Anti-Procrastination Strategy - Take charge of your attention!

[Illumination]

I've just blogged on this.

I guess these days there're just too many things that are out to capture our attention. So the whole idea is that we have to learn to block out distractions and focus on the things that really matter.

How do you guys handle distraction? Or putting it in another way, what do you do to take charge of your attention?

[Stephen]

I am currently procrastinating.

[fainaent]

I have found that it's important to find the cause of your procrastination. Often you will be very surprised. For instance, today I needed to put in some articles for my blogs(I still have one more to go, but I've written 5 today). In this case, the 'procrastination' was just a lack of motivation. So I backed things up a bit to look at the bigger picture. I've just created 3 blogs, and I want them to be an unbelievable force for good in this world. Haha. But seriously, I do. I realized that if I don't update every weekday like my plan, I'm not going to get the traffic, and not as many people are going to take a look at my articles, learn, and improve themselves. This gave me motivation. It wasn't procrastination, it was lack of motivation. (By the way, what I did there to help myself has to do with chunking and different perceptual positions... I'm loving these NLP tools!)

Instead of trying to deal with procrastination(the symptom), try and find the real problem. If you're distracted because a football game is on, you have to examine your priorities. If watching the football game is more important to you than 'X', you're just not going to be very successful at 'X' while the game is on.

Just some of my thoughts.

[clementc82]

I think of the things that I want to have in my life and this will be enough to get me going.

[Illumination]

Originally Posted by Stephen

I am currently procrastinating.

why?

[Illumination]

Originally Posted by fainaent

I have found that it's important to find the cause of your procrastination. Often you will be very surprised. For instance, today I needed to put in some articles for my blogs(I still have one more to go, but I've written 5 today). In this case, the 'procrastination' was just a lack of motivation. So I backed things up a bit to look at the bigger picture. I've just created 3 blogs, and I want them to be an unbelievable force for good in this world. Haha. But seriously, I do. I realized that if I don't update every weekday like my plan, I'm not going to get the traffic, and not as many people are going to take a look at my articles, learn, and improve themselves. This gave me motivation. It wasn't procrastination, it was lack of motivation. (By the way, what I did there to help myself has to do with chunking and different perceptual positions... I'm loving these NLP tools!)

Instead of trying to deal with procrastination(the symptom), try and find the real problem. If you're distracted because a football game is on, you have to examine your priorities. If watching the football game is more important to you than 'X', you're just not going to be very successful at 'X' while the game is on.

Just some of my thoughts.

Yea, I agree with you on finding the root causes. The trouble is, sometimes people allow others things to grab so much of their attention and time that they don't even find the underlying problem.

Thus, to me, the first step should be to gain an awareness first. If you're on auto-pilot mode, you wouldn't be able to find the root cause. To gain awareness, you need to eliminate distractions. Only when you've quietened the noise outside of you can you hear the voice inside of you.

cheers.

[Illumination]

Originally Posted by clementc82

I think of the things that I want to have in my life and this will be enough to get me going.

Good for you!

Some people have disempowering beliefs - they think about the things they want to have, and they feel even lousier. And procrastinate again.

[BrettAshlee]

To eliminate procrastination, make sure you start with very clear goals about what you want to achieve and why. Look at the ways in which you might be compromising your values - are there a lot of "shoulds" involved?

Procrastination is a sign that there are conflicting forces at work within us. I agree that it is important to get to the root cause in order to successfully move forward. Here are some helpful questions: What is it about the situation, task, or goal that makes you want to turn away from it? Is it someone else's goal rather than your own? Are you afraid of failing (or succeeding)? Are you simply disinterested? Do you lack clarity on how to what you're trying to do?

If you simply have too much going on to focus on completing your most important tasks, create a do-list and then re-organize it by order of priority rather than by ease of task. Too often we trick ourselves into thinking we can get the "little things" out of the way first, only to later discover that more and more "little things" keep cropping up and preventing us from getting to the important things.

Brett

[Illumination]

Originally Posted by BrettAshlee

To eliminate procrastination, make sure you start with very clear goals about what you want to achieve and why. Look at the ways in which you might be compromising your values - are there a lot of "shoulds" involved?

Agree on this. One of the challenges for many people is deciding on a goal - many people have no idea what they want. It really calls for an inside-out approach - to examine one beliefs and values and then determining the best path. I've also been pondering on how an outside-in approach would work out i.e. you move towards what you seem to be inclined to, and figure things out along the way.

Originally Posted by BrettAshlee

Procrastination is a sign that there are conflicting forces at work within us. I agree that it is important to get to the root cause in order to successfully move forward. Here are some helpful questions: What is it about the situation, task, or goal that makes you want to turn away from it? Is it someone else's goal rather than your own? Are you afraid of failing (or succeeding)? Are you simply disinterested? Do you lack clarity on how to what you're trying to do?

If you simply have too much going on to focus on completing your most important tasks, create a do-list and then re-organize it by order of priority rather than by ease of task. Too often we trick ourselves into thinking we can get the "little things" out of the way first, only to later discover that more and more "little things" keep cropping up and preventing us from getting to the important things.

Brett

I concur - procrastination has many underlying causes, most of the time, with these causes inter-stacked with one another. People get inundated by all the information about the world and themselves that just trying to elucidate everything is akin to walking in knee-deep soft mud.