- Procrastination is defined as the irrational act
of delaying a task or set of tasks.
But it's defined by me as the thing that's ruining my life.
Thank you to Notion for sponsoring a portion of this video.
I procrastinate everything.
I'm always late to things
because I'm procrastinating leaving the house.
I procrastinate showering in the morning,
and then I procrastinate getting out of the shower.
In fact, this video is probably late
because I procrastinated writing this script.
And I'll do anything to avoid work.
I'll tell myself I'm gonna start work at 9:00 a.m. sharp.
And then it turns 9:01, and I think, "I might as well wait
until 10 minutes past nine,
'cause that's a nice round number."
And then suddenly, it's 11:27 p.m.,
and I haven't got any work done.
One time just to avoid work, I decided to make
a spreadsheet that told me what the most efficient purchase
was in Cookie Clicker, which is a game where you press
a button, and you get a cookie.
That's the game.
As you can see, right now, it's Wizard Towers.
So yeah, procrastination has taken over my life,
and it's time to figure out how to beat it.
So I decided to figure out why.
And I bought some books about two years ago,
and then I got around to actually reading those books,
which led me to academic articles,
which led me to blog posts.
And here's what I found.
Part one: why procrastination is bad.
I generally think that people know
why procrastination is bad.
You put off things that are genuinely important to you,
like texting your mum or reading a book
that you've been interested in.
And also things that you aren't as interested in,
like texting your mum or reading a less interesting book.
Maybe you've had to cram for an exam because you didn't
pace out your studying properly or at work you've put off
preparing for... emails?
I have no idea what people do at work.
Anyway, everyone knows that procrastination leads
to people stressing over deadlines,
but that's not the whole story.
There are actually two types
of consequences from procrastination.
And as far as I know, nobody has actually named them.
So I'm just gonna give them my own names.
If they catch on, then I can become the guy who named them?
The first is what I call tangible consequences.
These are the things that come with deadlines.
It's the failed grade if you don't hand in an essay on time
or the upset friend, if you miss your train,
which consequently means you miss their... wedding
for example.
In these cases, there's a direct and negative
consequence that comes with procrastination.
And the closer you get to the actual negative
consequence happening, the more likely it is that panic
and stress take over and suddenly you are able
to be hyper focused and motivated to get the thing done
just in the nick of time.
For me, that means submitting an essay 14 seconds
before the deadline.
I wouldn't recommend.
This means that you can basically live your life
as a high functioning procrastinator.
And maybe that's fine.
I mean, you do get all of your stuff done,
it's just a bit close to the wire.
However, there is a second type of consequence
and this is what I'm gonna call intangible consequences.
Look, I tried to come up with a better name,
but Hank Green said it was a limitation
of the English language, so, what are you gonna do?
Intangible consequences are the consequences
to things that don't have deadlines.
This is exercising regularly or keeping
in touch with people you love.
Both of these things are likely to lead
to a life that's much more fulfilling
and it's a life that I don't even know I'm missing.
Procrastination can eat into all of the possibilities
of joy and happiness that we could be experiencing
and that's something that I don't think
gets talked about enough.
So this is me telling you to think about it.
So if procrastination is that bad, why do we do it?
Part two: why we procrastinate.
Procrastination is a symptom of a psychological phenomenon
called time inconsistency.
We tend to value immediate rewards
over our future consequences.
This means that your present self prefers decisions
that provide instant gratification.
Even when conceptually you understand
that your future self will suffer worse consequences.
Your future self and your present self
are at odds with each other.
Your present self stays up playing video games late
at night because they can't relate
to their future self who needs to deal
with the consequences of a blaring alarm at 6:00 AM.
Your present self keeps putting off that essay that's due
in a month because your future self can panic-write
an essay the night before the deadline.
Your present self can watch YouTube videos
because your future self can just record this voiceover
at 2:00 AM the day before it goes live.
Part three: how to stop procrastinating.
So I've developed what I'm calling
Taha's Five Easy Steps to Defeating Procrastination
based on other people's research, writing,
and experimentation that I'm now summarizing.
Sources are always in the description.
And one of the tools that I've used
to defeat procrastination is Notion,
who are kindly sponsoring this video.
And personally that's very exciting
because Notion is an app that I use every single day.
And I used Notion to build a to-do list system
that incorporated the tips that I learned
while researching this video, like the two minute rule,
which you will learn about later in the video.
And that's the reason why I love Notion.
It's easy to use but it's also flexible.
I find that whenever I use a note taking or to-do list app
or any sort of organizational tool,
after a few weeks I find that the inflexibility
means that it's really hard to continue using it,
but that is completely different in Notion.
It's as simple or complicated as you want it to be.
It's a to-do list app, a note taking app,
a project management app, and everything in between.
To me it's the all in one, everything you need
productivity tool, and best of all,
it is free for personal use.
I used it all the way through university
and I'm still using it right now.
In fact, Melissa, Sabrina, and I use Notion every day to run
answer and progress, and I use it to run my whole life.
It helps me stay organized, run meetings effectively,
and keep track of videos that I wanna make in the future.
It's also my favorite app and I'll tell anyone about it
who will listen, and now I'm getting paid to talk about it
and hopefully I can continue talking about it in videos.
So if you've never tried Notion, you can try it free
by clicking the link in the description.
Anyway, it took me a few minutes to build a
to-do list system that I could use that incorporated
the two minute rule.
And if you're curious about my template,
you can also find that in the description.
So if you're curious about Notion or my template
you can find both things for free in the description.
And now, how to stop procrastinating.
Step one, eat the frog.
Do your most important task first.
The big ugly frog of the day is your most important task.
Getting it done early in the day when you have the energy
will give you the momentum to propel you forward
for the rest of the day.
You'll be crushing it in no time.
I started this process a couple days ago
and I'm already seeing productivity gains.
I can do almost double what I was doing before.
My skin is clearer, I'm no longer stressed,
and I'm getting loads of likes on Twitter.
The only issue is I'm lying.
It didn't work.
Did you really think an Answer in Progress video
would be that simple?
- [Voice From Computer] WE ARE PLAYING SOME AMOGUS.
- [Voice From Computer 2] Welcome to this positive
guided meditation.
♪ Jeffrey Bezos ♪
(keyboard clacking) - The only issue is instead of
getting my most difficult task done early in the day,
I'm just avoiding getting started all together.
I feel guilty about doing any other easier task
because I'm supposed to be eating the frog.
So I ended up doing nothing.
Okay, maybe doing the most important task first
would make me more productive if I wasn't
a professional procrastinator,
but I am a professional procrastinator.
I have a doctorate.
So I need another plan.
Step two, eating the tiny, very delicious frog.
While eating the frog or doing the most important task first
might be an effective strategy for some people,
I'm not some people.
I need help doing the bare minimum.
In a blog post, James Clear of Atomic Habits fame
says, "The friction that causes procrastination
is usually centered around the starting behavior.
Once you get going, it's often less painful
to keep working."
I don't know why I'm reading from the book,
he said it in a blog post.
So here's the plan.
I'm gonna make my frog tiny and delicious.
I'm gonna make the task so small
that getting started becomes almost trivial.
I'm gonna use the two minute rule.
I just have to do the task for two minutes.
No more.
It's 120 seconds.
I spend more time trying to remember how old I am.
Surely I could manage 120 seconds, right?
Am I 12?
And once you get going, you enter a virtuous cycle
of doing the thing, which leads to a sense
of accomplishment, which leads to motivation,
which leads to doing the thing,
which leads to a sense of accomplishment, which leads to-
We're no longer waiting for motivation to strike.
We're generating motivation by doing the thing.
Step three, build a library.
When I was at university, I only had one thing
on my to-do list, which was to get to the library,
because once I was at the library and I was surrounded
by people who are also working, I felt self-conscious
about scrolling through Twitter and not working.
The fact that there were people around me working
forced me to overcome my procrastination
because the uncomfortability of procrastinating
had increased.
So to replicate that post-university,
I've started co-working with friends online.
Co-working.
Step four, the walled garden.
A commitment device is a technique that makes it harder
for you to procrastinate.
You build a series of barriers that prevent you
from falling into the common procrastination traps.
Do you get distracted by your surroundings?
Put on some headphones and listen to lo-fi.
Do you get distracted by your phone?
Destroy it.
Do you find yourself on youtube dot com
watching videos about procrastination instead
of actually doing something productive
just so you feel productive?
Download a website blocker to make it harder
for you to access the websites that get you distracted.
By moving my phone to a different room
and using a website blocker, I was able to prevent myself
from reaching for the tools that make me procrastinate.
Step five, stop working.
"Don't do more today than you can completely recover
from by tomorrow," Greg McKeown.
I found that procrastination meant I spent more time
at my desk spending hours trying to get to work
and a small amount of time in the evening
frantically cramming the work from the day
and no time resting or relaxing or doing any of the stuff
that you're supposed to do.
I started procrastinating my sleep to try and claw
back some of the hours that I would've spent relaxing
in the early hours of the AM, which just meant I was tired,
unmotivated, and miserable the next day.
And then the cycle would continue.
And then I stopped working.
I had a hard cut off at 6:00 PM and I would just stop work.
And this had two effects.
The first one was I stopped procrastinating.
I felt a sense of pressure to get my work done
before 6:00 PM, because I knew afterwards
I wouldn't work anymore.
The second effect was a sense of relief.
I knew I wouldn't punish myself by working
in the evenings to try and cram all of the work
that I should have done in the day.
I ended up happier, healthier, and ultimately
more productive.
Sometimes working isn't about brute forcing
all the tasks that you have to do in the day.
Sometimes it's about pacing yourself,
getting rest, and eating those tiny, delicious frogs.
(soft music)