Top 5 Strategies for Overcoming Procrastination from Brian Tracy’s “Eat That Frog
I recently read this small yet effectively good book on procrastination. Although many things suggested in it take time to implement and get used to, these five things can be copied quickly. With ever-increasing distractions, I found this book to be the best recent read.
With the increasing number of things that can keep us distracted, like mobile phones, push notifications, TV, friends( yeah), work and commute, it has become effortless to postpone tasks until the end. But with some proper planning and techniques, we won't need to do that.
These are the five things I learned from Eat Your Frog that can be quickly implemented in day-to-day life.
Learn to say NO!
Very simple yet the most challenging thing to do.
Living 23 years of my life has taught me one crucial thing; you can't have it all.
From experience and reading, I learned you could juggle three tasks at any time. More than that, and something gets fucked up. Your relationships, Health, Work, Sleep, and Mental Peace.
The ability to say NO comes to the rescue only if you know how to use it.
Examples: Let's take those three things: work, a workout and a side hustle.
A friend calls for a hangout, but your priority is a side hustle. Saying yes will fuck up your side hustle.
Mom called, and you are at work; if you don’t complete the task at hand and start talking, your work will fuck up.
You’re invited to a party. You go and see all your favourite snacks. Eat them, and it will fuck up your workout/weight loss.
You have to focus on your priorities, or Else you'll always say yes to other things and procrastinate on your priorities.
Tracking goals
It's a simple one. Go to google sheets—in the first column, your priorities and, subsequently, the number of days.
I have created one which you can use.
Print it from your home/office printer and track it every day. Make sure to add at most three major tasks. You can add a few minor tasks, such as eating fruit every day. Tick it when done and put a big red cross when failed.
Tracking pushes you not to break that streak. A big red cross will want you to avoid it.
I track things like reading, writing, eating fruit, workout, call family/friends.
Get serious about life.
We are not kids anymore with parents on our backs to protect us. Growing up means taking responsibility. The first is the responsibility for you is yourself.
How will you ever care for work, family, spouses, or children if you don't care for yourself?
You are grown up, and you have it in you. Just sit down for a minute and think.
Take it one step at a time.
We, humans, are more impatient than ever. We want the resolution to everything at once. Sadly this is not how the world works.
Things take time. If you are in your 20s, you have like 40–50 years of life ahead. Take things slowly—one at a time.
Foucs on three goals at a time and no more. As said above, that’s the max you can juggle.
I tried many things at once, and all I could think about was escaping everything.
Set unrealistic deadlines and pressure yourself from time to time.
This is essential since doing the same thing at the same for a long isn’t very sustainable. Mix it up a bit.
Find some large chunks of time and try to do something big.
The trick is to maintain daily progress doing this.
There is an interesting phenomenon here.
Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.
This is Parkinson’s law.
Remember how we used to complete college projects/assignments at the last moment even though we had a lot of time?
It doesn’t matter what, but it always ends just at the time of submission. Not a day or a week earlier.
Setting up short deadlines with pressure will make you do your tasks fast. It's not sustainable to do this every day, but you can try it on weekends.
Example :
I work out every day, Yet sometimes, I go trekking to mix it up.
I read a bit every day, yet sometimes I spend 4–5 hours reading a lot. Last week I read like 300 pages in one day.
I write once a week, but sometime back, I tried writing every day.
It has another benefit apart from completing things fast. It makes you realize the importance of routine and daily work rather than big-bang delivery.
That’s the five things I do, and you can do as well to beat procrastination a little bit.
Happy, Not Procrastinating.
If you like this article, check out my other articles. I write about the practical stuff that worked for me. Thanks for reading.
Cheers :)
