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You’re not a procrastinator. You just have a habit of procrastinating. I think I’ve figured it out. I think I’ve cracked the “I’m a procrastinator” problem. And if you stick it through I’ll show you how I’ve solved this problem.
Problem with Procrastination
Whether it's doing your homework or studying for a test. Don’t get me started on studying. That is just a recipe for me to suddenly feel the urge to take off the clothes from my clothes chair and actually hang them up in my cupboard. Sweep and mop my room and read conspiracy theories on the beirut explosion.

The task is never the actual problem with procrastination. So the question is: Why do we procrastinate?

The biggest reason is that it is a form of stress relief. The stress of completing or performing a task is actually much worse than performing the task itself. So we avoid it. This is irrational since the task itself is not as bad as the stress of actually thinking about doing the task. I know, right? Sucks to be human. But basically you’re giving in to the instant gratification. Which is feeling good in the moment, even when it might hurt the future you. See this is the problem with the phrase “Live in the moment” and phrase popularised by drake and lil wayne “You only live once that’s the motto YOLO”. But basically if you YOLO enough times you’re gonna YOLO yourself into a breakdown.

People might come at me and say well I work better under pressure. Yeah that was me, I was that guy. The closer the deadline is the better. Sometimes you just wanna push that boundary of how late you can start a task while still scraping a 50% and it gives you a bit of a thrill. But studies have shown that this can lead to higher levels of depression and anxiety.

The other major problem with this is that some things don’t have set deadlines, and those are the worse things to procrastinate on, because you could put those off for weeks and months. There is no pressure so all of us who get things done under pressure won’t end up doing it and just put it off for when we wake up after our three hour nap because then we will have the energy to do the thing which wont work. So let me explain my three steps to overcoming procrastination.

Solutions explained

I’m talking to you, the lazy person who wants to make the most basic reforms from chronic procrastination. This process has helped me to get out a procrastination slump. Let’s admit it. You feel good about yourself while procrastinating, but for the most part it’s something that leaves you feeling guilty and stressed. So here are my three steps to success.
Three steps to beat procrastination

Step 1

So now that we know what procrastination is and that it's actually bad for us. how do we beat it? Well what we need to do is minimise the barriers and resistors to that task. The other main thing to do is accept the stress of the task. This is an important factor. Accept that this obstacle is stressful and you need to deal with it, and that putting it off won’t you feel better about it later. Admitting to yourself that completing this task will make you feel better and perhaps even lead to a reward. This leads us to step 2.


Step 2 - the 2 minute rule

As a person suffering from chronic procrastination you have to accept that your mind is evil and doesn't always have your best interests at heart. So you have to trick it. (Smeagle scene). So count down from 5 and then jump into telling yourself you’re going to do 2 mins of work. Literally 2 mins and then call it. What would actually end up happening is that A, you’ll finish the task in that time and then you can get back to stuff your face with doritos while you play xbox drink mountain dew.

The science behind this is that the act of actually doing the thing or working is not actually the problem. It is the avoidance that is the problem. So using the 2 mins rule you are getting away from avoidance and you may end up finished the desired thing.

Step 3 - Make a checklist

And the best way to do this is to get everything out of your head by making a checklist.

Yes, I’m making this whole video on checklists, but before you go. Did you know that checklists are one of the main reasons why planes hardly ever crash, or the reason why buildings have such a small chance of actually collapsing.

Dr Atul Gawande is the author of “The Checklist manifesto” and he is a surgeon who was tasked to actually make a checklist for surgeons and their teams going into surgery, and what ended up happening was astonishing. They set up these checklists for hospitals in regions from Seattle in the US to Tanzania and they found that the amount of deaths dropped by 30%. Not a drug or medication, Literally just having a checklist that they went through for each operation reduced the avoidable deaths in many different hospitals.