starting it.
Once we've gotten it going,
we often want to continue
so we do one lap around our block and I'm, like,
"You know what? I'll just do a second."
and a third and a fourth and before you know it
you've run a full mile when you only set out
to run one lap around your block.
So think of that habit, make it concrete,
but make it very, very tiny.
I told you mine, for this,
or sometimes just picking a topic for a video,
think of something you can do at the end of this
that you can actually get done
and then of course the third thing
because I do want you to do this
at the end of this video,
I'm going to make you turn off Youtube.
If you follow this right,
the third thing is to incentivize yourself.
One of the biggest problems with procrastination
is that there's delayed gratification.
When you want to do a thesis paper,
we don't get the A,
we don't graduate in for another six months
so why do work today?
What you need to do,
because we are all animals and
when you're trying to train an animal
you need to give him the prize right away,
is to set it up so that you get gratification
as you're doing the hard thing.
So in my case I'm filming this video right now.
I'm hungry and I'm not allowed to eat
until I finish doing this video.
That is going to make me want to get it done.
In fact, that's why I'm standing here right now
and not wait until tomorrow or the day after.
Whatever it is,
even for you it could be coming back to Youtube
and watching more videos,
but set that one thing that you're going to do
and don't give yourself the gratification
of something that you'd like
until you complete that tiny habit.
I know what this is all going to sound like.
It's like, "Alright I'll go do one push up right now
then come back to Youtube,"
but you will be shocked.
You will implement these things in your life.
You will start moving on a daily basis
towards the things that you need to do
and oftentimes, once you've gotten started,
the momentum just keeps going
and going and going.
One quick story and then i'll let you guys off
to go and actually do that thing.
I had a student in one of our programs.
In addition to learning charisma,
he's been working on creating a business
and he wants to do it in mobile apps
so I asked him,
"Okay, how are you going to do this?
What have you been doing?" he says,
"I spent hours a day on researching on Youtube.
I'm doing other apps," and I said, "No, no, no.
What is it that you're doing on a daily basis
to get there?" then he said, "On research."
"No, how many lines of code are you writing?"
The answer as you can guess was zero.
So you got to pick a metric here
that is going to take you towards your goal.
If you're trying to get better with fitness,
you don't watch videos on fitness.
If you're trying to get better with charisma,
as much as I want you guys on the channel,
don't watch videos on charisma.
Only go out and set a goal to practice it.
So right now what I would love you guys to do
is click Subscribe to this channel
so you can check us out later
and get the heck out of here.
Don't click on any of the sidebar things,
don't click on any of the after-things,
Youtube is designed to never let you go.
Get out, go do that thing.
If you want to set your incentive
for after this video to come back
and watch a YouTube video, great.
If you want to set the incentive
to go eat a cheat meal, great.
But do that thing.
I hope to god this is the video that least
have been watching it in my entire channel
and I hope that you guys get started
doing the thing that you've been procrastinating.
I hope this helps.
I look forward to see you guys
in the next video.