How do you force yourself to stop procrastinating?

I stop and have a long hard think about it

Movement seems to help me.

Going for a walk or doing some push-up's raises my energy when it's flagging.

Other than that, adopting a clear vision of your dreams is the best procrastination killer I know of.

Ryan Biddulph

I'll get back to you on that.

good post!

The best thing i have found with this is learning to prioritize...

For one day.. write down each and every thing that you do... on a white board.. or a sheet of paper... (ok.. or notepad)

Then at the end of the day circle the ones that make you money... and make sure those get done every day...

The rest of your list is filler.. it will be a mix of fun stuff you like to do.. and required stuff for long term big pictures... generally this section will takes up most of your day... Try to outsource, delegate or find other methods for this section.. so you will focus on whats producing results for you.. and not wasting your oh.. so precious time

OK, there was like a 100 word post that helped me more than "prioritizing", and "getting physical" somewhere around here.

Those things are helpful, but this tip helped me immensely.

Just do the minimum amount you possibly can. If you have to write some content for your website, atleast go to your backend and log in. Also open up your search engine or word processor.

These motions WILL help you get into the groove and start steaming on with whatever you need to do.

TRY IT RIGHT NOW.

Seriously.

- Dean

Do you have a WRITTEN Plan of Action?

Most don't.

If you have specific goals, with timelines and a step by step process to reach your goals, then you don't encounter procrastination.

Procrastination is the result of a weak goal, a poorly defined goal or a lack of knowing WHY you are even attempting to reach a goal.

Movement, or motivation, comes from wanting the RESULTS of reaching a goal.

What most procrastinators lack (and you may be one of the few who don't) is a step by step plan which clearly shows where you are at and what is left for you to do to reach the goal.

And any given goal is a part and piece of a bigger Life WANT picture.

Write down your steps. Watch procrastination fall to wayside.

gjabiz

The written plan of action is an extremely useful tool.
A bank won't touch a business loan without a thorough business plan, why don't we treat ourselves with the same respect?

Alternate between procrastination, playing games and watching tv

Telling myself this works pretty well...

When I mess around with other crap online I am wasting my life. Any minute spent at my PC not being productive is another minute of my life being wasted.

Wasting time is wasting my life. Keep telling yourself that and you'll start developing more productive habits like not checking your email multiple times a day.

Read the 4 Hour Work Week.

For me, i always seem to do the opposite thing for procrastinating - I will tell myself I'm gonna listen to music first, check my email, and then I will get to what I plan to do. I also set a time limit, like only for 10 mins, or I'm only going to listen to 4 songs. For most people, they would just keep going, but for me for some reason when I'm done, it's out of my system and I am ready to work!!

Again, Procrastination is not a habit, its a bad habit, therefore, ITS A VICE. And if it is a VICE it will not cause you any good. And you dont want that.

Try to have a mindset that why would you do something that wont do any good for you? yeah, its feels good but wait, after feeling good? and realizing that you havnt had done anything at all, you will end up feeling bad.

So, why not, feel bad first, it may be getting up early, run errands, getting little to no sleep, etc, yeah, you feel bad you feel tired, you feel miserable, BUT in the end of the day, thinking of all what youve done during the day. I dont think there will be no reason for you not to SMILE because you know soon you will reap the rewards of your hardship

Better enjoying the rewards if the thing get done, than suffering the consequences of the things undone.

I like to take constant and massive action, even if I'm bored with some repetitive tasks.

Thinking about my future son gives me enough motivation as to not to procrastinate.

A sleeping aid (the night before, or just a GOOD sleep) and a 5 hour energy shot in the morning. *shrugs*

YES, this is a serious answer! =P

A good rest calms the subconscious and then when you get a burst of energy that you MUST do something with ensures that I get things going.

Stop whatever you are doing, take a break(like playing Wow) for one hour and go back on that task you have on hand again. (;

I slap myself in the face.

Wow some great advice on here.

For me procrastination is a flag to some bigger issues...

Ask yourself this question: "Why am I stalling?"
- are you overwhelmed with the task?
-- chunk it down into smaller pieces

- are you afraid of failing/succeeding?
(ie are you sabotaging yourself, so you don't even start)
-- look backwards from the future point of view... what did you do to get past the risk of failure? What does success feel like?

- do you disagree with the task? ie does it feel wrong?
-- redesign the task so it feels right

LOL those are big questions.. could lead to even more procrastinating to get them answered... so proceed with caution.

Ultimately procrastinating is a stupid waste of time. So get up, jump around to break your emotional state.. and get busy. :rolleyes:

Good luck!

J.

Instead of knowing how to stop procrastinating tendency, we should ask ourselves what is the root cause of procrastination...and, in my observation it's
1.lack of appropriate interest or burning desire in the task at hand
2.lack of clear mental picture regarding the outcome of that task
3.lack of necessary skills, knowledge and tools to complete that task
4.lack of clearly identified goals causing you to experience distraction which in turn keeps the task unfinished
5.past experiences of low gains on that particular task subtracts your interest to do
6.You've done it before many times and a sort of boredom has crept in
7.lack of attention and concentration ability to stay 'long' on a particular task untill it's finish
8.No deadlines were set before the task is undertaken causing you to take it carelessly
9.Your own mental habit to put important task at bay and enjoy unimportant task
10. Your urge to satisfy yourself with instant gratification instead of delayed gratification - eg, watching tv, socializing, idle chatting, etc.
11. You're already rich and doing or not doing the task doesn't affects your income much
12. You're poor financially and other good options appeals to you more and you start believing a bird in hand is not good than two in the bush
13.Week internal locus of control, you're subject to external locus of control
14.PC failure, or circumstances on which you've no control
15.You not repeated the task which you have accomplished last time and you run out of discipline - and this resulted in a bigger gulf.

If we take notice of these causes -- I think, controlling procrastination will be easier.

I don't know that you can. There is a really neat article about procrastination in one of the latest New Yorker's (I think an October issue). You may want to check it out.

It seems that many famous people have been procrastinators. Mclellan, during the civil war, screwed up often because of his "Waiting". Check out the article. It is really interesting.

I would have posted this sooner, but, well, you know how it is.

Set up a 'procastinating' day. Do all your procastinating on that special day. I'll set up mine tommorow

I posted the ONLY real, long term cure for procrastination here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/mind-war...stination.html

Trust me: No other method will work in the long term, other than forced accountability which isn't viable for most of us.

I've bought nearly all the popular books on procrastination, and I can tell you ALL of them are BS and don't resolve the underlying issue at hand.

It makes me angry to see people exploiting this serious problem, with rubbish books, courses full of "theory" which won't work in the long term.

You might have some initial success with these "theories", but you will ALWAYS revert back to procrastination unless you resolve the underlying issue.

oneplusone - i like your post on association of pleasure or pain w action or procrastination. gonna do some self hypnosis on that.

lots of good stuff on this thread! shall we compile it into another book on motivation?

when i'm catching myself procrastinating, i do something productive. right away. anything. jot a note, open a editor, shoot off an email, make an offer, call the guy, make a list, chop wood, stare at the hardest problem in my hard drive until an answer comes to me.. seriously, someone in this thread and tom robbins say, never under estimate the power of massive action. well, no massive action exists without being made up of many smaller actions right? so start with some little simple things right away and get that ball rolling!

the other thing i do, is cutivate the zone...

It's quite simple.


first of all you have to eliminate all of your choices down to 1.
look at it like this, if you were driving down the highway and you saw sears, walmart, and target. All three stores had very big signs that said (t-shirts 50% off).

That would confuse the hell out of you because you wouldn't know which route to take...so you would PROCRASTINATE and you would probably end up not picking any store because you couldn't make your mind up.

but if there was only one store then your answer is right there, case freakin closed..

second you have to focus on whats important, and work around that.
lets look at our previous example again. lets say each store held up different signs.

• Walmart-t shirts 50% off
• sears- t shirts 10% off
• target- t shirts 40% off

now the obvious choice would be to go with the store that gives you the most money (and although there are more variables for a real life situation surrounding this example) for the sake of ease we are gonna say walmart is the better choice.

ok the point is, can you see how you were able to make a much clearer decision because you were able to take whats important (which in this case the amount of the discount) and formulate a "QUICK" decison.

Thirdly you must think about the "WHY" ...
This is one of the most important steps towards murdering procrastination...im serious if you conquer this step alone you should be able beat the dog s**t out of procrastination.

The why basically means what will you gain from completing the task that you're procrastinating about.

If the benefit you'll gain is worth it you will subconsciously become motivated to do what you have to do to get the s**t done, plain and simple.

i bet you would procrastinate if i told you i would give you 1 million dollars everytime you completed the task you're procrastinating on right now.

so take some time and think about the benefits you'll gain from doing the task. Hell write it down if you have to.. you just need to know whats in it for you!

you can find out alot more in the cheap little WSO im offering below in my sig.

Take care.
it's ya boy swaggs
aka Richard "i got hustle" jackson
aka pimpin aint easy, but making money is..

I usually have so many projects on the go and deadlines to meet that I simply cannot procrastinate. For example, I have an Internet Marketing presentation to deliver on Tuesday and I have still have to develop all of the slides and handouts for Monday morning for printing.

I have 30 people signed up for the presentation. I'll get it done between now and Monday morning.... I could have worked on it last week but the forcing function of the deadline wasn't close enough.

So I guess I still procrastinate per se but only to the extent I can without hurting my business.

JustinP raises a great point, somewhat along the lines of the Peter Prinicple: Nothing motivates like a deadline.

Deadlines will accomplish what no motivational quote will ever accomplish.

I LOVE deadlines.

#1. Stop watching so much South Park : p....I do it all the time.

There's two aspects to this:

1
Problem: Here's the deal...I think that everyone who's dealt with procrastination has one fatal problem...it's overwhelm. We all try to do to many things at once so we get overwhelmed.

Solution: Only pick out one thing and stick with it...if you do more than that you inevitably fail. It's almost law now days because we have information overload EVERYWHERE.

2
If that doesn't work then there's only one other problem...
Prioritization...for instance if you're going out every night after work or if your at home watching tv or playing video games or just kind of flirting with the idea of doing online business you have to...

1. Commit to your goal.
2. Make it more important than everything and everyone else....this is hard but if your friends, family, and favorite tv shows still love you they'll accept and encourage your goal...if they don't it's decision time...what's more important. If you get left for staying at home two hours after work while you build your business so you can quit your job and make A BUNCH of money in the long run are those really the people you need in your life?

That's all I see holding anyone back.
So

I think the best way is to take up something in your free time that also requires discipline, personally I like to do weights and press ups. I also do trading which requires laser focus so that has driven a lot of discipline into me.

I also think of business as a race and I like to win, I hate losing so I keep pounding away knowing that the competition is hot on my tail and I need to have an edge to stay ahead all the time.

Indeed Chris it is all about discipline. As an example, everyday i have to get a few more backlinks. I just keep the focus..

I think the way you start your day is it important to stop procrastination. I.E if you got enough sleep the night before, got up early and started fresh with a nice breakfast and some fresh air, you're going to be a lot more productive.

If you wake up with a hangover, get up at noon and eat pizza for breakfast, you probably won't get anything done! (i.e you're a student... aah the memories)

Energy is key, if you lack the energy it's really hard to focus.

Well, I think everything we will do starts in our mind so you can stop stop procrastinating by simply controlling your mind.

I have a little break,clear my thoughts then just knuckle down with some uplifting tunes and get it done already!

The next time you get the urge to procrastinate, just put it off

Make goals, schedule and diary for each day.

Think back to the last time you had a very productive business session; In detail.

How were you sitting?
What were you thinking about?
How were you feeling?

Decode exactly how it all was happening.

Have that done? Good. Now replicate it.

Imagine yourself feeling all of those ways and do it again now.
Breath the same. Sit with the same posture. Think in similar ways.

You will find that success in anything tends to always occur under a similar 'posture.'
Replicating that posture(both mentally and physically) can really pick a guy up and get him back off to the races.